Barnhill Contracting Co.

North Carolina Contractor Active in Unique Mix of Markets

By Scott Judy

Compared to other firms on Southeast Construction's Top Contractors ranking, Barnhill Contracting Co. of Tarboro, N.C., is a bit different. It operates simultaneously - and quite successfully - as an excavation/site development specialist, an asphalt paver and a building contractor.

Over the years, the company has even gone to West Virginia and strip-mined coal, but that venture lasted only a few years.

Today, the company does plenty of all three work types, and it was recently named the construction manager - in a 50/50 joint venture with Skanska USA Building - for the $128 million Raleigh Convention Center project, which is set to start construction sometime this year.

Additionally, according to the firm's revenue information submitted for this year's Top Contractors ranking, Barnhill Contracting Co.'s 2004 revenues increased by approximately $62 million over those in 2003 - the ninth-biggest such improvement of any of this year's respondents.

It has been a long and interesting road for the 56-year-old firm, which is still in its second generation of family ownership and led by company namesake Robert E. Barnhill Jr., son of the firm's founder. With about $280 million in revenue in 2004, the company has grown considerably since its humble origins of constructing farm-to-market roads shortly after the end of World War II.

A significant change was made in 1986, Barnhill said, when he and other executives decided to reorganize the firm into various divisions, with individual leaders for each. The goal was to create an entrepreneurial spirit within the organization.

"We've really grown since we did that," he said. "All of the divisions have experienced growth." Divisions include: Building, Raleigh, Tarboro/Rocky Mount, Northeast, Southeast and Highway

Barnhill added that this entrepreneurial environment has helped attract and retain talented people, as well as keep them motivated. "Hopefully we've (attracted) the right people and created the right environment for them to be successful and to enjoy what they're doing," he said.

The Divisions

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Barnhill Contracting performs most of its work in North Carolina, but it also has a presence in Virginia's highway sector and occasionally ventures down to South Carolina for existing clients. With its focus in the Tarheel State, Barnhill has attempted to diversify between the public and private markets, maintaining at least 40 percent of its work mix from either of the two sectors.

Some of the company's projects include an approximately $70 million Windsor Bypass project in Bertie County, N.C.; the $45.7 million East Wake Expressway project in Raleigh; a $28 million N.C. State Road 87 project in Bladen County; a $22 million State Road 1141 project in Fayetteville, N.C.; an $11.2 million Rocky Mount Sports Complex facility in Rocky Mount; an $8.5 million YMCA in Rocky Mount; residence halls at the University of North Carolina; subdivision sitework in the Raleigh and Tarboro/Rocky Mount areas; and schools, libraries and office buildings.

None of these quite match the Raleigh Convention Center, which Barnhill is handling in equal partnership with Skanska USA Building.

Though the cultures of the two firms are different, the combination of strengths is a winning formula, Barnhill said.

"Skanska has convention center experience, large project experience and their preconstruction expertise has been very helpful to us," he said. Barnhill's recent completion of another city project in downtown Raleigh, the BTI Center for the Performing Arts, the home of the North Carolina Symphony, may have benefited the company in securing the convention center contractor, Barnhill added.

"We had just finished that job with the city, which gave us not only a working relationship with the city and its staff, but it also gave us downtown experience, which was important to them," he said.

Barnhill added that there is a considerable amount of excavation required for the convention center project, and though his company will not be able to perform any of it, its expertise in that field, as well as its knowledge of other, local grading contractors, should help.

Reputation

While the company's stature is evident, its leader's approach and style remains decidedly reminiscent of the company's origins - humble and old-fashioned.

Asked what about his family company he's most proud of, Barnhill said simply, "I think we have a reputation for being honest and fair. Our philosophy is to do what we say we're going to do, and to be fair with our owners and our employees."

Randall Gattis, vice president of Sanford Contractors in Sanford, N.C., a company that specializes in bridges and concrete culverts, has plenty of good things to say about Barnhill Contracting. Sanford Contractors is slightly older than Barnhill, but the two firms have mostly "grown up" together.

Sanford usually works as a subcontractor to Barnhill, but Gattis said the role is reversed about 30 percent of the time, when his firm is the prime and uses Barnhill for its grading or paving work.

Gattis said the common subcontractor complaint of getting paid on a timely basis is never an issue with Barnhill. It comes down to simple respect and that "do-what-we-say-we're-going-to-do" mentality, he added.

"With some (other) contractors, you can say, 'These are the things I'm going to do and these are the things you're going to do,' but when it comes time for them to perform, they don't do it," Gattis said as an example. "That puts us in a bind, and you get in an adversarial conflict right off the bat.

"When Barnhill has a responsibility in the contract, it honors it."

Sanford and Barnhill will be putting that relationship to the test. The two companies recently formed a joint venture to design-build the $70 million Windsor Bypass in Bertie County, N.C., a job that's just starting.

The project is Sanford's first foray into design-build, and Gattis said, "We're very much looking forward to it, and I don't know of anyone I could have trusted any better to team up with.

"Some people might think I have to say these nice things, but I've always thought this. Trust is a big part of our business, and I trust Barnhill."

Indeed, more than anything, Barnhill appears committed to one thing - keep doing what it has been doing for decades.

"We don't have any plans to expand," he said. "We just plan on doing what we're doing, and trying to get better at that, you know."