Building For the Customer
by
Melissa Wells
Family ties bind successful
enterprise traditions at Tampa's
Mathews Construction.
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David
Oellerich, president of Mathews Construction of Tampa
Inc., is pleased at the growth of his firm, which
has reached $60 million in annual sales.
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In the
inner sanctum of the fashionable Tampa Heights office of David
Oellerich, president of Mathews Construction of Tampa Inc.,
three unique pieces hang on a wall of fine art. They were
created for their father by each of Oellerich's daughters
on her eighth birthday. "The pressure was really on my third
daughter," he says with a grin, because that work is as beautiful
as the other two.
In
similar fashion, the pressure is on Oellerich, the third
person in the executive leadership of the 70-year-old commercial
contracting company. By all appearances his practice of
the art of management is as appealing as his daughters'
handiwork.
But
long before the girls were creating art for their father,
Oellerich spent his summers as a youth working for Peter
Mathews, the firm's founder. "My father was in the construction
supply business in Sarasota, and he and Pete were best friends,"
Oellerich recalls. "Pete was working for a contractor in
Lakeland and wanted to start his own business. Dad loaned
him money to get started."
From
that beginning in 1962 the friendship between the two businessmen
endured over decades. "Dad introduced Pete to his wife,
Carol," says Oellerich.
"Uncle
Pete and Aunt Carol" made a significant impact on Oellerich
over the years. "Pete was larger than life," he says. "I
got to spend time with him and to really know my hero."
While
Oellerich was studying in the construction program at the
University of Florida, "Aunt Carol sent me a message in
a letter to my mother," he says, pulling the letter out
of his desk drawer and reading, "Tell David to study hard
and someday he can be an important engineer with Mathews
Corporation with offices around the nation and world."
As
appealing as Aunt Carol's thought might have been, Oellerich
didn't join Mathews's firm right after graduating. "When
I got out of school as a building construction graduate,
my wife assumed I'd work for Pete," he says. "But I had
figured out that I could never work for him. Pete was great,
but he wasn't lavish in his praise of people, especially
those closest to him. And that would have killed me." He
chose a firm in Cincinnati.
In
the meantime, in 1986, Oellerich's father, Herman, took
over as president of the construction firm so that Pete
Mathews could pursue his passion for real estate development.
But six years later Mathews, just 59, suddenly died, and
the senior Oellerich later bought the business from the
founder's estate.
"Dad
was getting ready to retire and I had this great job in
Cincinnati," says Oellerich. "It took him two years to convince
me to join the company."
In
1994 Oellerich relocated to Tampa and on "April 3, 1998,
I bought the business from Dad," he says. "We signed the
papers in Carol's (Mathews) kitchen."
David
Oellerich found himself at the helm of a firm that "the
'60s through '80s was one of the biggest contractors on
the west coast of Florida," he says. But those times were
over. " ... the general recession in Florida in the late
'80s was very hard on the company. Our business had shrunk
down. In the early '90s, when Dad operated the company,
he brought the business back to $10 million a year. Just
to survive was great."
The
transition of leadership between the father-and-son team
was relatively smooth. "While Dad owned the company, we
worked together closely," says Oellerich. "He was good enough
to tell me that I was the long-term future of this company.
He let me go with my vision from day one - as long as I
didn't risk his retirement. That was a great thing Dad did."
His
father needn't have worried about his retirement. The company's
annual revenues have grown from $20 million in 1994 to $60
million last year. "It's been quite a ride," Oellerich says.
Shaping
a vision
Not surprisingly, Pete Mathews helped shape Oellerich's
vision for Mathews Construction. "For Pete, the key to the
company's success was the customer," he says. "The company's
strong reputation was based on the 30 years he ran it. I
came full face with the fact of stepping into those shoes.
I came to be caretaker of Pete's reputation. Our focus is
completely on our customers."
This
is a key that Oellerich believes has led to the company's
rapid growth. "A company has to be about something bigger
than yourself," he says. "I've viewed my role as both to
protect Pete's reputation and to build on it. And I want
to do well for our employees. I don't know how to do it
any other way."
To
remind his employees of this vision, Oellerich has a plaque
quoting Albert Einstein hanging in every office. "Try not
to become a man of success, try rather to be a man of value,'"
he says.
"That's
what we're all about. Our first priority is what's good
for our owners. But this also applies to our subcontractors
and vendors. We treat them the way we'd like to be treated."
To
this end Oellerich has been selective about who joins his
staff, which is currently at 47. "I hire people who are
hard working and have the 'want-tos' so bad that every little
thing they do is done just right," he says. "I've made that
a priority since day one. And they do their jobs to the
'nth' degree, looking for better ways to do it."
That's
the quality that stands out in the construction experience
that attorney Jack Hackett had with Mathews Construction.
"The superintendent, Doug Whistler, was on the site the
whole time," Hackett says. "He wasn't the type of person
to stay in the construction trailer and talk to subcontractors
on the phone. He was out there shoveling, painting, digging
and pounding right alongside them. That resulted in his
receiving more respect and getting more from his subcontractors
than other superintendents could."
Mathews
was one of 20 general contractors to receive a request for
qualification from the 14-attorney Charlotte County general
practice law firm of Farr, Farr, Emerich, Siferit, Hackett
and Carr P.A. In business for 77 years, the practice recently
consolidated two offices into a new 20,500-square-foot,
two-story building in Punta Gorda.
"We
picked five contractors to bid," says Hackett, who is the
firm's vice president and director. "We wanted to find a
contractor that had experience in building a Class A professional
building of this size. Mathews Construction met the qualification
and they were the low bidder."
Mean
what you say
Besides the construction experience being generally "excellent,"
Hackett says, "we allocated 300 days for the construction
period. They met that 300 days even though we made a major
change in the early stages of construction relating to utilization
of the building. They were on time with everything they
said they would do.
"Everything
starts at the top with Mathews Construction with a corporate
consciousness established by David Oellerich," Hackett says.
"This is a customer-oriented company and that goes down
to every person we dealt with at Mathews Construction."
Typically
the construction process is fraught with unexpected changes
and unforeseen problems.
"We
have 40 or 50 subcontractors and suppliers on a job," explains
Oellerich. "We have to take their agendas and funnel that
into a single path for a good project in nature's laboratory.
It's a difficult business. Every day is a challenge. Every
day I make a decision that could cost tens of thousands
of dollars, every week much more and every month that could
cost the whole company."
Oellerich
learned early in his career to be careful in how he chooses
his clients. "When I was younger, we had some clients that
weren't of the highest character," he says, "but our feeling
was that work is work. Beggars can't be choosers. We learned
a hard lesson about working with people like that - that
if they don't have respect for our firm, 100 percent of
the time it will be a bad project for us. We've come to
think in terms of being careful about working for clients
that treat the people providing services to them as professionals.
I learned that the hard way and it's now something that
is standard operating procedure."
Nevertheless,
while balancing the pressure of these executive decisions,
Oellerich has managed to add to the bottom line. "Our growth
has come much faster than expected," he says. "It has come
from doing a good job and making the owners the focus of
our business. In the last five years alone we've worked
more than once for 20 companies, municipalities or institutions.
In some cases, three times."
Project
owners in the bay area have included the University of Tampa,
the Hillsborough County School Board, Ringhaver Equipment
Co., Trammell Crow Co., Centex Development Co., EastGroup
Properties Inc., ProLogis Trust and Grady Pridgen Inc. "This
has fueled most of our growth," says Oellerich.
"We
built Plant City's new city hall. We were on the hot seat
to the taxpayers, under a very public microscope to bring
that project in on time and under budget. We were performing
for them and kept that in mind with that type of scrutiny."
It
was a winning mentality that landed Mathews a second project
with Plant City, the renovation of Plant City Stadium to
accommodate the tournaments of the International Softball
Federation. And it's an attitude that apparently served
Mathews well with Costco Wholesale Corporation, a big box,
members-only discount retailer based in Seattle. "We've
worked for them throughout Florida since the mid '80s,"
Oellerich says. "And we've built stores for them throughout
the Southeast. We also built their 550,000-square-foot distribution
center in Atlanta."
A
new direction
Mathews's newest market has been the construction of educational
facilities. "We've made a conscious effort to branch out
and started pursuing public work," says Oellerich. "We did
our first project with Hillsborough County schools three
years ago and are now in our third project with them. But
we're just getting started. We plan to expand into other
neighboring school districts and municipalities."
Future
growth for the company, however, will remain grounded in
building construction. "I have no plans to do design work
or development," Oellerich says. "There are lots of other
people to do that. Just running a construction company stretches
my imagination. I'm an entrepreneur of the literal sense,
organizing, managing and assuming the risk of this business
enterprise. I'm not very flamboyant." What he lacks in flamboyance
is perhaps compensated for in prudence.
"I
believe in a lot of advice and support," says Oellerich.
"We have an advisory board that has been invaluable in the
past several years. I also belong to a peer group of eight
contractors across the country. Our businesses are similar
in size, business type and markets. We meet quarterly and
share everything. It's a big help to talk freely with someone
who's in the same business sharing these challenges. It's
like having seven new best friends. The advice is given
in good spirit but it's very direct. No punches are pulled.
It's very stimulating."
With
such strong support, Oellerich sees that "our big focus
will be to continue to serve the people we've worked with
for the last five or six years," he says. "We'll focus on
the bottom line and support our profits. Our employees are
pumped up about what they've done and they want to keep
going. We have a lot of young people in responsible positions
in this organization. They want to grow in their careers
and take on more responsibility. We can't level it off and
expect everybody to be happy. These people have the 'want-tos'
so bad they can't stand it."
As
the company's future unfurls, it's possible that a fourth
generation of Oellerich's family could step up to the entrepreneur's
plate. "My grandmother owned and operated a commercial plumbing
business in Augusta, Georgia in the '40s," Oellerich says.
Then it was his father's turn, and now his. Next? "My oldest
daughter has just finished her first year at an architectural
college."
Looking
back at the period in which he tripled the firm's annual
revenue, Oellerich says he would have changed a few things
had it been possible. However, he says, "I don't lose a
lot of sleep over mistakes. But I wish we could have been
perfect on every project. I wish I could have spent more
time at home. But I've been able to work with Dad for a
few years, he's still part of the business. That's been
great. I wish we could have done this while Pete was able
to see it."
