Eosso Brothers Paving's “Encore” Performance Wins 2023 Paving: Parking Lot Award

Every contractor knows that completing work in retirement communities is no easy task. There are many different details to organize and parties to notify when work needs to be completed, with the most important goal of minimizing community disruption.

Eosso Brothers Paving, a Brothers National Company out of Farmingdale, NJ, is no stranger to these types of projects. In fact, the company prides itself on being able to effectively communicate with homeowners and make these projects seamless for everyone involved. 

In 2022, the company completed work in the Encore Monroe community, a $1.5 million project that involved 589,000 sq. ft. of milling and 8,000 tons of paving in just 26 days. And they completed the work while also ensuring all parties were informed and pleased with the work. 

But the project began long before the work was bid in 2021. 

Community Comfort & Coordination Wins Bids

Eosso Brothers Paving a 30-year old business in the paving industry, has been a partner with the Encore Monroe community for several years. In 2015, the company started replacing the 400 driveways in the community over a two-year period. In 2017, the company sealed those driveways and began repairs on the roadways, crack filling over 40,000 linear feet of cracks.

“The community board members knew it was time to do something to further repair the roadways inside the community and were considering sealcoating,” Thomas  Eosso, owner at Eosso Brothers Paving says. “ I sat with the board numerous times to discuss their roadways and they were leaning towards sealcoating them. We discussed the value of sealcoating and the condition of the roadways with them at the time. Based on the size of the project and condition of the pavement, sealcoating would not be a cost effective solution. We suggested that the roadways be milled and paved.”

Eosso developed a budget for the entire project and presented it to the board. 

“Even though the community was familiar with our company, they weren’t going to award a $1.5 million project to our team without getting other options and we understood that,” Eosso said. “Based on the scale of the project, we recommended they hire a third party engineer to come up with specifications for the job that all parties would bid off of. Once we saw those, we were confident we could build a program and win the work.”

Even though the company came in with a higher bid than their competitors, Eosso’s experience, coupled with their organization and ability to keep the community moving during the work through a genius golf cart service, won them the work at the end of 2021.  Work was set to begin in spring of 2022.

Proposed vs. Actual

As business owners in our industry know, work that was bid in 2021 looked very different from work that was to start in 2022. 

“When we bid the work, fuel was $3.25 a gallon,” Eosso said. “By the time we began the project, fuel was up to nearly $6 a gallon and we knew we couldn’t eat that cost. We gave the community the option to space out the project over two years or accept a $72,000 increase from the original proposal.”

Luckily, the engineer of the community built a $500,000 buffer into the proposal in the event of any unforeseen structural damage with the pavement. Once the crew milled the pavement, the engineer walked the site with the project manager and found no further damage and work could proceed as bid with the increase.

Phasing Key to Success

To accomplish this work effectively, the company broke the work into 12 different phases. 

Gary Eosso, VP of Operations at Eosso, visited the project 10 times prior to starting the work to verify the daily production and maps. Eosso office staff project coordinators got to work creating the custom maps and getting all pertinent info to project managers. From there, the Eosso office team worked diligently to keep residents informed by distributing the maps and notices each day of where work was happening and when. Signs were placed throughout the community to ensure that residents knew what was going on and all safety hazards were clearly marked. 

Each day, Robert Tampone, Project Manager for Eosso for over 25 years, worked closely with the Community Manager, Shirley Santos. 

“Rob met with Shirley and discussed every aspect of the project,” Eosso said. “He created  a text chain that had the engineer, manager, sales team and operations and sent a text every morning to say the crew was onsite. He would let the team know if everything was set or if cars were in the way and needed to be moved. When any issues came up, Shirley would call Rob and he would handle it instantly.”

During work, traffic patterns were clearly marked with cones and staff members were on site to route cars through the area so that residents were still able to get in and out of the community. In the event residents couldn’t get to their cars? The Eosso Courtesy Cart came to the rescue. 

“The Eosso Courtesy Cart is a golf cart service that is like Uber for the homeowners on these projects,” Eosso said. “Eosso has a driver that picks up and drops off homeowners to their cars and houses. During paving, the roadways are closed so cars need to park out of the area and the cart creates a happy community by eliminating those long walks to their homes. Some of the elderly people have trouble walking and this was really a key factor in Eosso getting this work.”

In all, the crew took 12 days of milling and preparation of roadways. Cars needed to be out from 7am – 4:30 pm / enter after 4:30 pm. 8,000 tons of material was milled off the 589,000 sq.ft. project. 

Next, crews came in and paved the area in 13 days. They put down 2-½-in. of asphalt compacted to 2-in. - a big difference in the project.

“A lot of companies will put in a bid that they will put down 2-in. of asphalt and it will wind up being 1-½-in. compacted,” Eosso said. “That extra half inch makes a big difference in terms of lowering the price of the bid but it also makes a bigger difference in the quality of pavement put down, especially in colder climates.”

In addition to the milling and the paving, the company completed drainage work, replaced damaged belgium block curbing and parking spaces and stop bars - all with compliments from the homeowners and property manager. 

“Keeping a community informed with accurate information is one of the most important parts of a project and Eosso excels in this area,” Shirley Santos, Community Manager, Taylor Management Company says. “The project was managed with incredible notifications to the homeowners, daily if not more as well as communication from the office and multi daily site visits to keep me posted on the progress. My homeowners were extremely impressed with the workmanship. Numerous residents stopped in or called to tell me how helpful and friendly the crew was to them.”

Music to the ears of the experienced Eosso team. 

“ It was overwhelming the amount of positivity and great comments to our crews,” Eosso said. “Our crews are all trained to give our communities a great experience even though we inconvenience the homeowners. The community kept sending Shirley great emails saying how organized our crews are and the job came out beautifully and completely transformed the community. Plus we were able to  deliver the project on time and on budget.”

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