Heavy Load

Heavy Load

Richard Buckelew, president of RMC Florida Group Inc., juggles the hefty tasks of running a $100-million company in an industry strife with material shortages and staffing uncertainties.

By Sean Roth

Real Estate Editor

Imagine an industry where 50% staff turnover is the norm. Think about the training costs, the staffing issues and the response-time problems. Welcome to Richard Buckelew's world.

Buckelew, president of RMC Florida Group Inc. in Sarasota, says his company has tried every employee incentive imaginable to keep drivers, but so far it hasn't changed the statistics. "We have studied this very closely and there doesn't seem to be one clear reason," he says. "It's not wages; it's not the type of work. It doesn't seem to be any one thing."

Even with that and other significant hurdles, Buckelew has managed to keep the company growing at a quick pace.

RMC Florida Group makes up the majority of the Florida interests of RMC Group plc, a London-based construction-materials conglomerate. The South Florida division operates 13 concrete-block plants, 61 ready-mix plants and three crush-stone quarries. All totaled Buckelew is responsible for managing about 1,600 employees, of which about 1,200 are in the Tampa Bay area.

Buckelew was formally educated as an engineer, and he has held just about every position in the cement and concrete business from sales rep to quality control manager.

In 1989, Buckelew was recruited from Virginia Concrete, a subsidiary of a RMC competitor in Washington, D.C., to run RMC's newly acquired Singletary Concrete Products in Sarasota. "When I came to Singletary, we only had one ready-mix (concrete) plant and one block plant," Buckelew says.

In the past 15 years, the company has grown both internally and through acquisitions from gross revenue of $2 million in 1989 to about $110 million last year. Buckelew was recently put in charge of all the Florida operations of RMC Florida Group.

One of Buckelew's most recent tasks has been overseeing the conversion of former stand-alone subsidiary companies in Florida into the RMC brand. Most of the companies in RMC Florida Group had previously operated by their original preacquisition names, such as Singletary Concrete, but company officials decided to rebrand all of the subcompanies as RMC Group and to standardize purchasing processes.

"There was some method to keeping the identities of the companies RMC acquired," Buckelew says. "They were all strong operations in their respective market. There was no reason to disrupt that. But when our businesses along the West Coast began to grow. We actually started to compete against one another. Some of our customers were shocked. They didn't know we were that big. That was one of the things we tried to avoid; we wanted our customers to think we are just big enough to meet their needs."

But from a purchasing and internal operations standpoint, the retooling worked wonderfully. "We are a huge purchaser," Buckelew says. "We went from three companies to an 800-pound gorilla. It was amazing as far as negotiating prices. It also gave us better control over costs. We standardized our costs allowing us to carry a pricing advantage into the next market. It also lets our customers fill out one credit application that runs from one market to the next. It was also a big thing to be able to exchange some of the intellectual strengths of the company."

In the Florida market, RMC is the second largest construction-materials company behind West Palm Beach-based Rinker Materials Corp.

Buckelew says overall the majority of RMC's business is residential work, roughly 65%. Another 30% is made up of commercial construction, and the final 5% is public or governmental projects.

"That 5% is a drawn-out term from bidding to completion," Buckelew says. "There are companies that make a living working only on public projects. We find however that they tend to have cumbersome specifications and tight margins."

Buckelew is still trying to tackle the high turnover rate by attracting different types of employees to the industry.

"The modern workforce doesn't gravitate toward construction materials because it is seen as menial labor," Buckelew says. "There is a reputation problem when people think about the ready-mix business. It has an image as employing the bluest of the blue-collar. We are trying to change that perception of the workforce. These are well-paid jobs. They're solid secure jobs with tremendous advancement potential. There are more computers in this operation than most other business. We have computers in the trucks assisting each of the drivers."

The company is still pursuing an employee-retention program. Currently, RMC Florida Group will pay for any accredited college course their employees' successfully complete. The company also rewards every dependent child of its employees with money for success in school all the way through college. "These children don't even have to be living with that employee," Buckelew says. "We believe this benefit strengthens the family and makes our employees more proud of where they work. We are trying to educate the community that we are an employer of choice. We feel we are one of the best kept secrets in Florida."

RMC Florida Group also puts an emphasis on training and hiring bilingual sales representatives, dispatchers and plant managers to handle the growing Hispanic population in its work force.

"We are trying to identify labor pools that are more concerned with job security ... that are family-oriented," Buckelew says. "Either women or men. We just don't want the type of employment that is in town just to make a quick buck."

At the same time, with an average training cost of $3,500 per employee, Buckelew looks to technology to reduce that cost. He, with the help of several on the staff at the Sarasota office, recently patented an invention that uses computer sensors to ensure the consistency of the concrete in a delivery truck. Previously, concrete consistency, or slump as it is known in the industry, was regulated only by the training and experience of the driver. "We are the only ones in the world licensed to sell and manufacture that technology throughout the world," Buckelew says.

For the past few months the company has faced an added burden from supply shortages. Much like a great number of worldwide supplies, raw materials for cement have become harder to obtain and prices have been going up quickly. Buckelew estimates prices have gone up about 45%.

"With us it is mainly the availability of shipping assets," he says. "Finding those shops that are hauling commodities to China. Right now, we are a large-enough purchaser to deal with that, but some of the small companies have been cut off. We have to juggle four or five different suppliers. We are predicting an increase this July and probably a larger price increase for concrete in January."

Similar to steel, Buckelew says that concrete prices have been held artificially low for the past several years, so the shortage and resulting price increase could be just the correction the industry needed. "I see this turbulent market taking maybe a year to 18 months to correct itself," Buckelew says

Meanwhile, RMC Florida Group is focusing on the best way to deliver its product to its customers. One of its more unusual ways of gauging company performance is through all-day workshops held annually with its larger customers.

"At these meetings everything is on the table," Buckelew says. "(Besides that the only other rule is) we can't defend ourselves. We ask them how we could change our business to best serve them. Customers have changed the way we display our materials on the Internet. ... (even) our hours of operation."

At one of the more recent workshops, customers asked RMC Florida Group officials if there was a way to tell them the name of a customer for a particular delivery.

"Let's say you are on a large job site," Buckelew says. "There might be three or four of our customers working there, each one assumes that the truck that is showing up is for them."

Buckelew says it is likely that his trucks in the near future will feature an LED display similar to the common bus destination board.

"We are going to be a long-term player," Buckelew says.

RMC Florida Group is building a 16,000-square-foot facility at 5325 E. State Road 64 in Bradenton. Company officials plan to relocate the office from its current headquarters in Sarasota International Trade Center and consolidate staff from the Lakeland office into the new facility in May.

Singletary Concrete

YearGross Revenue

2001$80 million

2002$105 million

2003$110 million

Projected 2004 $118 million

Source: RMC Florida Group Inc.