The most defensible starting point is Associated Builders and Contractors of Indiana/Kentucky (ABC IN/KY) and its year-specific Excellence in Construction results. Search each results page for the town and project type you need, then open the detailed winner record to confirm the contractor, project, category, and award level. Treat the award as a project-specific discovery signal—not as a blanket endorsement, proof of licensing, or evidence that a firm is the right choice for every job.
Recent ABC IN/KY records identify award-listed work involving MAC Construction & Excavating in Jeffersonville, Clarksville, New Albany, and Sellersburg; Runnebohm Construction Company for the Johnson County Recycling Center; and Dan Cristiani Construction and Excavating for Seymour Dam Removal. The records are useful leads, but they do not establish a complete list of Southern Indiana contractors or each company’s headquarters and current service area.
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What an industry award actually tells you
ABC IN/KY describes its Excellence in Construction program as recognition for member projects and the teams that delivered them. Its 2026 award page says, “ABC’s Award of Excellence in Construction honors the collective talent and ingenuity of the entire project team—including the contractor, owner, architect, and engineer.” The same page says recipients are recognized for “exceptional accomplishments in innovation, quality, communication, and commitment to safety.”
That wording matters when you evaluate a firm. The award is attached to a particular project and a group of participants. It is not a continuing certification of the contractor, a guarantee of future performance, or a finding that the firm is qualified for your project’s licensing, insurance, bonding, schedule, or scope requirements.
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- Useful signal: the team completed work that an industry association chose to recognize under stated judging themes.
- Not established by the award alone: the company’s current availability, geographic coverage, financial capacity, licensing status, insurance limits, safety record outside the recognized project, or ability to reproduce the result on your job.
- Important distinction: a project in a Southern Indiana town shows where that work occurred. It does not prove that the contractor is headquartered there or serves every nearby county.
Use the award to find candidates, then verify the separate facts that control a hiring decision.
Which firms and projects appear in recent Southern Indiana award results?
The following examples come from ABC IN/KY results reviewed for 2023 through 2026. They are examples of award-listed work, not a regional ranking or comprehensive directory.
| Year | Firm or entry named by the award record | Project or location named in the record | What the record establishes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | MAC Construction & Excavating, Inc. | Projects in Jeffersonville and Clarksville | The detailed 2026 winners page labels both cited projects Excellence winners. |
| 2026 | Runnebohm Construction Company, Inc. | Johnson County Recycling Center | The detailed 2026 results label the project an Excellence winner. |
| 2026 | Premier Ag – Campbellsburg | Campbellsburg entry | The detailed 2026 results list the entry as an Excellence winner; the record cited here does not establish that this name is the contractor. |
| 2025 | Dan Cristiani Construction and Excavating | Seymour Dam Removal | The 2025 award listing names the firm on this entry; confirm the award level on the detailed record. |
| 2024 | MAC Construction & Excavating, Inc. | New Albany River Recreation Site Phase 2 | The 2024 results list MAC on the project. |
| 2024 | MAC Construction & Excavating, Inc. | Road Reconstruction – East Main Street | The 2024 results list MAC on the project; use the original record to confirm the town and award level. |
| 2023 | MAC Construction & Excavating, Inc. | Projects involving Jeffersonville and Sellersburg | The 2023 listing names MAC on entries involving those communities. |
For the 2026 MAC entries, the detailed winners page is more useful than a headline list because it identifies the Excellence level for both cited projects. For entries where a listing names a firm or team but does not show a tier in the information summarized above, do not upgrade the language to “Excellence winner” until the detailed page confirms it.
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Step-by-step: find award-recognized contractors for your project
1. Define the search area by project location
Write down the actual job location, nearby municipalities, and the counties you can reasonably use. Southern Indiana is not one uniform market: a contractor that completed work in Jeffersonville may not regularly bid in a rural county farther south or east. Include a practical travel radius, likely site conditions, and any public-owner requirements in your search notes.
2. Open the ABC IN/KY results page for a specific year
Start with the year-specific Excellence in Construction page rather than a generic company profile. Check several years—2026, 2025, 2024, and 2023 are useful starting points—because the mix of projects and the level of detail can change. Record the page’s competition year exactly; an award year is not necessarily the same as the year construction began or reached substantial completion.
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3. Search the page for towns and project names
Use your browser’s find function for the municipality, county, facility name, and work type. Search variations such as “Jeffersonville,” “Clarksville,” “New Albany,” “Sellersburg,” “Seymour,” and “Campbellsburg,” then search the project name itself. A town search can reveal an entry whose title does not include the community.
4. Capture the complete entry before contacting anyone
Copy the contractor’s legal or displayed name, the exact project title, location, category, competition year, and award level. Save the page date or year and the direct award-record address in your notes. Preserve spelling and punctuation; firms with similar names can otherwise be confused during bid outreach.
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5. Open the detailed winner record
Use the detailed winners page to distinguish an Excellence result from a Merit result or from a general listing. The 2026 records, for example, provide the decisive tier for the Jeffersonville and Clarksville MAC projects and for the Johnson County Recycling Center entry associated with Runnebohm Construction Company. If a summary page names a contractor but the detailed record is silent on the level, report only what the record actually says.
6. Confirm that the project matches your geography and scope
Award pages may show where a project was built, not where the company maintains an office or accepts work. Ask the firm whether it currently serves your municipality, whether it self-performs the relevant trade, and whether the recognized project involved the same delivery method, size, site constraints, and public or private procurement rules as yours.
7. Build a shortlist with more than one award source or year
Three to five plausible bidders is usually more useful than a single celebrated name. Include firms with comparable completed work even when their award history is shorter. Look for repeated evidence across years, but do not treat the number of appearances as a league table; award programs vary in participation, categories, and submission practices.
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How to verify that an award claim is genuine and relevant
Check the organization and competition
Confirm that the page belongs to ABC IN/KY and identifies the Excellence in Construction competition and year. Do not rely on an undated marketing statement that says only “award-winning.” Ask the contractor for the award organization, year, category, exact project title, and a copy or link to the official record.
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Match the contractor to the recognized team
Because ABC describes recognition of the entire project team, determine the firm’s role. It may have been the prime contractor, a specialty contractor, construction manager, or another participant. Ask who served as owner, architect, engineer, and major trade partners. A firm listed on a team is not automatically responsible for every element of the finished project.
Verify the award level and wording
Use precise language in your notes and procurement documents:
- Say “listed on the 2024 ABC IN/KY project entry” when the listing establishes only that connection.
- Say “the detailed 2026 winners page identifies the project as an Excellence winner” when the detailed record supplies that tier.
- Do not call a company an Excellence winner when only a project team or an entry is identified and the level is not shown.
Confirm the project location independently
Read the complete entry, not just the town appearing in a search result. A facility can have a municipal name that differs from its mailing address, and a road project title may omit the community altogether. If the location is material to your qualification rules, request the project address or owner reference from the firm.
Turn recognition into a useful contractor comparison
Once you have verified the award record, compare every candidate against the same project-relevant criteria. The award’s emphasis on innovation, quality, communication, and safety is a useful starting framework, but it does not replace due diligence.
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| Comparison area | Questions to ask every firm |
|---|---|
| Comparable experience | Which completed projects match our building type, dollar range, phasing, site conditions, and public or private owner requirements? |
| Scope and delivery | Will you act as general contractor, construction manager, design-builder, or subcontractor? Which work is self-performed, and which trades are subcontracted? |
| Schedule | Who controls the baseline schedule, what milestones are realistic, and how are delays, change orders, and long-lead materials handled? |
| References | Can we speak with the owner and design professionals from projects similar to ours, including a recently completed job? |
| Safety process | What site-specific plan, incident reporting process, competent-person coverage, and subcontractor controls will apply? |
| Proposal terms | What is included or excluded, how are allowances and alternates priced, what payment schedule is proposed, and what warranty is offered? |
| Capacity and availability | Who will be the project executive and superintendent, what other work is committed, and when can the team mobilize? |
Request the same information from each finalist and score it before discussing price. A polished award submission can demonstrate communication and presentation quality while leaving important commercial terms unanswered.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Due diligence an award cannot replace
Licensing and registration
Check the requirements of the city, county, and state where the work will occur. Some jurisdictions require local contractor registration, trade-specific licensing, permits, or bonds. Ask for license numbers where applicable and verify them with the issuing authority rather than accepting an unverified badge or logo.
Insurance and bonding
Request current certificates of insurance and confirm that limits, additional-insured wording, and policy dates meet your contract requirements. If the project needs bid, payment, or performance bonds, ask the surety or the contractor’s broker for the required evidence. An award record says nothing about current coverage.
References and performance history
Speak with owners who managed comparable projects. Ask about schedule reliability, change-order discipline, punch-list completion, communication during problems, warranty response, and whether the final cost matched the approved contract. Include at least one reference from a recently completed project, not only the award-winning job.
Financial and capacity checks
For a substantial project, establish that the firm can staff the work and carry its obligations through payment cycles. Depending on the procurement rules, this may include a bank letter, bonding capacity, financial statement, workload report, or subcontractor references. Keep confidential information within the process your attorney, lender, or public agency permits.
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Common mistakes when searching award-winning firms
- Assuming the award is a company-wide certification. ABC’s wording is explicitly team- and project-based.
- Using one year as a complete market list. A single competition omits firms that did not submit, were not members, or had no eligible project that year.
- Confusing a project name with a contractor name. “Premier Ag – Campbellsburg” appears as an Excellence award entry in the detailed 2026 results, but the information summarized here does not establish it as the contractor.
- Inferring headquarters from a jobsite. A Jeffersonville, Clarksville, New Albany, Sellersburg, Seymour, or Campbellsburg project indicates work at that location; it does not establish the firm’s office location or full service territory.
- Calling every listing an Excellence winner. Verify the tier on the detailed record, especially for the 2025 Seymour Dam Removal listing and 2024 entries.
- Letting the award replace a bid process. Compare scope, schedule, references, safety, insurance, and contract terms on the same basis for every finalist.
A practical worksheet for your shortlist
Create one record per candidate with these fields:
- Firm’s exact displayed name and primary contact.
- ABC IN/KY competition year and official project title.
- Project town, county, and your reason it is geographically relevant.
- Firm’s role on the team and the owner, architect, and engineer.
- Award category and level, copied from the detailed record.
- Comparable elements: building type, size, delivery method, phasing, and major risks.
- Current service area, availability, licensing, insurance, and bonding confirmation.
- Two or more comparable references and the results of your calls.
- Proposal price, exclusions, schedule, allowances, alternates, warranty, and proposed staff.
- Your decision, unresolved questions, and the date each fact was verified.
This format prevents an impressive award entry from becoming an unsupported conclusion and gives your team an audit trail for why each bidder advanced or was rejected.
What the current records do—and do not—cover
The recent examples are concentrated in ABC IN/KY’s Excellence in Construction results. They show a practical route to finding recognized project teams in Southern Indiana, but they do not establish every award organization active in the region, every recognized firm, or every contractor headquartered there. If your procurement policy requires a comprehensive market scan, add other relevant professional associations, municipal award programs, owner references, and licensing databases, then document the search dates and inclusion rules.
Keep the time frame visible in your shortlist. A 2026 recognition demonstrates a documented project-team achievement in that competition; it does not guarantee that the same personnel, subcontractors, workload, or service territory will apply to a contract you issue later.
Decision rule: when an award should influence your choice
Use recognition to move a firm into serious consideration when the awarded project is genuinely comparable, the detailed record verifies the claim, the firm confirms current coverage and capacity, and independent references support the quality of delivery. Keep looking when the entry is geographically unclear, the company’s role is uncertain, the award level cannot be verified, or required licensing, insurance, bonding, and schedule evidence is missing.
The strongest selection combines a verified award record with project fit and current due diligence. That approach captures the value of industry recognition without treating one past team achievement as a promise about every future construction job.
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