Neeser Construction specializes in design/build work for clients in the commercial, educational, military, residential and medical sectors.

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Alaska’s unspoiled wilderness and abundant natural resources have attracted many people looking to make their fortunes. Jerry Neeser, president of Neeser Construction Inc., says a different kind of untapped potential led him to leave California behind and strike out in a new direction.

“I was in California in the early ’70s in a business with my brothers, Bristol Concrete was the name, [and] we were building high-rise concrete shell structures and subterranean parking garages from San Francisco to Palm Springs, based in Los Angeles,” Neeser says.

Although the company ballooned to more than 400 employees by 1973, the struggling economy slowed its progress considerably.

“The work was starting to dwindle and was getting more difficult because of the gas shortage,” Neeser says.

It was around that time that one of his brothers traveled to Alaska and discovered the relative lack of contractors and plentiful opportunities. “My brother said, ‘I know how you like to work, Alaska’s where you belong,’” he recalls.

Neeser’s first project in Alaska was building a custom home, and in the first year he hired 10 people. Today, Neeser employs more than 400 people, and is the largest general contractor in the state.

Based in Anchorage, Neeser Construction specializes in design/build work for clients in the commercial, educational, military, residential and medical sectors. Since the company’s first design/build project, a church building in Washington state, Neeser Construction has been at the forefront of design/build work.

“We have a design/build history dating back to 1969, so there’s a fair amount of design/build work in the industry, [and] I would say we have a leg up because we’ve been doing it so long,” Neeser says. He says the design/build approach has been so popular because it creates a “single point of responsibility.”

Even though Alaska has some of the most difficult conditions for construction in the country, Neeser Construction has thrived and built for itself a solid core of experience.

All of Neeser Construction’s original 10 employees are still with the company, and Neeser says nearly half of its employees have been with the company for more than 25 years.

The Last Frontier
Despite the fact that Alaska has the lowest population density in the country, Neeser says the economy is stable, private sector work is available and military contracts are plentiful. What’s more, competition is relatively sparse. “We have good competition,” Neeser says. “We’re a small community, so we only have about six competitors in town.”

Those conditions might sound like heaven for an opportunistic national firm to swoop in and take advantage, but Neeser says Alaska’s other unique characteristics keep many of them away. “Logistics are very severe here,” he says. “You might build a $30 million school and as much as 30 to 35 percent of it could be logistics costs, from ice on the road to using hovercrafts.”

“Most of our materials have to come up on a steamship,” says Senior Project Manager George Tuckness.

He says the company pays an average of 15 cents a pound in added transportation costs. Nevertheless, the company has completed more than 30 projects in remote rural locations, such as school buildings in Stevens Village and Chalkyitstik.

Working Through Extremes
Even inner-city projects present their own unique challenges, due to extreme weather and the tough condition of soil. While working on the new Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in downtown Anchorage, for example, crews had to contend with temperatures near zero degrees that were so cold, welding had to be suspended because seams would crack. “Nine months of the year, the work is very harsh on the body,” Neeser says.

“For the most part you have to recognize that we have a real short summer season,” Tuckness says. “Our focus is on working real hard on getting the exterior finished.”

Plenty of Room
Tuckness says recent years have seen an increase in the number of contractors from the continental United States trying their hand at taking on projects in Alaska. “It must be getting slower outside; there’s more outside builders coming up,” he says.

However, many of those outside builders find themselves ill-prepared for the conditions, he says. He says he’s seen many a contractor from the continental U.S. be chased back down south by nothing more than the weather and ground conditions.

“I think experience with our conditions is a really big factor, and it doesn’t seem to really matter how good you are down there,” he says. “Most of the time, you’ll see them come up, do one or two projects and leave.”

Another contributing factor is the shortage of good manpower, which Tuckness says outside contractors also don’t consider. Without establishing permanent ties to the region, he says, contractors are unable to win major projects, and therefore attract the best of the scarce labor pool.

“The guy who can offer them a job afterward is going to get the preference on the good people,” he says.

“It’s a very difficult place to get manpower and to hold manpower,” Neeser says of Alaska.

Hiring Advantages
Neeser says the company’s profit-sharing plan, as well as its ability to secure major projects, makes it easier for the company to hire. But, he adds, it rarely does because of the loyalty and dedication of its work force. The company’s ability to win large-scale projects makes it attractive for them to stay. “We have the poster projects, so that attracts the better people,” Neeser says.

At least a dozen of Neeser Construction’s employees have been with the company for more than 30 years, he says. “We’ve got a strong core of quality people,” he says.

Keeping that core strong in the future, though, requires Neeser Construction to take an active role in recruitment.

Neeser says that currently, every member of the company’s management team is mentoring a younger employee to eventually take their places. He says the company is also hiring interns from schools such as Texas A&M.

Tuckness, who also serves on the board for the Alaskan chapter of the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America, says the organization is trying to change young people’s attitudes about the construction industry by reaching out to high school and college students. Through educational initiatives, he says, the AGC is starting to get through to students and show them the possibilities in construction.

“There was a perception for some time that you had failed somehow if your college experience ended with a blue-collar job,” Tuckness says. That attitude is still pervasive today, as many of the students actually pursuing degrees in construction are more interested in desk jobs than getting their hands dirty on the job site.

“We’ve got a lot of people who are coming out of the colleges right now with construction management [degrees],” Neeser says, but many of these students only look at the administrative side of the industry. “I would recommend that they do internships learning the job from the ground up.”
  
Further Recruiting Efforts
Neeser Construction also supports initiatives such as one from the AGC through which a company donates a nickel to the AGC for every man-hour its employees work. These funds are then used toward marketing efforts to recruit young people to the industry.

Neeser says that if young people are willing to put in the effort, Alaska can be a very rewarding place for their construction careers.

“It’s a place where a young person willing to work hard can advance quickly,” he says. “It may not always be the most desired work, but the work is here.”

Inside and Out
Along with the experience of working in Alaska’s adverse conditions and the combined knowledge of its veteran work force, Neeser Construction also brings an understanding of the issues building owners face on a regular basis.

Neeser says the company owns nearly a dozen properties in Alaska, Seattle and Reno, Nev. “When you hire Neeser Construction, you’re hiring someone who knows the problems of the building owner,” he says.

The company’s experience also extends to the conceptual phase of projects, as well. “We’re developers as well as builders,” Neeser says, “So we know the process from beginning to end.”

This means Neeser Construction will sometimes act as an intermediary between a client and the community, as it did when building a Wal-Mart store in Eagle River, Alaska.

Residents in the area were opposed to the proposed look of the 103,000-square-foot store, so Neeser Construction worked with Wal-Mart to develop a less-obtrusive look for it and presented it to the community.

The redesigned building features low-profile signage, low sight lines and a different color scheme. “That is not a natural Wal-Mart color, it’s an earth tone, as opposed to their usual blue and gray,” Neeser says. The result was a Wal-Mart store that was more in line with the surrounding area and didn’t upset the neighbors, but still satisfied the client.

Northern Lights
Neeser Construction is currently working on a project that is fairly unusual for Alaska but well within the company’s expertise. The project, 188 Northern Lights Blvd. in Anchorage, is a 15-story commercial high-rise expected to be completed in March 2008.

The unusual thing about it is that it is one of the few high-rise buildings in the state, and construction requires the use of a tower crane.

“The last tower crane that’s been in Alaska was us back in 1991 for the [Anchorage] VA hospital,” Neeser estimates. The project also stands out by being a tight fit in a state known for wide-open spaces.

The building’s footprint is sidewalk-to-sidewalk, in the middle of the city’s downtown, which means materials have to be delivered on trucks hourly to avoid shutting down traffic any more than absolutely necessary.

“It’s a truck show,” Neeser says of the job site.

Future Aspirations
Looking into the future, Neeser says the company will continue to stay the course and focus on its core strengths. He says a piece of advice for others in the construction business is to “stay away from speculative projects.

“That was unwritten advice from my father; I watched him go broke three times over speculative projects,” he says.

He says the company will also strive to uphold the record of client satisfaction it has held for decades. “In our 40 years, we have not had a disgruntled owner,” he says, and gives much of the credit to his employees. Even though he built the company on his own from that first home, Neeser acknowledges that there’s no way Neeser Construction could have reached its current level of success without the strength and commitment of his work force.

“In a nutshell, this company is our people, and our people make this company,” he says. “I just steer the ship.”