Perini Building Company

GC Breaks Records, Overcomes Obstacles

by Scott Blair

Perini Building Company has been atop Southwest Contractor's overall ranking for the past three years. The Phoenix-based company lifted its regional revenue to an unprecedented $1.1 billion this year, based on 2006 revenue. This reflects a near doubling of their revenue from Arizona and Nevada-based projects in a single year.

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Most of Perini Building Company's $1.1 billion tri-state revenue in 2006 came from Las Vegas projects. With the massive $4.5 billion CityCenter, $2 billion Cosmopolitan and $400 million Trump Las Vegas all breaking ground in 2006, the company had to rapidly expand its Las Vegas infrastructure.

"It's forced us to really figure out how to do this" says Dick Rizzo, chairman of Perini. "We had to actually establish a structure to allow ourselves the ability to expand, and that's by radically increasing our human resources staff."

In addition, the company has expanded its training program for new employees, putting them through a two-day 'boot camp' which trains up to two dozen new people every two weeks.

"We've doubled our Las Vegas staff in the last year," Rizzo says. "Our goal is to again increase that by another 50% for the remainder of this year and next because of the continuing need for expanding our administration and professional staff for these projects."

This requires a constant search for new people. "It's not simply by robbing from other local talent here to get them to work for us," Rizzo says. "It's really more of an outreach to get people from outside the area to come be a part of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here."

Finding enough skilled tradespeople is also a major challenge. CityCenter alone will require 7,000 tradespeople when construction activity peaks sometime in middle to late 2008, Rizzo says. With 35,000 union tradespeople in Clark County currently, Perini will be absorbing one-fifth of this workforce on just that one project.

"The unions are reacting very positively and are proactively expanding upon their base through apprenticeship and encouraging travelers to come in," he says. "I can say right now we haven't experienced any shortages on the trade side."

Perini has continued its community involvement with support for Shade Tree Emergency Shelter and Teach for America, and added a new Hispanic scholarship program to its list of charity donations.

Las Vegas-based MGM Mirage, CityCenter's developer, requested that Perini expand its diversity programs. Through local and national outreach, recruitment videos, workshops, diversity training and support to minority-owned subcontractors on improving their business practices, Perini has re-emphasized diversity with the impetus being CityCenter, Rizzo says.

The contractor has also begun training employees on sustainability, with some staff becoming LEED-accredited due to MGM Mirage's goal of achieving LEED-silver certification on CityCenter.

2006 was an eventful year for the company in Arizona. Crews wrapped up the 450,000-sq-ft Westgate City Center project in Glendale, while the $200 million Downtown Phoenix Sheraton Hotel got underway.

Can Perini sustain their rapid expansion and recent revenue increases for the long haul? According to Rizzo, the answer is yes. The firm is currently marketing for work that would start in late 2008, after CityCenter has peaked.

Perini also has insight into what the future might have in store for the region due to the company's preconstruction services division. "We get a good sense of what our workload could be two to three years out because we are usually into these programs a couple years before they actually break ground," Rizzo says. "It looks extremely good; the long-term opportunities look very encouraging."

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