Jimmy Board Joins Soil Depot
Jimmy Board has joined Soil Depot as Managing Director, Strategy and Development. He is a commercial real estate executive with more than 20 years across capital markets, principal investment and development, and he has been involved in more than $25 billion in capital transactions. He is here to do one thing for our clients: turn dirt from a line item you pay into a line item you can win back.
Key takeaways
- Jimmy Board joins Soil Depot as Managing Director, Strategy and Development.
- More than 20 years in commercial real estate, spanning capital markets, principal investment and development, acquisitions and dispositions, asset management and strategic growth.
- Involved in more than $25 billion in capital transactions, with senior leadership positions at CBRE, JLL and Colliers International, plus multiple principal investment, private equity and development platforms.
- His focus at Soil Depot is project economics: cutting material, hauling and disposal costs so earthwork returns money to the deal.
- The time to bring him in is before the earthwork is bid, while material, haul distance and disposal are all still open.
Who Jimmy is
His career has run along both sides of commercial real estate. Twenty years of it: capital markets, principal investment and development, acquisitions and dispositions, asset management and strategic growth, at CBRE, JLL and Colliers International and at private equity and development platforms in between.
That experience covers the full lifecycle of a commercial asset, not one slice of it. He has worked across multifamily, build-to-rent, retail, industrial, office, land and other commercial real estate asset classes, which means he has sat on both sides of the table: the institutional capital markets side that underwrites a deal, and the principal side that has to actually build it and live with the numbers afterward.
What he is doing at Soil Depot
Jimmy now brings that same principal and return-focused mindset to Soil Depot. His job is to help developers and contractors identify the most cost-effective soil and logistics solutions on a project, and to create additional return on cost through meaningful earthwork savings.
In practice that means getting into the dirt line early, while it can still be changed. By reducing material, hauling and disposal costs, his focus is to turn dirt from a necessary project expense into another opportunity to improve overall project economics.
Why a capital markets background belongs at a dirt company
It is a fair question, and the answer is the reason we hired him. Earthwork is usually treated as a construction cost, priced late, by whoever is available, against a scope that is already fixed. That is exactly how it becomes one of the least examined lines in a budget. Nobody argues with it because nobody underwrote it.
Someone who has underwritten $25 billion of transactions reads that line differently. A dollar taken out of haul cost is a dollar of return on cost, and on a large site the dirt number is big enough to move the deal, not just the schedule. That is the argument our page on where GCs actually save on dirt haul makes with the field numbers. Jimmy makes it with the capital stack.
Where the savings actually come from
There is no trick to this and we will not pretend there is one. The savings come from three places, and all three are decided early.
Material. Specifying what the plans actually require rather than what is easiest to order. Select fill where an engineered material is called for, common fill or fill dirt where it is not, and base to the gradation on the sheet. Our guide on what select fill is covers where that line sits.
Hauling. Distance and truck cycle decide most of the cost of moving dirt. The closer the source, the cheaper the yard, and the right truck for the road is a bigger variable than most schedules assume. Our breakdown of dump truck sizes and load capacity is the short version.
Disposal. This is the one with the most money left in it. A site that is exporting clean material and a site that is importing it are usually paying twice for the same dirt, once to get rid of it and once to buy it. Matching those two is the whole idea behind our network, and it is what took roughly half the cost out of the Melissa export.
The rest of the record
Jimmy was recognized by the Houston Business Journal as a Top 40 Under 40 honoree in 2016, and was named a JLL Top Achiever for six consecutive years. He graduated cum laude from Marist College with Bachelor of Science degrees in Finance and Marketing, where he also served as captain of the varsity baseball team for two years.
The six consecutive years is the line worth pausing on. Single strong years are common in commercial real estate. Six in a row at a firm the size of JLL is a different kind of record.
How to reach him
If you are a developer or a general contractor with a site that is about to move dirt, Jimmy is the right call before the earthwork is bid, not after. He can be reached at Jimmy@soil-depot.com or on (713) 201-4454, and he is on the team page alongside the regional managers who run each market.
We coordinate soil supply, trucking and site logistics for developers and contractors across Texas, operating in DFW, Austin, San Antonio and Houston. Our service areas page covers what we deliver where, and the soil calculator will give you a volume and a truckload count before you call.
Questions about the appointment
Have a site about to move dirt?
Tell us the material, the volume and the site address and we will get a quote back the same day. If the earthwork is still being planned, that is the better call to have.