Ted Phillips picked up his first shovel as a teenager on a TVA clearing project in 1949. Three years later, he and brother-in-law Ted Jordan shook hands and founded Phillips & Jordan, Inc. No fancy business plan—just two men who showed up ready to work. Those early days meant clearing thousands of acres for TVA across the Southeast. But standing still wasn’t in our DNA. We kept pushing, expanding, and tackling bigger challenges throughout the 20th century.
Today, Phillips still stands tall, rooted in those Smoky Mountains but reaching across America. When Ted Sr. passed in 2018, his wife Avis—who’d been in the trenches from day one while also running her own construction company, Avisco, for 35 years—stepped up as Chairman of the Board. That move didn’t just make Phillips woman-owned; it put someone at the helm who knows this business inside and out.