Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(28)
“But it sounds like you mostly do government work?”
“True. There are firms out there who specialize in major hotel projects, conference centers, casinos, that sort of thing. The hospitality industry. In comparison, we’re the opposite end of the spectrum—the institutional industry.” Lopez chuckled, pleased at his own irony.
“Why?”
“Government game is connections, and Justin has connections. That’s one of his strengths. The man knows how to work a room, and when you’re competing against a dozen other firms for an RFP worth hundreds of millions of dollars, personally knowing the senator on the appropriations committee, or having had the head of the Bureau of Prisons over to your house for dinner, isn’t a bad thing. Some firms even employ lobbyists. We attend some key conferences, get to know the major players and Justin will take it from there.”
“So you get to know the key people who are issuing RFPs for these major projects. In New England?”
“We build nationally.”
“Okay, national building projects. But these projects are for hundreds of millions of dollars, and must take, what, years to complete?”
“Just the on-site build will tie up a couple of years,” Lopez clarified. “But take a major prison project we just completed. Took us ten years, start to finish. Our client’s the government, right? And governments don’t move fast.”
“I get it. So, on the one hand, you’re landing projects in the hundreds of millions, but on the other hand, it’s taking you up to ten years to complete them. Big money, big risk, like you said. But Denbe’s a second-generation firm, right? Started by Justin’s father. Meaning you guys have longevity on your side.”
“We are not the new kids at the party,” Lopez agreed, “but nor are we resting on our laurels. When Justin took over after his father’s death, he became obsessed with growing the firm. Way he saw it, the industry was at a major turning point, where the big were gonna get bigger, but the small, smaller. He didn’t want to get smaller. Of course, the challenge in construction is how to grow a company without growing your overhead. We’re a boom-and-bust industry, right? We increase our staff, double our costs during the boom, and suddenly, we can’t survive the bust. Hence, Justin’s centipede model: Denbe Construction provides the leader for each segment of the build process—the best project manager, the expert tradesmen, et cetera, for guidance and troubleshooting. Basically, we provide the generals, our subs provide the troops. Meaning Denbe can staff lean, while still being a leader in the industry.”
“So does that make you the expert on the experts?” Tessa asked Lopez. “After all, if your guys are the best of the best, and you’re the overseer of the best of the best…”
Lopez rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if I’d say I’m that smart, or just that stubborn. Look, I can draw you all the pretty pictures you want, but basically large-scale construction means large-scale headaches. First, I gotta hand-hold dozens of subs to put together one coherent RFP. Except putting together a building proposal is a lot like a political campaign. All the subs put on their best faces and make their brightest promises, hoping you’ll pick them for your winning team. But maybe, when the HVAC subcontractor was campaigning that hard, he forgot to read the fine print on the spec sheet. Or he mistook the number seventy for, say, the number seven, so he underbid the project by quite a lot. Most subs will try to weasel out of such mistakes. My job, three years later when we’ve actually started building, is not to let him. On a good day, that can mean forcing a sub to eat an error worth tens of thousands of dollars—no big deal when the sub’s total contract is for fifty million. On a bad day, however, when the error runs into the tens of millions, meaning the sub is now losing money on a project I’m not letting him quit—a quote is a legally binding contract—that can mean threat of lawsuits or even death. Hey, it happens.”
Tessa was impressed. “So you’re the company bad cop. Does that make Justin the good cop?”
“Pretty close. Justin is strategic. When a sub sends us twenty sets of boots on the ground, but the overall timeline of the project clearly demands forty, he sorts it out. When the electrical plan manages to violate four basic codes, he’ll get on the phone and hash it out. When an RFP gets tied up in a committee, he does some schmoozing and pulls it out. Justin’s not just smart, he’s useful smart. He not only gets things done, but makes you happy to have done it. Guys like me, we respect that.”
“Guys like you?”
Lopez shrugged. “Army ranger.”
“Lot of former military on the payroll?”
“You could say that.” He held out his hand for her notepad. When she handed it over, he drew a line down from his name on the org chart and added four horizontal boxes beneath. Design Manager; Structural Engineer; Superintendent of Security; Quality Engineer.
“This is the core build team,” he explained. “Design manager oversees the architects. That’s Dave, only one of us whose misspent youth wasn’t funded by Uncle Sam. Now, the structural engineer, Jenkins, is former air force. Everything is funneled through him, including layers and layers of plans. You think I like details? Jenkins dreams in blueprints. He’s also an antisocial son of a bitch, probably has some kind of Asperger’s, but the man is scary smart and not too bad with a forty-five, so we forgive him his other sins. Let’s see, that brings us to Paulie, the superintendent of security. Now, security systems have two components, electronics and hard line. Paulie handles both and is the craziest mother you’ll ever meet. Former Navy SEAL, and how Justin ever gets him through security clearance, I’ll never know. Especially after that last incident, involving two bars, the entire town’s PD, and Paulie’s new court-mandated anger-management classes. But Paulie’s not really too bad, just as long as you keep him off the sauce. That’s my job, and Justin’s. Which brings us to our quality engineer, Bacon. His real name is Barry, but call him that and he’s liable to hurt you. Bacon is ex-marine, Force Recon. He wears a spoon around his neck. Claims he used it once to kill a guy. We don’t argue much with Bacon.” Lopez looked her in the eye, his voice dead serious. “This team, we’re the ones who work with Justin the most. We work close, we work well. And I can tell you, to a man, we have his back.”