Phil Diekemper, vice president Northern operations, left, and Ron Schuster, CEO, of CECO Concrete Construction, Kansas City, Mo.

Since CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION started monitoring the financial health of the concrete industry in 2001, concrete-related revenue for the top 100 companies has decreased only once prior to 2008 (that was in 2002 by 1.5%). But that was followed by a pretty good year in 2003 and big jumps in 2005, 2006, and 2007. This trip through the cycle seems likely to be different.

Ron Schuster, CEO, CECO Concrete Construction, Kansas City, Mo., says, remember commercial concrete construction is “a lagging industry—nonresidential lags housing and we all know that housing isn't fixed yet. I think industrial work—petrochemical and chemical facilities, not automotive—will be back next year because oil's coming back. But I don't think commercial nonresidential is coming back anytime soon. In fact, I think 2010 will be worse than 2009. That's unfortunate for all of us, but we've dealt with this sort of thing before.”

This year's CC100 listing shows contractors dealing with it in different ways. Some found lucrative markets; others have suffered. All in all, 2008 wasn't so terrible.

• Total revenue for the CC100 companies increased about 5% in 2008 due to big gains from some larger companies—both concrete subcontractors and general contractors.
• Concrete-related revenue for the entire 100 companies was down about 1%, but was up 17% for the 20 largest commercial concrete contractors. Perhaps that was simply momentum coming out of a very strong 2007. “We do big jobs so we work off an eight- to nine-month backlog and we saw the market for new work decline about August 2007, but we had the work already sold and in the pipeline,” says Schuster. “We saw the bad news coming out of housing in late '06 and I've been in this business long enough to know that when housing goes in the tank, one or two years later commercial nonresidential goes in the tank. We made the decision then that we needed to get diversified so we bought two companies to allow us to move into industrial markets—specifically petrochemical and refining. Most of our growth in 2008 was through acquisition.”
• Some companies grew in 2008 while some sharply declined. The split was right down the middle with 40 companies growing, 20 staying about flat (±5%), and 40 having significant revenue declines. That is the worst performance in the past 10 years—only 2002 came close (see Growing or Declining?).
• Maintaining growth is difficult. Only three companies on last year's fastest-growing list made the list again this year—Baker, Urban, and Ruttura. This is Baker's third consecutive year of double-digit growth. In fact, most of the companies on last year's fastest-growing list had lower revenue in 2008 than in 2007; eight of the 20 had double-digit revenue declines.
• Despite overall revenue growth of 17%, the 20 largest commercial concrete contractors also were split evenly between those that saw growth from 2007 to 2008 and those that contracted.
• There is no discernable geographical pattern to the companies that had significant growth in 2008. Their locations vary from Utah to Pennsylvania to Arizona to Georgia. Conspicuously missing are companies from Florida and California, which have seen the downturn earlier than other areas.
• Two of the top three fastest-growing companies are in Utah—D&F and Gulf Shores, and there's another connection: Steve Stone is owner of Gulf Shores and a partner in D&F. “With Gulf Shores, all we build is distribution centers, like for Rubbermaid,” he says. “We had that niche and they had cash so they just kept building. D&F, on the other hand, is a local Utah company that builds high schools, fire stations, recreation centers, and lot of other county work. We foresaw the economy crashing and went after a lot of county work where the bonds already were funded and that allowed us to grow fast. Not a lot of jobs but some big contracts—from $2 million up to about $6 million.”