California's Leading Mass Excavation Company Offers Insight into State of Building Industry

Santa Ana, CA May 20, 2009 (Vocus/PRWeb) -- Infrastructure projects keep building industry giants like Sukut Construction, Inc, busy. It will be at least two years before substantial housing demand returns to California as potential buyers hold back out of fear of losing their jobs, forecasts Mike Crawford, CEO/president of Sukut Construction, the state's largest mass excavation company.

Overbuilding has left one to two years of standing residential inventory in California, said Crawford, whose firm brings in $150 million worth of work a year on average, which, up until now was mostly from the private sector.

Although some reports show homes in the state getting more affordable, job loss concerns will likely leave California with an inflated supply of residential construction for the next two years, Crawford said. "There are housing lots that we\'ve graded where they haven\'t even started to build," he said.

In 2006, Sukut\'s employee count peaked at 600, as the company prepared to work on a 30,000-home development in Ontario. That project ground to a halt and layoffs followed at the employee-owned Sukut.

So far this year, Sukut has hired 20 engineers, bringing the count to 420 employees. Its workers are building the U.S.-Mexico border fence, and dozens of other public projects.

In fact, 70 percent of the Santa Ana-based firm's jobs are now on government-funded projects, triple what they were in 2005-06, when a substantial portion came from home builders, said Crawford.

The $3.6 billion in federal stimulus funds for California\'s highway and transit construction and billions of dollars in state construction bonds is allowing the firm to continue to add workers.

"The stimulus is helping to make up for the big drop in residential work," said Crawford.

Sukut will be bidding on millions of dollars for public infrastructure contracts for projects for which it will need about 150 to 180 more people, he said. It will add union-scale staff to its firm and subcontract for the rest. The contracts would bring about two to three years of work to Sukut, which has built the infrastructure for freeways, flood and storm water control systems, concrete structures and landfills throughout California.

"We're committed to providing the highest quality infrastructure," said Crawford.

Founded in 1968, Sukut does earth moving, grading, pipe laying and builds wastewater treatment facilities. At any given time, it is working on 40 to 45 projects. The firm moves 150 million cubic yards of earth a year and is ranked within the top 300 largest contractors in the nation.

Current projects include four 60-acre wastewater treatment ponds holding more than 1 billion gallons for the Los Angeles Sanitation District and a seismic retrofit of the San Pablo Dam. Its client for this $55 million job is the Eastbay Municipal Utility District.