Brothers Concrete’s is capable of everything from condos and hotels to plants and schools, it says.

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Frank Hardesty, founder of Brothers Concrete Construction, has an unabashed affection for concrete similar to the way a baker treats his flour or a painter regards his pallet. To Hardesty, concrete isn’t just a building material, it’s the lifeblood of his industry and it deserves to be treated as such.

“Why concrete?” he asks. “I think if you ask anybody that’s been in the concrete industry for any length of time, they might tell you there’s just something about concrete. “When you look at it – see it come out of the truck – you get a feeling about it.

“‘It gets in your blood,’ they say. I was exposed to the concrete industry 25 years ago; there was a feeling I had and it just pulled me in.”

Before founding his own company, Hardesty worked for a Washington, D.C., area general contractor and was exposed to all of the trades – “the plumbers, the electricians, the masons, the earthwork and the concrete people,” he recalls. “The concrete people, in my mind, stood out from the crowd. They stood apart from everybody else.

“They seemed like they had sun on their faces, they seemed to be happy, and they looked like they had cash in their pockets.”

In 1985, he established Brothers Concrete in Vienna, Va., and soon found cash in his own pocket. Location has played a big role. “One thing that translates into long-term growth for the company is Washington, D.C.,” Hardesty asserts. “You have job growth here and you have a tremendous, stable base of solid customers and an exceptional work force. Those are some of the things that I would attribute to the company’s success.”

Broad Range
Brothers Concrete takes a turnkey approach to its concrete services. “We’re hired to perform turnkey cast-in-place operations, which involve erecting a tower crane and casting the footings all the way up to the roof, topping out the building and then taking our crane down and moving on,” Hardesty explains.

The contractor’s projects range from hospitals, schools, condos and offices to hotels, industrial plants and government institutions, as well as renovations of all scopes and sizes.

“We’re currently working on some very high-profile government jobs, including for the State Department, the FBI and the executive branch, which I am not allowed to get into, but you can imagine the house is white,” he hints.

Making History
Brothers Concrete is also working on what is considered to be the largest renovation project in Washington, D.C.’s history – the Constitution Center.

“We’re working for James G. Davis, Construction Corp., which is one of our best clients, and it’s a very exciting job,” Hardesty says.   

The project entails renovating the 1.5 million-square-foot Nassif Office Building, which originally housed the Department of Transportation.

The 10-story building is divided into four sections with a 90,000-square-foot open-air courtyard in the middle.

A 300,000-square-foot curtainwall system will be installed with blast-resistant systems to meet the government’s security initiatives, according to James G. Davis.

“The project is challenging in the respect that it’s such a large job,” Hardesty notes. “There are so many small pieces to this job that need to get done in a timely manner. It’s not a typical high-rise where you’re building from the ground up – you’re in the garage fortifying walls, you’re on the roof, you’re all over the building.”

It Takes Teamwork
Brothers Concrete approaches each project as a team player. “We provide a competent management team on each job to help our clients succeed,” Hardesty says. “We go into each job feeling like we’re on the same team. We don’t put our blinders on and say, ‘OK, this is our scope; this is all we need to worry about.’

“We go in with confident management that have worked on the general contractor side for 15-plus years and have seen just about everything.”

No Shortage Here
“Even though we’ve been in the marketplace for 25 years, our management team has another 20 years or more to work,” Hardesty notes.

“We’re all in the 40-something zone and that’s a little odd.

“I know a lot of big companies around the country that are finding these 40-somethings to be the absent group.

“It’s a very fascinating thing; it’s a generation that somehow didn’t get into the construction industry.”

However, he adds, the company realizes that to continue growing, it needs its fair share of 20- and 30-year-olds. “We develop from within, but we also hire stars from around the country,” Hardesty says. “We lean toward hiring on a national level vs. a local level.

“We like to bring in people with new ideas and different ways to do things.”

What Downturn?
Hardesty has heard talk of a talent shortage, but says that hasn’t been the case in Washington, D.C. “We’re not seeing a labor shortage,” he asserts.

Not to mention, “the national media is focused on a downturn and a potential recession, but we’ve never been quite this busy,” he adds.

“I don’t know how that happened, but it doesn’t add up with what we’re reading in the newspaper and watching in the news.

“There is such diversification in the Washington, D.C., builder’s market,” he continues.

“Obviously, the condominium market slowed down; however, those projects can turn into rental high-rises, as well as hotels.

“Office construction is starting to slow down; however, we have a huge influx of government-funded projects and that just ebbs and flows into a very diversified portfolio of work.”