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>> Steve Wright: What I do.
I tell you a lot of stories about my life.
At the end of each year, I take 10% of what we make and I
distribute it amongst my employees.
This will make you smile.
My project managers, estimators, and project
managers they work on a commission base.
They get about 40,000, 42,000 a year.
But I got one fellow whose salary is 42,000 a year and he
made 1/2 a million bucks last year.
And everybody at my place is on incentives.
These supervisors, the full fledge supervisors,
I pay them 1,000 a week.
So they are getting 52,000 a week.
I rent their trucks from them because
I don't like owning equipment.
Most of those guys last year made upwards of 75,000 dollars.
But usually fresh graduates I'm hiring at about 600 a week.
First year, I think, I hired two guys last year.
They made close to 40 on a 30,000 dollar salary.
>> male speaker: How many do you hire each year?
That's the most I had hired for several years.
One or two, I suppose.
A week from today, I'll be 64 years old.
I don't know how much longer I'm going to do it.
So I don't want to get a whole lot bigger.
The company, I think will go on.
Some of my employees would like to buy it
when I get tired of it, I guess.
I've got really good employees, so I'm able
to take more time off than I used to.
Or come and talk to young guys who want
to do this for a living.
That is kind of the marketplace to tell you the truth.
A lot of my competitors, and you know it's funny, you become
friendly with your competitors.
They are not your enemy.
There are ones that will cut corners, and
they don't usually last too long.
With the quality guys, I know at least a
half a dozen contractors.
If we go somewhere and can't find a plumber, then I can call
and say, "Do you know any plumbers
in Washington, Missouri".
And they'll tell me 3 or 4 guys, and
I would do the same for them.
Wal-Mart has so much work that none of us need it all.
We call it the big river of opportunity and
all we need is a bucketfull.
These other guys they tend to pay
their guys more salary than I do.
But most of them have no bonus program.
When I got out of college, I went to Florida.
I lived in Fort Lauterdale for 3 years.
I came back home because I couldn't stand it.
While I was there, I was a superintendent for a guy.
I built a sackreet plant for him.
I brought it in under budget, and he made
an extra 40,000 dollars.
He gave me 100 dollar bonus.
I started looking for a job the next day.
I was really offended by that.
So, that's why I'm generous with my guys.
They are doing the work.
Those guys have made me a fairly well-to-do guy.
You got to, all the dollars are not mine.
You want to try and find someone like that
who values what you do.
The big trick with being a success, I think, is you got to
make enough money to live on.
The real key is to find something you really like to do
and learn to do it really well.
And the money just shows up because I never had any goal to
have a company this big or make a lot of money.
I just wanted to do something I liked.
You know you got to do it five days a week
for the next 40 years.
You better like it.
You just got to remember.
Whatever deal you made, just live up to it
with your customer or client.
>> Dr. Wafeek Wahby: From day to day, how is
work being advanced meaning suppose
you have an item of work, like walls or electrical wires, who
gives orders to commission him to start this day, and then how
would inspection go?
>> Steve: We use critical path
method to schedule this stuff.
We monitor it all the time.
I have these 3 people there who are seldom in the trailer.
They are out there walking around making judgements about
if this is progressing.
One thing has happened with us now after doing them so long, I
know that between week 21 and 26, we better have 12
electricians on the job or we won't get it done.
So you go out and you count noses.
If it's only 10 and they are working real
good, we won't say much.
That's one of the biggest problems we fight.
Especially, with subcontractors who haven't done very many.
There is no question than an electrician knows more about
wiring that building than I do, or
probably my superintendents do.
But we do know how many it takes to get done on time.
So, if they are only out there with 8, I'm
pretty sure it's not going to work.
And Wal-Mart's construction managers who come out a couple
times a month, they know it too.
If they go out there and count noses, we better have already
yelled at them.
Second, if a subcontractor doesn't show up when he is
scheduled to, we call him that day.
We give him about 48 to get going, then we
put a lot of pressure on him.
We send him telegrams threatening to fire him, things
like that, replace him.
Because you just don't have, I told you
the big ones are 5 acres.
Five acre buildings and 20 acres of site work.
You've only got 7 months to do it, which means around here, if
you start the last day of March and it's nice and you get done
the first day in November, you pretty
much used up the good weather.
Like right now, we are coming down
towards the end of the season.
October will be fine and usually most of November.
But everything we've got needs to be closed
in so we can work all winter.
The thing that usually fluctuates because of the
weather is when we do the parking lot.
If we start now, let's say, then we don't have enough time to get
ready and do the earthwork, get the stone down, put the asphalt
paving or concrete whichever it is before weather gets bad.
So we would have to do that next spring.
That's probably the biggest adjustment.
For the building itself, there are steps to do it.
Sitework is the only thing that really changes a lot.
>> male speaker: Wouldn't you start
with the parking lot first?
>> Steve: No, because it tears it up.
We grade it and then we'll put temporary roads in and use large
stone, it's pretty rough.
First thing we do is build the pad, the building pad.
That's the very first thing we do.
They are maybe two feet out of the ground and again 5 acres,
200,000 square feet.
Get that up so they can start foundations.
Then the site contractor he usually builds that.
Then he goes out and starts doing the grading.
While we are building the pad, the utilities are going in,
underground sewer and the water and the electricity.
So that all that excavation is done and filled back in before
we start smoothing things out.
Ideally, which seldom happens, what you would like to do is
that order and then the next thing you
do is put the rock down.
The stone under the parking lot.