Construction industry executive Lawrence P. “Larry” Roman is a man of strong opinions who heads a company that, in contrast with the times, shows a strong bottom line. These days Roman worries aloud that good companies like his might fall victim to a national economy whose condition he likens to a spreading cancer. In Mount Vernon, he is doing his small part to rebuild America”™s health and keep American companies in business.
Roman is CEO of WDF Inc., a 700-employee plumbing, mechanical and specialty general contracting company with annual revenue of more than $250 million. Since its merger about a year ago with Five Star Electric Corp., New York City”™s largest electrical contractor, WDF Inc. forms part of a company, GreenStar Services Corp., that is the largest specialty contractor in the state of New York.
WDF and Five Star, which have kept their company names, together as GreenStar did just under $600 million in revenue last year, according to Roman. Add in Nagelbush Mechanical Inc., a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contractor with which WDF merged in 2007 and the third GreenStar company, and GreenStar did just over $600 million in business last year, he said.
”˜We have a backlog”™
A third-generation plumbing contractor and scholarship-sponsoring graduate of Hofstra University”™s business school, Roman since 1988 has twice sold and twice bought back a contracting business started by his father in the 1960s. He largely credits Joseph M. LoCurto, WDF”™s president and chief operating officer, with the company”™s recent boom in large infrastructure contracts, now the chief focus of its business. Roman, who called LoCurto “the most knowledgeable person I”™ve known by far in the infrastructure business,” saw his 13-year “wooing” succeed when LoCurto came to WDF from construction heavyweight Slattery Skanska Inc., where he also served as president, bringing 40 employees with him.
“Bringing him on board has allowed us to become a big player in the infrastructure game,” Roman said last week at his company”™s 30,000-square-foot headquarters on North MacQuesten Parkway in Mount Vernon, where 200 non-union office workers are employed. The company employs about 500 union workers in the field.
“The key to our company is we”™ve always been diversified,” with each division at various times leading in revenue and profits, Roman said.
WDF won a $35 million plumbing contract for the Time Warner Center and a $10 million plumbing contract at 7 World Trade Center. It currently is doing plumbing at the new Goldman Sachs headquarters in lower Manhattan. It did heating, ventilation and air-conditioning work in Tower 4 at the World Trade Center site and will do plumbing work in the Freedom Tower there. Roman said the company did almost $100 million in city school renovations. It has done a number of large-scale environmental projects for city agencies. Its contract with the New York City Transit Authority to renovate eight Queens subway stations is valued at $140 million.
“We have a backlog that takes us out for the next two to three years, and we”™re still looking for more work,” though not outside New York City. “We don”™t have enough estimators,” Roman lamented. “We have more work than we can possibly handle in bidding,” forcing WDF to tackle only about half of the projects on which it would normally bid. The volume of projects now out to bid suggests the impact of federal stimulus money for infrastructure work already is being felt in the city”™s public sector, he said.
Roman said while WDF”™s contracting is about equally divided between the municipal and private sectors, “We”™re definitely headed for where I think we”™re going to be 80 percent or larger in the public sector. Now the private sector has come to a crawl.”
Private development projects in the city totaling about $5 billion have been halted by construction costs, Roman said, and developers and unions are at a standoff over labor concessions that would lower costs and allow construction. “There”™s a humongous amount of projects that have either not gone forward or have gone non-union. We hope that the unions step up to the plate and do what”™s necessary to get these projects going,” he said.
Buying into ”˜Buy American”™
While WDF thrives, Roman has watched “in shock” as stock prices dive for major American companies. This winter the spreading crisis moved him to act.
Growing up in Flushing, Queens, Roman heard it said, “How goes General Motors, so goes the United States.” In late 2008, “General Motors looked like it definitely was going out of business,” he said. “General Motors to me is an icon and it represents our country. I just felt we should do what we possibly can as Americans to help” the nation”™s ailing automakers and their workers.
In December, Roman and LoCurto started a 90-day Buy American Autos Incentive Program for all WDF employees. The company offered $500 to an employee who bought or leased a new car from one of the Big Three automakers and a $1,000 award for the lease or purchase of an American-made hybrid or vehicle getting at least 30 miles per gallon.
“We had a few people who took it, but people are scared,” said Roman, who planned to reiterate the cash offer at a company meeting last week. “They”™re worried about being laid off.”
Roman thinks the nation has been stricken with a cancer that already has metastasized and “is starting to spread quickly now to every sector.” Had the U.S. Treasury Department carried through on its initial plan to buy up banks”™ toxic assets, “In my very strong opinion that was the only thing that could have saved us.” But that measure would have cost taxpayers about $2 trillion, he opined, far more than the $750 billion authorized for Treasury”™s Troubled Assets Relief Program.
The federal bailout instead “is like giving a cancer patient Advil. He might feel better for a short period of time, but you haven”™t solved the problem.”
“Now the problem is so big that if something is not done in my opinion in the next few months, we”™re just going to implode. The risk that we”™re dealing with now is enough to take good companies and make them bad.”
Roman said the Obama administration”™s focus on infrastructure in the federally funded recovery program “will help in a small way. The more work we have, the more people we can put to work. For every $1 you put into infrastructure, you will get back $1.50 to $2.”
Still, Roman, said, “The amount that came out for infrastructure” ”“ about $82.9 billion nationally, of which New York expects to receive just under $4 billion ”“ “is not nearly enough to do what Obama wants.” That spending should be “at least triple what they put in.”
If that is done, “I believe this country will stabilize. ”¦You could have the city vibrant and hiring like crazy,” Roman said.
“The work is not going to be in the financial sector any more. That game is over. The difference is Wall Street made money on gimmickry. We made real money and we did it the old-fashioned way. We earned it.”
