Fahs completed the Auburn Armory West addition addition for the New York State Office of General Services.

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Projects today seem to have much shorter durations than in the past. Therefore, any delays – whether caused by construction, design or nature – can wreak havoc on a job.

Rich Gangemi, Fahs Construction Group COO, notes that in particular, the public bid market seems to have allowed such short construction periods, that even with the best planning, delays become unavoidable.  

“We try to identify areas of potential delay as soon as we become aware of one and work with the owner to minimize its impact and get back on track,” Gangemi explains. “I think that one of our trademarks is the fact that we are very owner friendly, in both the public and private sector and look to solve problems and offer value engineering suggestions to save the owner money.”

Fahs has an active roster of projects and strives to stay on top of its schedules. In the summer especially, Gangemi says, the company is very active in the education sector. “We do a lot of school work in the summer and those jobs need to be completed by the fall,” he notes. “For example, we were awarded one job in June and it had to be done in August; that’s a ten-week schedule. But, we overcome those time challenges by really attacking those jobs once we get them with proper planning and effective use of overtime.”

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Fahs operates three divisions. The General Construction Division, led by Carl Guy, focuses on public and private general construction work for schools, hospitals, industrial plants, athletic facilities, hotels and senior living facilities. The Heavy Highway Division, led by Dominick Cerretani, focuses on design/bid/build and design/build bridge and highway projects, often for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and New York and Pennsylvania Departments of Transportation. The Commercial Division, led by Karl Foster, performs sitework and commercial asphalt paving for public and private organizations.

Gangemi says about 50 percent of Fahs’ work is in general construction, while heavy highway is about 40 percent and commercial the remaining 10 percent.

While Fahs fosters close relationships with all its clients, Gangemi stresses that the commercial paving work is particularly client-driven because much of the division’s work is private, naming Wal-Mart, Wegmans Food Market, Putnam Publishing, Universal Industries and Borg Warner as top clients.

“Karl Foster has done great work with that division and works with many clients on a five-year maintenance plan for parking lots,” Gangemi explains. “With active stores, especially Wal-Mart and Wegmans, the stores need to stay open even while we are doing maintenance. We are very aware of keeping our construction activity at a low impact on the day-to-day retail operations.”

Most of the commercial paving projects are within a 100-mile radius of the company’s Binghamton, N.Y., headquarters, while the heavy highway division primarily works in New York and Pennsylvania. Fahs’ general construction work ranges as far as Indiana and Connecticut.

“We’re serving as construction manager on some assisted-living facilities that are part of a big development,” Gangemi says. “We built five of those projects in Indiana, and are working on two properties in Connecticut. We are aiming to do two or three of those a year.”