A few public projects are keeping at least some South Florida contractors busy at a time when construction activity remains slow in an overbuilt condominium and office tower market. “There’s much more activity than there was last year at this time,” says Tom Murphy Jr., chairman and CEO of Coastal Construction Group in Miami, who adds that Florida is one of the worst states for new starts. Coastal began only one project last year, necessitating layoffs through 2009. However, the firm is now rehiring. “We’re starting back in positive territory as far as people,” Murphy says. Coastal is building a
Southeast Construction presents its third annual Top Design-Build Contractors ranking. Derived from information obtained during the Top Contractors survey conducted earlier this year, it documents the amount of revenue related to design-build activities by the contracting firms that participated in that ranking. Related Links: Top 50 Design Builders Ranking The Top Design-Build Contractors ranking is based upon 2009 regional revenue that each firm estimated came from design-build projects within the four-state region of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The ranking also includes more information about each firm, including the location of its main regional office, phone number and
Our annual survey of subcontractors in the Southwest shows revenue totals plummeting in 2009. Last year, we ranked 160 companies totaling $6.13 billion based on their 2008 revenue. This year, the responses fell to 113 firms with revenue totaling just $3.58 billion in 2009. Photo Courtesy Carollo Engineers Crews pour concrete for a clarifier floor during construction on the third phase of the $60-million Casa Grande Water Reclamation Facility. Related Links: Top 113 Specialty Contractors State/Worldwide Market Sectors Safest Subcontractors Even with the drop in participation, the largest firms remain fairly consistent year to year. All but five of last
Nationally and regionally, 2009 was a pretty dismal year, economically. Construction felt the downturn especially, with an industry unemployment rate that peaked at 22.7% last December. Additionally, earlier this year, McGraw-Hill Construction, publisher of Southeast Construction, estimated that the value of new contracts in the four-state region declined by a collective 24% during 2009, compared to 2008. (And 2008 had the lowest value of new work in many years.) Unfortunately, that downward market trajectory was the main story line of 2009. But another was the seeds of future construction activity that were being planted by government spending. Looking at this
At a time when demand remains strong for new and upgraded facilities at colleges and universities, institutions are delaying projects because funding is difficult to obtain. Still, some projects are moving forward. �The education market in the Southeast is flat, which means it�s fairly good compared to other markets,� says Scott MacLeod, Skanska USA Building chief operating officer for the Southeast in Atlanta. �Our two strongest markets in the Southeast are health care and education.� Skanska is building the $140-million, 297,000-sq-ft Hillsborough Hospital and 68,000-sq-ft Medical Office Building for the University of North Carolina Hospitals in Hillsborough, and a $13.9-million
Despite the ongoing construction slump, there is always demand for a more efficient and cost-effective building solution. div id="articleExtrasA" div id="articleExtrasB" div id="articleExtras" A Florida-based builder of concrete homes and other structures thinks it has such an innovation in its modular concrete building system that it is utilizing throughout South Florida and the Caribbean, including Haiti. After some noteworthy recent successes in Palm Beach County, the Keys and pre-earthquake Haiti, officials with Royal Concrete Concepts of West Palm Beach are pitching their modular system as a building solution that can be shipped and constructed quickly almost anywhere. �Our products combined
It�s no secret: 2009 was another bad year for many contractors working in the four-state Southeast region. Numerous firms closed their doors for good. Others sold out to bigger, more prosperous contractors. Nationally, unemployment in the construction industry topped 22% at one point in 2009, only to escalate further in 2010. And unless a contractor was able to snag some stimulus work, opportunities remained relatively sparse. In that regard, being recognized as the �Contractor of the Year� for accomplishments in 2009 could be viewed as akin to winning an award for making the best of a bad situation. And by
As the result of a rare closure of interstate highway, a 15-mi rehabilitation of Interstate 385 near Laurens, S.C., is on track to be completed in just eight months—and for two-thirds of its original estimated cost. Photo: Portland Cement Association, Southeast Region Recent paving activity on the I-385 project. Closure of section of South Carolina interstate highway is allowing SCDOT to complete the project in just eight months. Originally constructed as U.S. Route 276, the four-lane divided highway linking Greenville with Interstate 26 was added to the interstate system in the mid-1980s even though it hadn’t been designed to those
New faces are nothing new in the Carolinas, which have long been among the nation’s fastest-growing states. But with construction activity at a standstill in many other parts of the U.S., local contractors increasingly find themselves vying with competitors representing a cross-section of unfamiliar area codes. Image: BE&K Building Group A joint venture of BE&K Building Group and Turner Construction Co. won the contract to build Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner final-assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C. Image: Turner Construction Co. Turner Construction is managing construction of the 500,000-sq-ft, 21-story Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel Tower III in Cherokee, N.C. “The make-up of the
The U.S. General Services Administration received nearly $5.6 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding to modernize federal facilities and convert them into high-performance green buildings. Those dollars are starting to flow into communities in the Southeast as projects ramp up. Photo: General Services Administration Skanska USA is overseeing a $49-million modernization of the George C. Young U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building in Orlando. Related Links: Top Green Contractors “The government spends a lot of money on energy use in buildings, and anything we can do to make that better and reduce our carbon footprint is a good thing,”
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