R.P. Weddell & Sons Co. performs underground utility installation services.

R.P. Weddell & Sons Co., a general engineering contractor based in Las Vegas, started out strong in the business, but faced a few setbacks during the earlier part of the decade. Now it’s back on top, and says its expertise in underground utilities has never faltered. “I’d say we are one of the premier underground utility companies in Las Vegas,” Vice President Dan Weddell says. “We pride ourselves on doing a quality job and doing it right the first time. And, we have been fortunate to have good customers that have been with us for many years.”

Founded in 1987 by Steven and Christopher Weddell with the help of their father, Rolland Weddell, R.P. Weddell & Sons Co. is now owned and operated by three brothers; President Steven Weddell and Vice Presidents Christopher Weddell and Dan Weddell. Through the years, the company established a series of divisions including water and sewer, power and telephone, concrete and gas.

It performs underground utility installation services such as water, sewer and gas mains, storm-drain piping, concrete structures and telephone, cable and street light conduits for residential and commercial developers.

Weddell says about 95 percent of its projects are private. In the past, about 75 percent of the projects were residential and 25 percent were commercial. Now, they’re 60 percent residential and 40 percent commercial. This is because R.P. Weddell is striving to create equilibrium by increasing its commercial projects. Besides, Weddell adds, with the housing market in a lull these days, why wouldn’t it?

“There aren’t as many housing projects out there as there used to be,” Weddell says. “And, with the decline in housing projects, competition has been intense with a lot of our [competitors] slashing prices. We know what our true costs are for every project, and we use that as a tool to negotiate projects, or make the decision to graciously walk away.”

Current Projects
In July 2005, R.P. Weddell landed a $1.5 million-a-year contract with the city of Las Vegas to maintain its flood channels. “There are lots of riff-raff and trash and vegetation that grows in it throughout the year, and we have to make sure the water can flow through the channels,” Weddell explains. “We maintain them by cleaning up the debris with specialized equipment such as a mower attachment that goes onto our excavator or track-mounted skid-steer loaders to clean up trash and debris.

“There are also certain things we’ve done where they require access to and from the channel, so we installed concrete ramps. We’ve had to remove and replace certain sections of the channel. That entails removing aged concrete and cast-in-place new sections with structural re-bar and concrete.”

Although the company is beginning to concentrate more on the commercial realm, Weddell says high-profile home development projects are opportunities it could never pass up.    

In 1998, contractor DMB Highlands Group asked R.P. Weddell to perform utilities services on the Lahontan project, a high-end residential development in Truckee, Calif., near Lake Tahoe. Located at the base of the North Star ski resort, Lahontan has become a second or third home to celebrities such as Madonna and Paul McCartney.

It is a mountainous area with rugged winters, so the company has worked on the project for three six-month seasons, with a roughly $15 million budget per season. “They were happy with us because of our total commitment to the project and our ability to keep up with production in a very difficult terrain,” Weddell says.

Last year, the company was invited back to perform utilities services on the 560-acre Siller Ranch, which is another high-end golf course community adjacent to Lahontan.

Overcoming Catastrophes
Things are going well for R.P. Weddell right now; however, Weddell admits, that wasn’t always the case. In 2002, a series of catastrophic events occurred, leaving the company no choice but to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Two years prior, Rolland Weddell and friend Tom Gonzales came into what the company describes as “a substantial amount” of dot-com money.

They formed a new company, Commerce Associates, to develop Tuscany Hills, a more-than-500-acre master-planned golf course community in Henderson, Nev. R.P. Weddell took on an administrative role in support of the new company.

In September 2001, the company finished a half-million-dollar project for Specialty Holdings, which resulted in bankruptcy for the developer, and non-payment for R.P. Weddell. In March 2002, a dispute between Gonzales and Rolland Weddell prompted the latter to resign from Commerce Associates. As a result, R.P. Weddell pulled out of the Tuscany Hills project.

In May 2002, Gonzales and Commerce Associates named R.P. Weddell in a lawsuit. “This lawsuit was much to the detriment of R.P. Weddell in the loss of time and money spent to defend it, as well as the negative publicity it created,” Dan Weddell says. “Just as the Tuscany project boosted sales, the negative impact caused a sharp decline. The allegations in the lawsuit led to the loss of a portion of the customer base [we] had created.”

One week before the lawsuit was filed, Rolland’s wife and the Weddells’ mother, Marie Irene Weddell, was killed in a plane crash along with employee-pilot and friend Larry Levi, “resulting in the lost focus in the business while we were in a tumultuous period of uncertainty with the Tuscany project,” Weddell recalls. “Collectively, these were the events that led to the filing for relief under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.”

The original plan was to pay off unsecured creditors over a five-year-term. However, the company paid the debt much faster than the plan required. R.P. Weddell settled its differences with Commerce Associates, and returned to Tuscany and completed its contracts. In June 2004, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court closed the case, and the balance was paid by December 2005, with all creditors paid 100 percent in full.

“The bankruptcy has taught the company to know its limits, know its true costs and to know how to achieve the success that [we] had initially set out for,” Weddell says. “[We have] the wherewithal, the personnel and the customer base to continue to be profitable now and well into the future.”