Wade Perrow Construction

Specialty: Design-build
Principals: Wade Perrow, CEO; Dan McKinney, president
Year founded: 1979
Location: Gig Harbor
Largest project in 2002: A $12 million design-build project to remodel and convert two historic brick buildings into chemical and metallurgical laboratories for the U.S. Navy at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.

Photo courtesy of Wade Perrow Construction One of Wade Perrow Construction’s projects last year was building a new home for Tacoma Screw Products.

Business is still good for Wade Perrow Construction, although things are slowing down a bit, said Tom Balbo, vice president and manager of business development for WPC.

“We have a lot of stuff that we’re bidding on,” Balbo said. At the same time, “We had a couple projects that got put on hold.”

The firm specializes in design-build projects, but when things slow down, “we look at stuff we don’t normally look at,” he said. Work can be found in smaller projects and state facility jobs. “We don’t build schools, but there’s a lot of school work right now,” Balbo said.

WPC doesn’t plan to change its specialty, however. “We’ll stick to where we are right now,” he said. “We’ll just bid some more hard money jobs.”

WPC’s largest job last year was a $12 million design-build project for the U.S. Navy on the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton. WPC worked with M. Kennedy Construction, MSGS Architects and AHBL to remodel and convert two historic brick buildings, built in 1896 and 1904, into chemical and metallurgical laboratories.

A good sign for the market right now, Balbo said, is all the advertisements in the newspaper for project managers, architects and engineers. After looking through a recent edition of the Journal, Balbo found several firms hiring. “If people are looking to hire people, you can assume there’s work to be had.