Bob Wilkinson describes to Construction Exec Grace Pacific’s diversification of product lines beyond highway paving and reconstruction.
Written by John O'Hanlon and Produced by John Bakke
Grace Pacific Corporation has been serving the state of Hawaii since 1920. As you travel Hawaii's roads, chances are Grace Pacific has been there before you – because its business is all to do with the infrastructure, from the aggregates and the asphalt that make up the many layers of the actual road surface to the paving, guardrails, signs, and traffic control.
The company was founded by three brothers and was a family concern until 1975 when it was bought by its key employees led by Dwayne Steele, the founder, builder, and creator of its current business philosophy.
Today it has a handful of private shareholders who own the majority of the stock, with some ten percent still in the hands of non-union employees, who also benefit from a generous profit sharing plan.
Few companies, even today, have such an entrenched policy of concern for their employees, the environment as a whole, and the community within which they operate. “We have a board of directors that’s very much oriented towards keeping our employees happy,” says Bob Wilkinson, who has been Grace Pacific’s CEO since it acquired Hawaiian Bitumuls & Paving Company, a smaller competitor on Oahu, in 2001. Since then, the company has expanded with acquisitions in paving on Kauai and Maui and on Oahu in its precast concrete business.
The latter manufactures a variety of precast concrete products including piles, girders, bridge and pier deck panels and structural components for buildings and parking structures. Non-core unprofitable concrete block and asphalt emulsion manufacturing operations were sold in the meantime…
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