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Contractors headquartered near Washington, DC, are quite busy filling government agencies’ contracts associated with road, street and underground utilities maintenance. One reason for so much maintenance work in and around Washington is that government roads and streets departments are depending more on outside contractors to carry it out.

One contractor enjoying an ongoing brisk business is Metro Paving Corp. of Hyattsville, MD. The company has been rapidly growing since its start 10 years ago and, according to Manuel Rodrigues, vice president, it could have been expanded even faster based on the work opportunities to be had. The company was started by two people and now it employs 150.

"We started modestly by doing small projects for roads and streets maintenance mostly in DC and nearby areas in Maryland. We still specialize in road maintenance work, but our focus is on DC contracts because there is less competition," Rodrigues explains. "Many road maintenance and underground utility contractors do not want to work in DC because of the heavy traffic."

Besides the road maintenance work carried out for government agencies such as the DDOT and District National Park Service, Metro Paving still wins significant contracts tendered by the Maryland State Highway Administration and Virginia DOT. Primarily, the company does asphalt paving, road and street asphalt patch paving and repair/replacement of potable water and storm sewer lines under roads or shoulders.

Presently, the biggest contract held by Metro is a DDOT asphalt paving project with a value of $70 million. However, most of its contracts are for small to medium-size projects involving road patch work after storm sewer lines have been repaired or replaced. In Washington, DC, alone, the company has five 10-person crews doing this kind of work year ’round.