Getting set for the next wave

Since it moved to Carson City from California in 1963, Shaw Construction Co.

Inc.

has ridden many a wave.

Today, President Ed Shaw says, the company paddles like crazy while it awaits the arrival of the next big wave.

Along with its traditional expertise design-build projects Shaw Construction these days has made a successful foray into jobs completing tenant improvements in commercial and industrial buildings.

And in a return to its roots much of its early work was school construction Shaw Construction increasingly is bidding on taxpayer-funded projects.

"We're broadening what we do," Shaw said a few days ago.

"It's not enough to be just a design-build contractor.We're becoming more multi-faceted."

In large measure, the shifting focus reflects a slowdown in the sorts of industrial jobs that have been the bread and butter of Shaw's design-build business.

As a trained architect, Shaw moved the company founded by his father into a leading role in the design-build market during the last two decades.

He figured correctly that companies looking for new quarters would be drawn by an approach that wrapped government permits, architectural design and the actual construction into a single package.

With time, Shaw Construction further honed its approach.

It decided, for instance, to use outside architects and draftsmen rather than keeping professionals on its staff.

"We are networking better with architects now rather than competing with them," Shaw said.

While some of the design-build jobs were small the recent construction of a 5,000-square-foot store for Freedom Cycles in Reno is one example much of the company's workload came from mediumsized industrial and distribution buildings throughout the region.

It's no accident that most of the design-build jobs constructed by Shaw are owned by the same companies that occupy the structures.

Anything much bigger the giant distribution facilities that dot the region, for instance typically are built by investment companies that lease them back to users.

That's a market that holds no allure for Shaw.

But the market for mid-sized manufacturing buildings dried as hard as the ground in the Forty Mile Desert last year, and that set the 20-employee company looking elsewhere for work.

One intriguing possibility arises as gold prices stay well above $350 and mining companies begin to move forward on new projects.

In the 1970s, mining work concrete and buildings created one of the first big waves for the company.

Shaw wouldn't mind riding the wave a second time.

Remodeling jobs and tenant improvement work, too, is a bright spot.

"People are fixing their buildings rather than selling them," Shaw said.

The brightest news of all, however, is the possibility that the new revenue sources may begin flowing at the same time that its core market in industrial construction revives.

"There are going to be a lot more things that happen than things that get put on the shelf," Shaw said.