Just before the July 4 holiday this year, a piece of news traveled through the homebuilding services sector with a speed and urgency that left many builder operations teams scrambling: One of the nation’s leading third-party inspection and risk-mitigation providers, Quality Built, had abruptly ceased operations.

For builders caught in mid-cycle — with homes days or weeks away from closings, energy code sign-offs pending, and litigation-sensitive quality control processes not yet complete — the closure created an instant, cascading, operational crisis.

Certificates of occupancy were suddenly in jeopardy. Critical inspections were stranded. Compliance timelines were at risk.

That’s when Pacific InterWest, a unit of Atlantic & Pacific Build Group, and already a 20-year provider of quality assurance, risk mitigation, and energy compliance services to builders and developers, stepped into the breach.

Overnight Impact

According to President Stacy Beers, the market response was immediate and measurable.

We’ve written 26% of our year-to-date total revenue, directly been related in July to their closure,” Beers tells The Builder's Daily. “A quarter of our volume right now, in less than a month, was attributed to them just shutting their doors. It’s been crazy.”

Beers notes that while some clients already split work between the two firms, the competitive field in their core QA/QC service line has always been narrow.

With Quality Built gone, “it has opened the market up for us across the board.”

Anticipating a Moment Like This

Pacific InterWest CEO Glen Martin says the team didn’t predict the exact timing — but they had long strategized that precise possibility into their plan to grow.

We follow Quality Built pretty closely. We thought there might be a time when such an opportunity would arise. We weren’t surprised by the closure. We were caught a little off guard with how quickly it happened.”

That readiness came from a deliberate focus on expansion by following their existing clients into new geographies, building operational templates for market entry, and maintaining situational awareness of competitors.

We have conversations regularly about which half-dozen or dozen new states we want to be in, and how we execute a plan in that state.”

Rapid Deployment Under Pressure

VP of Operations Blaise Kostielney learned about the closure on July 3 at 6:40 a.m. and had staff in the field immediately after the holiday weekend.

Operationally, what allows us to pivot like that is the relationships that we’ve built over the years," Kostielney says. "Whether somebody works for a competitor… we maintain those relationships, and there’s a time and a place when we need to call on those, and that’s what we do. We were able to get our existing team to take on the additional work… and then build our team to expand.”

Those relationships extended beyond builders to the inspectors and specialists suddenly displaced by Quality Built’s shutdown, making Pacific InterWest the natural landing spot for experienced and capable personnel in key regions.

Agility as a Core Competence

Martin illustrates the company’s operational reflexes with a story from early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when Bay Area construction sites could only remain open if they had JSAS safety inspectors on site.

This requirement came out… and I was, frankly, not aware that it happened," Martin says. "The next morning, I had a phone call… ‘Do you do JSAS inspections?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what that is.’”

“By the third customer that day, I answered, ‘Yeah. When do you need it? Send me the information.’ We hired all the people, changed our software, and worked from Thursday to Sunday. Monday, we started doing these inspections and creating safety guidelines.”

That pivot, executed in under four days, carried the company through a year and a half of pandemic-related slowdown in other inspection work.

Customization Over One-Size-Fits-All

Beers says retention of the new client base depends on more than just being available in a crisis. It comes from tailoring programs to each builder’s needs.

We’re getting to understand how their programs need to be. We’re setting up new programs for them for quality assurance. We have a Quality Assurance Manager who not only looks at everything we’re outputting, but also how we can improve. How do we continue to refine our programs? How do we continue to partner better with our clients? Because everybody wants the same thing. We all want to build a quality product.”

That includes broadening service scope when warranted.

One of the services that we offer is our peer plan reviews and being able to catch things up front instead of in the field," Beers says. "That right there alone is going to be massive.”

Making the Case in a Cost-Conscious Market

In 2025’s high-interest-rate, affordability-strained market, every builder expense line is under review. Beers frames quality assurance as both cost avoidance and brand protection.

You’re going to pay now, or you’re going to pay later," Beers observes. "Anything you catch in the very beginning, you’re going to save the cost in the long run. Our job is risk mitigation. We’re here to help them try to avoid as much as possible.”

Kostielney underscores that service reliability is part of the value proposition.

We pick up the phone when there’s a problem," he says. "We address the problems. We’re responsive. We’re a partner… sometimes that costs us money. But if you lose any part of your reputation, then you rarely get that back.”

Consistency Across Geographies

With active projects in multiple states, Pacific InterWest invests in process discipline to ensure results match client expectations everywhere.

“We have processes, standard field training with our new people, an experienced person reviews every inspector’s work product," Kostielney adds. "We take the information and use that to teach and improve the quality of the work in the field.”

Expanding Beyond Residential

Part of Pacific InterWest’s growth strategy is diversification into municipal infrastructure and privatized military housing, where they often act as the local jurisdiction.

“We do the review of the plans. We stamp the plans. We issue the building permits. We make the inspections. We write the certificates of occupancy. We become the jurisdiction,” Martin explains.

The work addresses both housing quality for service members and adaptive reuse.

There’s a lot of reuse, turning a lot of these unused military complexes into affordable housing,” Beers says. “It’s a very good feel-good thing… we’re doing something good for the environment, and people.”

Lessons learning

When a major player in a small, specialized field disappears overnight, the disruption can cascade across builders’ schedules, compliance obligations, and closings. Pacific InterWest’s ability to absorb a 26% contract volume increase in less than a month reflects a combination of advance positioning, operational relationships, process discipline, and a willingness to move fast when the market shifts.

In a homebuilding climate where speed, certainty, and trust are at a premium, Martin, Beers, and Kostielney frame Pacific InterWest’s role simply: be ready, be responsive, and make the builder’s problem go away before it becomes the buyer’s problem.