Brice Neiman and the work behind the walls

In February 2008, Brice Neiman brought a contractor’s arithmetic to Nebraska’s legislature. He ran E&K’s Omaha and Lincoln drywall operations. He wanted lawmakers to understand what happened when employers carrying the costs of a workforce competed against businesses treating workers as independent contractors. A cheaper bid could mean a very expensive choice for the company that lost it.

Neiman described an operation employing roughly 150 to 250 people over a year and doing about $25 million in revenue. Keeping those people working had taken him beyond Nebraska into neighboring states. The problem, as he explained it, reached straight from a bid sheet to the next job. The decimal points had people attached.

Ten years later, he became chief executive of CDM Investment Group, E&K’s parent. His responsibilities would stretch into California acquisitions and a much larger organization. But that earlier appearance offers a useful place to begin: a working manager explaining why the numbers on the page mattered to the people outside the room.

Before the boardroom, chores near Fairmont

Neiman was born in York, Nebraska, on March 25, 1974. Fairmont was part of his early life. His brother Jeff later recalled that their father worked as a signal maintainer for Burlington Northern Railroad and also had an interest in a small cow-calf operation south of town, near the air base. Brice and Jeff helped with the chores.

It is a modest childhood detail, and a revealingly physical one. There are animals to look after and work to finish. Agriculture appears here as something the brothers helped do, rather than scenery behind a childhood photograph. Jeff would make his own career in the cattle business, managing the Circle Five Beef feedyard.

Brice’s education took him to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, from which he graduated. His construction career began in the field with E&K in Lincoln. That starting point matters in a business whose finished product so often conceals the work required to make it. People admire the room. The studs, drywall and ceiling systems generally receive fewer compliments.

He married Cecilia Serna on August 6, 1994. Their family would include three sons, Jesse, Jacob and Jamie. Nebraska, construction and family were all part of his life well before the chief executive title arrived.

A bid sheet has consequences

At the 2008 hearing, Neiman supported LB1016. He described competitive pressure associated with worker classification and taxes, and explained that his operating unit expected roughly half its work that year to come from outside Nebraska. Iowa, Kansas and surrounding areas were helping supply the workload.

His argument was practical. He believed competitors’ labor arrangements could create bid differences that his business could not simply absorb through a smaller profit. The choice then became whether to accept work on damaging terms or find work elsewhere. A company could be busy and still be making a bad bargain.

That is a more interesting management problem than the tidy instruction to grow revenue. Revenue arrives with obligations. Employees need a continuing stream of projects; projects need prices that cover the work. In Neiman’s testimony, these were connected problems. Moving across a state line could preserve employment while changing where the business earned its money.

The exchange also places him in a particular trade. He identified drywall, metal studs and acoustical ceilings among his company’s work. These are the practical components of an interior: the things that turn a building’s open volume into rooms people can use. His concern was how to keep delivering that work without bidding away the means to do it.

The long preparation for June 1

When Neiman became CEO on June 1, 2018, he had spent more than 22 years with the organization, including the preceding 15 as president and unit manager of E&K of Omaha. The appointment followed a long period running a business within the group. He already knew the company from well below the top of its organization chart.

Kent Vipond remained chairman. The succession included a planned period of working together, giving the incoming chief executive access to the experience of the outgoing one. Greg Williamsen succeeded Neiman in Omaha. The change therefore required more than a new name beside the CEO title; responsibilities moved at the operating level too.

Neiman’s language on taking the job was strikingly collective. He spoke about being surrounded by “so many talented people with clear values.” His stated ambition was to preserve the culture while improving service, quality and results. The opportunity to lead came with something he wanted to carry forward.

Continuity can sound dull until someone has to arrange it. A business still has customers and crews on the day its leadership changes. Neiman’s promotion belonged to that less theatrical kind of corporate story, in which preparation does much of the work.

“so many talented people with clear values”

Brice Neiman · on his 2018 appointment

The people in the convention photograph

A photograph from CISCA’s 2018 convention shows Neiman among the association’s past presidents. He is fourth from the left in the back row. Around him are people whose names also appear in the history of his industry and his company, including Kent Vipond and Ron Bishop.

The picture adds another dimension to a career often described through company titles. CISCA brings together the ceilings and interior systems construction industry. Neiman had also taken a leadership role in the wider trade. His professional circle extended beyond the people reporting to him.

By 2021, CISCA’s strategic plan listed him among the stakeholders for a review of executive committee succession and volunteer structure. It is the sort of association work that rarely supplies a glamorous caption. It does require people to consider who will do the work next, how responsibilities should be arranged and how an institution keeps going.

Seen beside his own transition into CDM’s leadership, that involvement is suggestive. Succession appeared both inside the business and in his industry service. In each setting, the question was how to pass responsibility between people without losing the knowledge that made the organization useful.

California, with the names left on the door

In September 2021, CDM announced an agreement to acquire Elljay Acoustics, a Southern California contractor specializing in acoustical ceilings, specialty ceilings and wall systems. The business had more than half a century of experience. Its work brought another established operation into the group Neiman led.

The arrangements preserved recognizable leadership. Ron Bishop, who had been with Elljay since 1977, would remain president and join CDM’s leadership team. Elljay’s team would stay in its existing roles, and its name and brand would remain. The acquisition announcement made those points explicit.

For anyone trying to understand Neiman’s approach, those details deserve attention alongside the transaction itself. A contracting company carries knowledge in its employees and relationships. Keeping experienced people in place gives continuity a practical form. Customers still know whom they are dealing with; teams retain the people who know the business.

Neiman described the purchase as aligned with CDM’s strategic goals. At the time, E&K had more than 1,200 employees and five offices, spanning Omaha, Denver, Kansas City, Phoenix and Chicago. California widened the geography of an organization whose incoming CEO had once explained the necessity of finding work in neighboring states.

An acquisition with a thirty-year acquaintance

The following year brought another California agreement. In October 2022, CDM announced its planned acquisition of the Brady Companies, specialty subcontracting businesses with roots reaching back to 1946. Their services included framing, plaster, drywall, fireproofing, doors and ceilings. The businesses operated in Anaheim, Castroville and San Diego.

Neiman’s explanation emphasized an existing friendship between the organizations stretching back 30 years. He described learning from one another, developing their cultures and improving business practices. The deal had a history before it had an announcement. That is a different timescale from a transaction introduced as an entirely new opportunity.

Again, the leadership arrangements were concrete. Rick Marshall, Abe Cobian and Gregg Brady would continue as presidents in their respective areas; Harry Schirer would continue as chief financial officer. They would join CDM’s leadership team. The Brady name would carry forward as Brady West.

CDM then described an employee-owned group of more than 1,500 people. Neiman’s responsibility had expanded considerably from his Omaha operating unit. The recurring feature of the two acquisition announcements was the attention given to established teams. Growth brought more people into the organization while preserving leaders who already understood their part of it.

The name that stayed in the community

Neiman died on May 13, 2023, at 49. He had been living in Overland Park, Kansas, after earlier years in Omaha. His life brought together the Nebraska communities where he began, the construction organization he led and the family he and Cecilia raised.

Colleagues remembered kindness as well as leadership. E&K’s tribute described the impact he had on the company and its community. People who had worked with him also remembered friendship and a ready smile. Those are personal recollections, and their value lies in their scale: the impression someone leaves with another person.

The Brice Neiman Memorial Foundation was formed in 2024 to continue charitable giving in his name. Cecilia became its president. A memorial golf tournament became another way for the community around him to gather, with a third annual event listed for August 2026 in Overland Park.

A career can be reduced to a sequence of appointments and transactions. Neiman’s includes those, but it also contains the brothers doing chores, the manager explaining a bid problem, and the colleagues standing together for a convention photograph. Each puts him among other people, doing work that depended on their participation. His title changed over the years. That company around him remained central to the story.