DULYChanged

DULYChanged

CONSTRUCTION by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A $175 million contractor with five branches in three states learns its growth will be stunted without "constant vigilance" when it comes to inter-office communication.

In 2003, executives at DooleyMack, one of the biggest construction firms on the Gulf Coast, began the long and tricky process of altering the corporate structure. The plan included consolidating some offices, creating a succession plan for its founders, hiring and promoting new managers and moving into a new $3 million Lakewood Ranch headquarters.

Four years later, the company is finding out the construction industry has been changing along with the company. "Our industry has become less about building buildings and more about customer service," says Bill Robey, the president of DooleyMack's Sarasota and Key West divisions, and one of the firm's newer executives brought in during the transformation.

Yet the changes, both external and internal, haven't dented the company's growth patterns. Its revenues grew 27% last year, from $138 million to $175 million, after taking a dip in previous years due to the reorganization. It's now the fourth largest construction firm on the Gulf Coast.

What's more, the firm continues to work on a diversity of buildings, following the plan its four founders had when they opened it, in an office on Siesta Key in 1976. Current projects, of which the company has more than 3,000, worth a combined $2 billion, include a high school in Fort Walton County, a Courtyard Hotel in Sunrise, a $16 million theater and arts center near Jacksonville, a $49 million research complex in Davie and luxury condos on Longboat Key.

"I think [the changes] are working very well," says Bill Dooley, one of the co-founders. While still active as the company's chairman and chief executive officer, Dooley has been spending more time with the firm's homebuilding and development arm. "We have the largest backlog in the history of the company right now."

Still, company executives say to continue growing its revenues and maintaining its large client list, it needs to keep striving for customer service perfection. The primary challenge in that department is that DooleyMack now has branches in five cities - branches set up to be entrepreneurial, each with its own president/chief decision maker. Robey says it takes "constant vigilance" on the part of all the company's employees and managers to make sure one office knows what the other is doing and to eliminate turf battles.

Other challenges loom for DooleyMack, too, such as a cumbersome government permitting process, figuring out the best ways to utilize green building concepts and risk management, which Robey says grew more complicated over the past few years.

Next generation

In some ways, says Dooley, the challenges the company faces in terms of going to the extreme to meet clients' needs, is not different than what it was 30 years ago. One big difference in 2007, though, is competition. In just the last two months, two national construction firms with a sizeable Florida presence - Suffolk Construction and the Tower Group - have either opened or announced plans to open Gulf Coast offices in Lakewood Ranch.

While Robey says moves like that are inevitable as the Gulf Coast grows, it does serve as a jolt to the firm that customers have options. Dooley adds that the growth of the market, and how the company would find its place in it, was the main reason he and other company executives, including Chief Financial Officer Wendy Mack and Chief Operating Officer Ken Smith, went ahead with internal reorganization plans a few years ago. Says Dooley: "We had to turn things over to the next generation of leadership."

The company broke things down by creating a limited liability corporation for each of its areas, all of which fall under the parent company, DooleyMack Constructors, Inc. In addition to LLCs in Sarasota, Panama City and Fort Lauderdale, the company has offices in Atlanta and Dallas. It also opened Homes of Distinction by DooleyMack, a luxury and estate home building company.

The transition process was deliberately slow. Consultants were hired to find the best managers for leading the company. Some of those ended up being internal candidates, while others, such as Robey, came from the outside. Robey, an architect by trade, previously worked at a few smaller Gulf Coast firms, focusing on pre-construction management tasks.

Dooley, Mack and Smith are still active with the company, and have retained their ownership stakes, only now they work as advisers. The mangers in each office make the day-to-day calls. Says Robey: "We have set ourselves up in a very entrepreneurial fashion."

Going green

But being entrepreneurial, says Robey, doesn't always mean being independent.

Many times, Dooley Mack executives say, a project starts with one office but the client ends up wanting to work with people from another office, maybe because they are familiar with someone there. In turn, the company makes constant adjustments to make sure the client is comfortable with the set up. "It takes constant focus on the customer," Robey says, "We can't afford to be parochial about our people."

Robey speaks with his counterparts in the other DooleyMack branches regularly to talk about both clients and general challenges. For Robey, that usually falls back to the permitting process: In the Gulf Coast, the molasses-style pace isn't only frustrating, it can be costly.

"The length of time and cost it takes to get a permit through is very frustrating," Robey says. "Some counties have gotten to the point where that's their method of slowing down growth."

DooleyMack executives, led by Robey, would rather see development trends lean another way, toward green building. The Sarasota office has several planners and architects that are trained in LEED (Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design) concepts and the office is currently working on a pair of green projects.

"I think it's more than just a trend," Robey says. "It's just taking time to find market acceptance."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business. DooleyMack

Industry. Construction

Key. To facilitate growth and a successful corporate restructuring, the construction firm created limited liability companies for each branch.