Healy, Long & Jevin (HLJ) is a Wilmington, Del., specialty concrete contractor servicing the Mid-Atlantic region with cast-in-place, post-tension and filigree structures; heavy foundations; architectural concrete; slab place and finish; concrete pumping; and concrete site work. Its history can be traced back to 1891, when company CEO Jack Healy's grandfather started a general contracting business that went on to help build Delaware through the late 1800s and 1900s. In 1978, Jack built upon his family's history in the construction industry when he started a specialty concrete contracting business with a since-retired partner. Today, HLJ's management team includes Jack, partner Mike Jevin who serves as president and chief estimator and Jack's son Sean Healy, secretary/treasurer.

HLJ has been quick to adopt new technologies and ideas over the years. In 2005, when HLJ's operations VP retired, the company took the opportunity to revamp its management team and change its attitude toward communication and the size of jobs it takes on. As luck would have it, those changes were put into place by the time the market started to turn in 2008, giving the company stronger footing to survive in a tougher economy and the skills it needed to succeed on a recent 140,000-square-foot industrial floor project that required hand placement of superflat floors.

Getting away from a 'crew company'

One key change HLJ made was increasing the scope of job sizes it pursued. Historically the company only went after medium-sized to large jobs. Those projects, sometimes in the range of tens of millions of dollars, were successful financially, but, as Jack explains, made each job feel like it was being run by an independent company with project superintendents who had their favorite crews and workers doing the same thing day in and day out. This created a "crew company" atmosphere and often a dip in work for field crews between big jobs. HLJ wanted to eliminate the crew company atmosphere and keep workers busy between the big jobs. The company set out to build a structure that would allow it to pick up jobs less than $250,000, what HLJ considers its small jobs.