Young people looking for a way to build their skills in the construction world would be hard pressed to find a better path forward than the one taken by Don Peters. Fortunately and coincidentally, his wife Raeâs skills would turn out to be the perfect complement to Donâs.
The couple started small with a landscape company in 1996 and grew into a heavy-civil and concrete contractor. The Peters and their company, Solid Earth Civil Constructors, have faced the same challenges everybody faces in this business. What makes them uniquely successful is their approach to everything from new hires to technology and the financial management of their company.
And it doesnât hurt that through it all theyâve cultivated a family atmosphere among their cadre of young employees. Whether on the jobsite or in the office, itâs not uncommon to hear them referred to as Momma Rae or Papa Don.
âAnything for a buckâ
By the time they started their company, Don had already spent the better part of his life mastering a variety of construction skills. At age 14, he was operating a Caterpillar DW 15 scraper while working for his dad in a high school work-study program. He went on to run dozers and excavators and then fell in with a veteran welder, spending two years in his fab shop learning everything about that trade.
When a job with a landscaping company came along, Don jumped at the opportunity. Soon after, he met Rae and went to work for her brotherâs landscape company, running that firmâs construction, excavation and concrete jobs.
But they wanted more out of life. So Don and Rae launched their design-build landscape company about a year after they were married. âWhen we first started out, Iâd do anything for a buck,â says Don. âIf somebody would pay me to sweep their garage floors, I would sweep their garage floor.â Rae went door to door offering landscaping services and put in many long hours cold calling potential clients.
It didnât take long for the coupleâs energy and skills to find lucrative work. The husband and wife team spent long hours in their home office figuring out ways to realize their clientsâ complex dreams and then in the field building a reputation for quality construction from the ground up.
âConstantly ask yourself whyâ
Rae recalls her supervisor at the savings and loan approaching her one day and asking, âWhat were you thinking?â But it wasnât a reprimand, it was a challenge.
âShe was looking for justification, reasoning, logical, critical thinking,â Rae says. âIn running your business, you have to constantly ask yourself why. In business, that is invaluable.â As president of the company, Rae examines every business decision by this philosophy.
For example, the size of every job the company considers gets careful scrutiny. âOur office staff is small, and when you look at bidding as a prime contractor rather than a sub, that requires a lot of hands-on with your subs. That can be challenging,â Rae says. Solid Earth Constructors depends on its reputation for high quality, and ensuring that subs meet those expectations is not easy. âOne of the worst things you can say is âgood enough,ââ says Rae. âBut there is no âgood enoughâ for us. It has to be right.â
âDebt is your enemyâ
Equipment purchases are also carefully analyzed. Unless they can pencil in the jobs that will pay for the machine, they wait.
Says Don: âWhen the time is right, she tells me to give her a number, and sheâll write a check for that number. She knows how to control the spending. We donât want to be tied down to payments when work gets slow. So, with each job, weâre continually putting money back into the company for future equipment purchases.â
Or to put in in Raeâs terms: âDebt is your enemy.â
When the recession hit, Don and Rae decided to sell their office building and move back into a home office rather than take on debt to ride out the slowdown. âI hate paying interest,â says Rae. âWhy pay extra for something thatâs already expensive? Interest digs into your profits.â
Moving up
By 2011, Donâs skills and Raeâs business acumen seemed overmatched to the needs of the landscaping business. So, they focused on the bigger world of civil construction, testing their skills in a pool of large and well-qualified competitors.
By this time, Solid Earthâs reliability was well-known. It soon started winning bids as a subcontractor to companies like Kiewit Infrastructure and Bechtel National. It also contracted with many of the federal and government entities across the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. Bechtel was so impressed with the companyâs craftsmanship and reliability, it named Solid Earth a key contributor and top subcontractor in 2016.
Bigger jobs, better margins
Don and Raeâs original plan was to work together four years to launch the company. After that, Rae wanted to return to school to earn a masterâs in counseling. Eventually, she got her masterâs and opened a counseling business. But as the economy started to improve from the recession, and as their son, Matt, started to play an increasingly important role in the company, Rae felt it was time to step back in.
Frankly, there was no one who could take her place. âWhen you grow up with a company, you know all the ins and outs,â she says. âIt was such a gradual thing; you donât realize what youâre learning as you go.â
By this time, the company had stopped offering landscaping services and was pursuing exclusively civil construction and concrete work â bigger jobs, better margins but lots more demands. âWe needed all hands on deck,â says Rae.
The young guns
While Don and Rae are the engine that drove Solid Earth Civil Constructors forward from the beginning, Matt, 22, is the turbocharger. Almost from birth, Matt has been enamored with heavy equipment. He didnât care a fig for Dr. Seuss books. He wanted to read equipment magazines. His dad let him operate as soon as he could reach the sticks and follow instructions. He earned his spending money as a teen running skid steers, dozers and excavators for the company.
In addition to his equipment operating skills, Matt plays another role in the company that is crucial to its immediate and long-term success â training the new hires.
Everybody in construction struggles with the lack of workers, and nobody seems to have any good solutions. Don, Rae and Matt decided the best thing to do was to hire young workers with a good work ethic regardless of whether theyâd ever touched a piece of yellow iron. Matt and Superintendent Richard Lewis, who was hired five years ago and brought a wealth of heavy equipment expertise and problem-solving skills to the company, are in charge of the training. It helps that Matt and Richard are about the same age as these new hires, and their youth, experience and enthusiasm for the big iron make them ideal trainers.
Don likens this new-hire training program to a four-year apprenticeship. âWe give them the option of going into the excavation division or the concrete division,â says Don. âThe majority want to go into excavation, so we train them in safety and slowly put them into a piece of equipment. We start small with a skid steer and then move them into a mini-excavator and progress from there.â
The company has about seven employees in various stages of skills acquisition, almost half its workforce, says Don. âYou see them out there working on the site, and they just glow. Theyâre having a ball. But they have to work. We all have to bring something to the table.â
The new hires are paid well too â prevailing wage or better, says Don. And while many in this business say they canât afford to give new hires on-the-job training, Solid Earthâs approach develops a strong sense of loyalty, little turnover and enthusiastic employees.
With Matt and Richard, respect for the equipment is also paramount and pays big dividends. Machines are washed and waxed regularly. Grease is a daily ritual. Matt bought battery-powered grease guns for all the machines, so operators had one less excuse not to grease. And heâs a fanatic about oil changes. âWhen the manual says 500 hours, we do them at 250 hours,â says Matt. âWe have not had a single equipment failure or breakdown in years.â
Technology
With a small core of dedicated personnel, the team has been able to incorporate technology at important junctures. To better integrate their operations with Bechtel, they started using Bluebeam Revu in their estimating to increase their efficiency. Don credits the software with enabling him to triple his estimating output. In the concrete division this year, they bought a full Topcon GPS system to guide their new GOMACO slip-form paver.
No place for sissies
Although Solid Earthâs success is well-established, the path to getting there and the current demands are anything but easy.
âAt 4 a.m., Iâm in the shower. Thatâs my think tank,â says Don. âBy 6 or 7 p.m., weâre still working, talking, thinking about the next day, the next job. One of the hardest things is learning to shut it down. You have to enjoy the work, but you have to enjoy life and your family around you too.â
In the early years, Rae wasnât just working in the office, she was also raising Matt and two daughters and shuttling kids to sports practices and after-school events. She took her work with her wherever she went.
âThere are so many personal sacrifices you have to make,â Rae says. âYour employees always get paid. Your bills always get paid. But when we were young, we didnât always get paid. When you have your own business, your dinnertime conversation, everything, is superseded by the business.â
Good advice
When asked what advice the couple would give young people looking to start their own construction company, the couple stay away from the easy answers and the âfollow-your-dreamsâ sentiments. Despite their enthusiasm for the business, their counsel is logical and cautionary. You wonât find their words on any motivational posters, which makes them all the more valuable.
âI would say be clear on your motivations and the justifications for your decisions,â says Rae. âIs it an emotional decision or a practical one?â Some people want to see their name in lights, she says, but what happens when you canât pay the power bill?
âGo into it with an educated mind,â says Don. âLook at it from top to bottom, inside out. Really evaluate what you are doing and make sure it qualifies in your wheelhouse.â
Having done just those things, itâs not hard to see the enthusiasm the couple have for the business theyâve created. For Rae, itâs the autonomy and how it knits the family together. âThere are a lot of chiefs in the family,â she says. âAnd when itâs your own company, you can make room for those different personalities.â
For Don, itâs being able to see Matt and the young men they hire grow strong in their skills and their confidence and loving the work he loves, starting down the path he charted more than 20 years ago. âEvery day Iâm amazed,â he says. âThat kind of thing makes me get up and pull my boots on every single day, period.â