Aging Gracefully

Old and new firms rely on solid foundations

By Sean Ryan

Alot of successful construction companies — young and old — function like a family.

They look after their own, work to keep the household together and teach the next generation to adhere to the ideals and ethics that made the group strong in the first place. That's how six generations of Bentleys have preserved Milwaukee-based The Bentley Company, The A List's oldest firm, and how two generations of the LaBontés family have fostered Menomonee Falls-based Creative Constructors LLC, one of The A List's youngest general contractors.

"With six generations within an organization, that's just a legacy that you cannot allow to fail in any way, shape or form; you have to succeed," said Bentley Chief Operating Officer Robert Stelter. "Most people here are not Bentleys, but over the years, it's instilled family values that still are here today. One of those is support for the people."

Contractors, like families, must grow and change over time to stay healthy. At older firms, it means a history of transitions as complicated as a family tree. For younger contractors, it means taking baby steps to temper growing pains. While the Bentleys can catalogue 156 years of shifting from local residential jobs to major nationwide projects, the LaBontés are slowly planning how to grow out of their five years of retail and multifamily construction.

"We're looking to branch out more as we develop a history," said Brian LaBonté, Creative Constructors’ vice president. "We've stuck in similar areas. We're looking to get more into hospital work and education facilities."

These companies are planning their inevitable maturation based on an unyielding foundation of basic principles that, over time, become tradition. At Creative Construc-tors, it means continuing the company's five years without a safety violation. Bentley takes pride in its customer-knows-best mentality that has given it a 156-year run without being taken to court by a client. Brookfield-based Current Electric Co., the youngest of The A List's major systems subcontractors, makes a cornerstone out of ensuring the company's prosperity extends to its employees and their families, said President Chuck Smith.

"We pay out to all the employees — everyone is basically in the same boat when it comes to getting paid out on the profits," he said. "I like to see people making a just wage, that's for sure."

The most familial aspect of the industry is the effort of company leaders to wean a successor that will carry the firm's name into the future. At Green Bay-based Berners-Schober Associates Inc., The A List's oldest architect at 106 years old, this first happened in the mid-1900s when partner Ed Berners began leading the company in founder Henry Fuller's stead.

"You can have a successful first person, but if he doesn't make that transition, it's going to die," said Joseph Dettlaff, Berners-Schober principal and president.

"(Berners) worked until he was 90, and he was kind of workaholic. He was here about 16 hours a day."

Company values are a romantic, but important, lesson to pass between torchbearers, but the succession also hinges on the more practical matter of keeping the company's product consistent. At Current Electric, for example, Smith is trying to teach his partners and 35 employees the company's visual signature in lighting design. In the 1980s, when Current was young, Smith and his sister developed a system of lighting design that is unique to the firm.

"Without that, our customers will ask, 'What is this? This doesn't look like a Current Electric project,'" he said.

In many firms, family and management succession are the same thing. At The Bentley Company, founded by a Bentley and run by Bentleys ever since, Chief Executive Officer Tom Bentley is about a year into teaching his only son, Todd, how to run the business.

"He's in the process of grooming his son now," Stelter said, noting that Tom Bentley is likely to step down in another five or six years. "It's a lot to learn, a lot to get exposed to. So, to some extent, there's some concern that you are never really ready when it happens."