... working construction during the pandemic
Steven Massaro is the president of Massaro Corporation. Since its founding in 1967, Massaro has become one of the largest construction firms in the region with a wide range of projects, including school and hospital buildings, apartments, parking garages, hotels and office buildings. Current projects include construction of the Landing Hotel at Rivers Casino.
Mr. Massaro was elected president of the General Contractors Association of Pennsylvania in March. One of the group’s top issues is modernizing the state Separations Act, a 1913 law which requires public entities like state-related universities to bid and award separate contracts for plumbing, heating, electrical, and ventilation work on projects where the cost exceeds $4,000. The association argues that the act is antiquated and ends up costing schools and other public entities more money.
Mr. Massaro talks about that and the effects of the pandemic on the construction industry.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
How has Massaro and the construction industry as a whole rebounded from the pandemic?
I’d say pretty well. Going from March 2020, we had 22 projects totally shut down. Eleven stayed active because they were health care. Then there wasn’t a whole lot in terms of new opportunity for the rest of 2020. All of a sudden a $1.5 million bid project became really attractive, Not that they’re not attractive, but they were like ... the opportunities were so few and far between.
But overall, it’s been good. We performed well and the pandemic hasn’t been what we first thought in March 2020 — could this be the end of us? It hardly has become that.
How would you say the pandemic has reshaped the construction industry?
One thing about construction is the people that work in the office can work from home. The men and women that go to work at the sites do not have that option. There’s a bit of an unfairness there because a portion of your workforce that’s so critical to what you do has no option but to go into work. And some of them were going into hospitals working right next to COVID units.
The truth is, there are some people that really enjoy working from home.
It’s a smaller number of people that work from home — but we’ll find reasons for them to come to the office at some point. We’ve learned that working remotely on bid day, which we do two or three times a week, does work remotely. You can argue in some ways, it makes it a little bit calmer because everyone’s got what they’re working on. And when it’s their turn to feed into the estimate, they do their job. So we would have never even thought of a hybrid model of people can work from home. But we will permit that to happen in a hybrid model.
I remember back when I started in the late ’80s, early ’90s, everyone wore more suits and ties and casual became more norm. It’s almost pervasive now. I see very few people in our industry getting dressed up to be on a Zoom call.
So not a big change, but I think casual will become very normal in the industry.
What about out in the field itself? How has the pandemic sort of reshaped that aspect of it?
Certainly masks when we were in the high points of the pandemic, it did make it tougher to to do your work. I mean, two workers hanging drywall and trying to social distance is impossible. But I will say, the men and women did a really good job of [buying] into those protocols of handwashing, wearing masks, and, therefore, we never had a huge outbreak on a job site. There were cases, and they did isolate and they were contained. And looking back on it, it’s a pretty proud moment to know that those workers took it seriously and really did not contribute to a huge outbreak.
Now masks are not required, work is back to normal. While it was going on from March 2020 through the spring of this year, we did lose some productivity, you do lose some efficiencies, because of the time it takes to go wash your hands, the time it takes to unfog your glasses, the time it takes to be careful in how you work in terms of interacting with people.
The problem we’re having now is, while we were doing that work on these job sites during the heat of the pandemic, a lot of factories were slowed down, shut down, working at half staff. Then in February, March, the opportunity started pouring in this year. And they poured in from jobs that were put on hold during 2020. They poured in from jobs that had been planned in 2020.
They almost felt like they all hit at once. And supply-chain material deliveries, price escalations became very real in March, April, May, and continue to be an issue getting doors, getting certain roofing materials. What you thought prior to pandemic, you can no longer think. You just can’t get certain roofing installations in four to six weeks, You just can’t get certain doors or most doors for 12 weeks, 16 weeks. So you really have to think about when you price-work and engaging with your subcontractors in a more meaningful way, to really understand deliveries and not just of special fabricated materials, but also just common fabricated materials.
A lot has been written and talked about in terms of cost increases involving materials. What have you seen in that regard?
I’ve gone through a couple of huge escalation time frames in our industry and this certainly has been one of them. I think the demand on any residential building materials like lumber two months ago was really bad. It was really expensive. But as that demand continued, production ramped up and we get busy. Escalation’s kind of common in April, May, June, because summer months, people are doing their projects, but it was exacerbated by the pandemic. But we see it leveling off. It’s not going back to what it was yet. But we’re seeing material costs leveling off. We haven’t had too many projects, too many bids that we’ve submitted in the last 45 days, I think 60 days ago, 80-90 days ago, some of them were like, oh, we’re over budget, we got a big problem.
The last 30- 45 days, things have been in budget and proceeded to construction.
But escalation moved down to No. 3 or 4 on the list of concerns. Getting materials is probably No. 1.
What would you say are the biggest challenges facing contractors and the industry today?
Certainly, a huge concern is people. We have a lot of great workers in our industry, especially at the project sites. But getting young people to not only want to do this, but also have the work ethic to do this. It’s a great industry. You get to work with your hands every day, you get to see what you’re building, we get to build facilities that people are cured in, that people are educated in, that people live in, that social service agencies use. And there’s a lot of pride that comes from that.
I get concerned that the work ethic, each generation, it continues to decrease a little bit. And if you’re union and you’re getting paid a very good family sustaining wage, I’m concerned that we need to make sure that that work ethic is there because costs can’t keep going up, wages can’t keep going up, and productivity going down. And just kind of the old school family way of teaching our kids how important it is, but also how gratifying it is to put in a full day’s work.
You’ve just been selected to head up the General Contractors Association of Pennsylvania. What do you see as your priorities in leading that group?
I think it’s solidifying and having a voice that is common to all the different associations across the state of Pennsylvania to make sure that we are focused on issues that are improving our industry, improving the things that are important to construction. So having that common bond with the other agencies in Philadelphia in Harrisburg, and across the state, I think is really important.
[Another is] really modernizing a really antiquated law in Pennsylvania — the multi-prime contracting, the Separations Act. It’s so antiquated to have a public school building built, with the owner holding four different contracts. It might have made sense in 1913. But it certainly doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And the evidence of that is the private market has a choice to pick whatever delivery method they want — invited bid list, low bid gets it, design build, [construction manager] at risk. And 100% of the time, the private market does not pick to do a separate prime contracting for multiple prime contractors. That tells you something. So it’s hugely important that we at least modernize that, so that we offer choices to schools.
What would you say has been your favorite project to work on over the years?
There are two of them. One was the Mount Alvernia Mother House renovations back in 1992. And the academic cancer center for Allegheny Health Network, Allegheny General Hospital, that we finished about a year ago was also a hugely satisfying project to be involved with. It’s the hub of all their cancer centers. And to know that that’s a facility that’s helping save people’s lives, cure people, is really meaningful.