Absher Construction Co.

Specialty: General contractor/construction manager and design-build; education; public housing; ecumenical; commercial/office; military/defense

Management: Dan Absher, president; Tom Absher, executive vice president; Greg Helle, Brad Sayre and Clark Helle, vice presidents

Founded: 1940

Headquarters: Puyallup, with an office in downtown Seattle

2008 revenues: $240 million

Projected 2009 revenues: $250 million

Current projects: $70.9 million Navy bachelor enlisted quarters and parking garage in Bremerton; $62.1 million Denny Middle School/Chief Sealth High School; $22.5 million Pacific Plaza renovation of a downtown Tacoma parking garage into 257,000 square feet of office space and expanded parkingurth Avenue; Nakamura Courthouse; the Joshua Green Building; Pier Bravo at the Bremerton Naval Station; John Wayne Airport parking garage deconstruction in Orange County, Calif.

Image by BLRB Architects Absher Construction is the general contractor for Pacific Plaza, a $22.5 million project that will turn a downtown Tacoma parking garage into 257,000 square feet of office space and parking.

Puyallup-based Absher Construction Co. sees potential in Hawaii and Guam.

The third-generation, family-owned business will start construction in April on two 100-resident, five-story barracks and adjacent support buildings at the Schofield Barracks complex in Honolulu for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Tetra Tech is the architect on the $73 million design-build project, which will be constructed to LEED silver standards. Sean Lewis, Absher's director of marketing and communications, said his firm's market research shows the military is planning barracks and other facilities in Hawaii and Guam in "the coming four to six years or more."

"(There is) a lot of work coming out of there that we haven't seen in recent years," he said. "It's not just a project or two, there's a number of jobs coming up in both places." Absher is pursuing a Navy bachelor enlisted quarters in Guam and intends to go after other projects, he said.

More than military

Besides the military work, Absher builds public schools and housing. It also constructs office, condo, retail and mixed-use buildings, private schools and facilities for religious organizations.

The firm is seeing intense competition on public projects, with private-sector work having fallen off due to the recession. There were about 10 bidders on the Spanaway Lake High School and Issaquah High School projects it recently bid, Lewis said. That's more bidders than in recent years when some local school districts had to place ads to solicit contractors, he said.

As the recession thaws, Lewis said he expects to see resumption of on-hold projects if the developers can get financing.

BIM's "huge" impact

In the future, Lewis said he expects building information modeling to have a "huge" impact on the construction industry. The software allows companies to model buildings on a computer and can lead to big savings, largely because it detects design flaws that can then be worked out before construction, he said.

"You can see where stuff isn't going to work together, (such as) this duct work isn't going to work (because) there's a wall there," he said.

But the software is expensive, staff must be trained to use it, and the proper hardware is needed, he said. Contracting and architecture firms that can afford it will have an advantage over those that can't, he said. "It's not something that the average little mom-and-pop contractor can do," he said.

The recession is making it easier for Absher to snag skilled employees. College construction management students who in the past few years have been assured of jobs no longer are -- and they are competing with recently laid off workers, Lewis said.

"It's a different world this year," he said.