ENR lists top contractors

The Engineering News Record's annual rankings of construction firms are out, and several Michigan-based contractors have made the top 100.

Southfield-based Barton Malow Co. (#35), Detroit-based Walbridge-Aldinger Co. (#62), Angelo Iafrate of Warren (#65) and Northville's Ellis Don Construction Inc. (#68) all made the top 100.

The firms were rated according to revenues from their involvement with prime contracting, joint ventures, subcontracts and design-construct ventures.

The Bechtel Group Inc. of San Francisco was ranked No. 1 on the list.

Other contractors familiar to the Michigan construction industry include: The Turner Corp. of Dallas, (#3); Peter Kiewit and Sons of Omaha (#7); The Clark Construction Group of Bethesda, Maryland (#12); Black and Veatch of Kansas City (#20), Hunt Construction Group of Indianapolis (#25), Perini Corp. of Framingham, Mass., (#37), and J.S. Alberici of St. Louis (#53).

The top 400 firms with Michigan ties includes the Boldt Co. of Appleton Wisconsin (#101); Granger Construction of Lansing (#155); The Christman Co. of Lansing (#160); Miron Construction of Appleton, Wisconsin (#164); Roncelli of Sterling Heights (#232); Clark Construction of Lansing (#271); George W. Auch of Pontiac (#289); J.M. Olsen of St. Clair Shores (#317), and DeMaria of Novi (#382)

Construction's health may be slipping

The huge drop in the stock market following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon could very well push the nation into an economic recession, many economists predict, and the construction industry had already been showing signs of faltering last summer.

The nation's unemployment rate in the construction industry jumped from 6.8 percent to 7.5 percent in August. That percentage translates into an increase of 56,000 unemployed construction workers in the nation, for a total of 626,000, the Labor Department reported.

Meanwhile, the F.W. Dodge Division of McGraw Hill reported that the value of new construction starts in July retreated by 5 percent to $470 billion.

"The latest month, while showing generally reduced activity, remains consistent with the sense that the construction industry has leveled off close to last year's pace," said Robert A. Murray, vice president of economic affairs for Dodge.

Nonunion sector still way behind

As we reported in our last issue, some nonunion contractors are beating up their portion of the construction industry over the low-paying conditions for workers.

"Today," said a former bigwig with one of the nation's largest nonunion contractors, "we do not have craftsmen, we do not have apprentices, we have poor people."

And the trend isn't changing. Personnel Administrative Services Inc. reported that open shop contractors anticipate offering raises of 4.62 percent for all crafts in 2001 - a drop of one-third percent from raises given in 2000.

Meanwhile, first-year collective bargaining agreements in the construction industry provided the nation's unionized workers with an average increase of 4.3 percent during the first 36 weeks of 2001. That compares to 4.0 percent during the same period in 2000.

Nonunion workers are going to have to make some significant wage gains if they're going to catch their union counterparts. In the region that includes Michigan, according to PAS Inc., the average U.S. nonunion construction worker earns $20.88 per hour in wages and fringes. The average union construction worker earns 32.33 per hour in wages and fringes.