A New Website, a New Chapter: Vertical Construction Group Is Live
A new construction company deserves a website built to get straight to the point. And now, Vertical Construction Group has one.
Today, www.vcgil.com is live. It introduces a new name in commercial construction backed by more than 40 years of experience. It also marks the launch of something new on my side of the screen: a different way of building websites, combining decades of human experience with the remarkable capabilities of AI.
The result? A polished, professional website built in a little over two weeks. And this is just the beginning.
A New Name With a Long History
Founded in 2026 by Mark Riedy, Vertical Construction Group may be a new company, but it certainly isn't new to the business of building.
Riedy's professional history stretches back to Champion Electric in 1985, through Project One Partners in the 1990s and Polaris Design Build in 2024, leading to Vertical Construction Group today. That's more than four decades of experience brought together under one new name.
The company serves six sectors: retail, recreation, institutional, tenant interiors, hospitality, and special projects. Its client roster includes familiar names like Trader Joe's, Under Armour, Checkers, and NOAA.
That's a substantial history to tell. Our job was to tell it clearly, confidently, and without making visitors work too hard to find what they need.
Fast Means Fast. Period.
We've all been there. You click a website, stare at a blank screen, and start wondering whether your internet connection has gone on vacation.
I wanted Vertical Construction Group's visitors to have a better experience.
On launch day, the site's initial mobile loading time was measured at 22.8 seconds. After a round of focused improvements, that number dropped to 2.9 seconds. The finished site scored 90 out of 100 on mobile and 99 out of 100 on desktop in Google's Lighthouse performance tests.
Accessibility and SEO both scored 100. The site also received a perfect 3 out of 3 in Lighthouse's agentic browsing category, which evaluates how well a site supports AI-driven browsing.
How did we do it? No secret sauce. No expensive optimization package. Just thoughtful design, properly sized images, smarter loading, and less unnecessary software getting in the way.
Sometimes the best technology is knowing what not to add.
Back to Basics, With AI in the Toolbox
This project also gave me the opportunity to put my Web Zero methodology into practice.
The idea behind Web Zero is refreshingly simple: go back to the fundamentals of the web, then use modern AI tools to make those fundamentals work harder.
Instead of building on a traditional content management system (CMS), with its databases, plugins, updates, and potential security headaches, Web Zero starts with the basics: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The result is a lightweight website that doesn't need a complex software stack just to display a company's information.
Fewer moving parts mean fewer things to maintain, fewer opportunities for things to break, and a smaller attack surface to defend. And because the site is built to be lightweight, it can deliver a faster experience, too.
AI helped write the code and accelerate the build. Human experience guided the decisions, reviewed the work, and made the final calls. That's an important distinction. AI is a powerful tool, but someone still needs to know what good looks like.
In this case, that someone was me.
I call it Web Zero because sometimes moving forward means getting back to what made the web great in the first place: open standards, simple technology, and websites that put people first.
You can read more about the approach on the Web Zero project page.
One Page. One Purpose. No Fuss.
Could a company with more than 40 years of experience have a website with just one page?
Absolutely.
The goal isn't to fill a navigation menu. It's to give potential clients a clear picture of who Vertical Construction Group is, what it does, and why its experience matters. If one thoughtfully designed page does that job, why make visitors click through five?
Good web design isn't measured by the number of pages, the number of plugins, or the complexity of the technology behind the curtain. It's measured by how well the site serves the people who use it.
The Beginning of Something Bigger
I'm proud of what we've launched for Vertical Construction Group, and I'm excited about what it represents for my own work.
Web Zero is a new way of approaching website development: less overhead, fewer dependencies, better performance, and AI working alongside human expertise rather than replacing it.
Vertical Construction Group gets a website built around its business. Visitors get a fast, straightforward experience. And we get a real-world example of what's possible when you rethink some long-standing assumptions about how websites should be built.
Not bad for a little over two weeks' work.
And stay tuned. This is the first of what I hope will be many Web Zero projects.