Banner Year for Construction
Contractors See Revenue Jump in Arizona, Nevada
By Scott Blair

Revenue in this year's Top 125 General Contractors in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada skyrocketed 23 percent over last year, flirting with the $10 billion mark in annual commercial construction revenue.

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Contractors saw dramatic gains this year. Perini Building Company seized the top spot in this year's ranking, up from fourth place last year, increasing their revenue by over 64 percent to $379.5 million in the three-state region.

Revenue reported by Arizona contractors rose nearly 19 percent from 2003.

"I believe the Southwestern economy, as well as our top management style and team has been the major contribution to our success," said Jason Endline, President of Larry D Builders, who saw their Arizona revenue nearly quadruple in 2004 over the previous year. "We have been on the forefront of management and field technology using the latest in project management, estimating and project monitoring systems and software."

Nevada contractors posted another stellar year with a phenomenal gain of 38.6 percent over the previous year. "We saw a large increase in the demands of regular clients combined with a steady stream of referrals," said Norman Dianda, president of Q & D Construction, whose company's revenue increased in 2004 by 47 percent. "We expect to see commercial expansions and developments of all sizes and types in the coming year. The revitalization of downtown Reno is also picking up speed."

New Mexico posted more modest gains, with a 3.7 percent increase over 2003 revenue. Jaynes Corporation again topped the state ranking this year, holding their revenue nearly equal to last year's figures.

Contractors see much opportunity in the coming years, as well as a few challenges. "Qualified work force will be our biggest challenge," said Dianda, whose headquarters at Q & D are in Sparks, Nev. "We expect we'll have to work very hard to find additional qualified operators and laborers in our general engineering division and carpenters, superintendents and project managers in our building division." Other issues facing contractors are occasional construction material shortages and rising insurance costs.

"In the 27 years I have been with Perini, I have never been involved with or seen as many business opportunities as we have coming up in 2005 and 2006."" said Dick Rizzo, chairman of Perini. "Our challenge is to balance our resources with the opportunities facing us."

This year's list includes a special feature ranking the safest contractors in the Southwest, which can be found on page 77.

The Top Contractors feature is compiled using voluntarily submitted data by each contracting company, based on 2004 revenue figures. The accuracy of this data is reliant upon the good-faith disclosure of each company's revenue.

Any company that did not disclose their 2004 revenue was not included in the rankings.

Surveys were sent out to more than 1,000 general contractors and we received over 140 submittals. While we aspire to include everyone, we apologize if your firm was missed in this year's research. Please contact Southwest Contractor at 602-631-3080 for consideration in future rankings.

Due to the overwhelming response, we were unable to include the following companies in our overall rankings: Caliber Construction, Inc., $6 million; Breinholt Contracting Co., Inc., $5.2 million; National Construction, Inc., $5.02 million; Surface Contracting, Inc., $4.86 million; Epstein Fenton LLC, $4.5 million; ESB Modular Mfg., $4.4 million; Yarborough Development, Inc., $4 million; Laurshan, Inc., $3.5 million; ICON Builders, $3 million; CMX, LLC, $1.09 million; Patton Johnson Contractors, Inc. $.9 million.

Thank you to all the firms who took the time to participate in this year's survey.

Click here for Top General Contractors 2004>>