Although the COVID-19 pandemic kept many Rhode Islanders close to home for much of 2020, Pariseault Builders Inc. didn’t slow down.
With construction deemed an essential service by state officials, the Cranston-based company hammered away at a full slate of multimillion-dollar projects while businesses in other industries were forced to scramble to remain operational.
Pariseault completed a dining facility at Camp Yawgoog in Hopkinton, a renovation of the Hunter S. Marston Boathouse for Brown University, a renovation for Hope Health Hospice & Palliative Care’s inpatient facility in Providence and a medical building in East Greenwich for one of the state’s largest health care systems.
“It’s continued to uptick with projects and revenue,” said Pariseault spokesman Sean Lamontagne.
The family-owned business, which employs about 70, was named one of Providence Business News’ fastest-growing companies in 2020.
PANDEMIC RESILIENT
The Ocean State’s construction industry was “particularly resilient to the pandemic,” according to a May report by the Center for Global and Regional Economic Studies at Bryant University and the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council.
Now, as COVID-19 begins to recede, construction seems to be gaining momentum, according to many in the industry, with residential, commercial and roadway work in high demand.
Rich Coelho, owner of Right Built Homes in West Greenwich, kept a steady schedule throughout the pandemic. For him, adhering to COVID-19 safety requirements such as setting up sanitizing stations, keeping close track of workers’ whereabouts on job sites and creating separate schedules to facilitate social distancing, became a job within a job.
“We were still busy. We were working through it, but we had to track everything,” Coelho said. “As far as my production, I didn’t really slow down; it just took longer to complete the projects.”
Now, inquiries from people wanting new homes are coming in twice as fast as usual, and Coelho is booking into next year.
He attributes the spike to the state’s red-hot real estate market, which has reported homes selling for more than double the asking price.
“There’s definitely more demand, and I think that’s because of inventory. People are moving because of school systems and they can’t find a house,” he said, adding that young families with small children make up about half of his clients.
In the commercial sphere, demand for projects such as warehouses and distribution centers is fueling growth, despite a lagging need for new office and retail space.
Although the $284 million Tidewater Landing stadium project in Pawtucket had yet to break ground in August, initial plans calling for office space have been reworked to include multifamily housing instead. Fortuitous Partners, the project’s developer, announced the change last fall in a statement to the Pawtucket City Council.
The move highlights shifts in the industry, but it does not signal a slowdown, construction leaders say.
“The trend going forward is research and development, lab space, entertainment, distribution centers and warehouses, and large residential projects,” said Michael Sabitoni, business manager for the Rhode Island Laborers District Council and president of the Rhode Island Building & Construction Trades Council.
Demand for new office space may be at a virtual standstill, but that won’t last forever, Michael Giuttari, president of MG Commercial Real Estate Services Inc., predicts.
“The thought [was] that hotels and restaurants were hit the hardest [by the pandemic], but it was office space construction,” Giuttari said. “We’re not at normal right now. I definitely think it’s going to come back. People like to see each other, they like to communicate, they like to collaborate.”
INFRASTRUCTURE BOOST
Another potential jump-start for the industry is the promise of funding for infrastructure.
“I see extreme growth in the public sector,” Sabitoni said.
With about $400 million in state spending approved by Rhode Island voters in June, big projects are on the horizon, Sabitoni said.
Some are already underway, with funding that predates the pandemic. Phase three of the $650 million Narragansett Bay combined sewer overflow project in Pawtucket and Central Falls kicked off this year, along with the $74 million reconfiguration of the Claiborne Pell Bridge ramps in Newport.
Bond measures include more than $57 million to rebuild the University of Rhode Island Fine Arts Center and $65 million to build or rehabilitate affordable housing. Voters also approved $72 million for R.I. Department of Transportation projects. $60 million for new industrial parks and continued funding of pier reconstruction at the Port of Davisville in North Kingstown.
“Everybody’s returned to confidence, there’s a clear path forward,” said Bruce Iannuccillo, president of both Rhode Island Associated General Contractors and R.P. Iannuccillo & Sons in Providence.
He credits both the state and federal government for finding money to stabilize the industry.
For some in the construction industry, though, the possibility of funding falling short of pre-pandemic levels remains worrisome.
T. Miozzi Inc., a paving contractor in North Kingstown, has contracts with about 30 cities and towns in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The work, which company President Thomas Miozzi calls “our bread and butter,” is paid for by tax revenue.
Miozzi has an eye on municipal budgets that lost revenue from taxes on property and restaurant sales during the pandemic.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the full effects of the pandemic,” Miozzi said. “There is concern that our work may dry up due to lack of funding.”
Still, Miozzi’s schedule is full and includes multimillion-dollar projects, such as a $3.7 million box culvert and road rehabilitation in Warren for the R.I. Department of Transportation.
Home renovation projects, which hit a fever pitch as COVID-19 made living spaces the focal point of daily life, are also going strong.
“The industry is as busy as ever and continues to be busy,” said John Marcantonio, CEO of Rhode Island Builders Association, a trade group for residential builders. “We didn’t shut down during the pandemic, so we’re not really emerging from it. We’re just dealing with the changes.”
‘WAITER TURNED PAINTER’
One such change is a renewed urgency in the need for skilled tradespeople to take on increased volumes of work.
“The demand level for skilled contractors [for home renovations] was a bit overwhelming to the industry,” Marcantonio said.
Finding young workers to replace experienced ones as they retire has been a nagging problem in Rhode Island for years, he added, but when the demand for home renovations soared in 2020, the pandemic provided a solution of sorts to the shortage.
As many restaurants and hotels shed staff, some newly jobless hospitality workers turned to construction.
“Waiter turned painter; we’ve seen this happen. A lot of new people came into the construction trades,” Marcantonio said. “Whether they’ll stay [is anyone’s guess].”
He estimated that during the pandemic, the number of people who registered with the state as a contractor was double its normal volume.
“Usually about 70 to 80 contractors per month come in, and roughly the same number might retire, but during the pandemic it was up to 120 or 130 coming in per month,” Marcantonio said. “Now the numbers are leveling off.”
Building Futures, a pre-apprenticeship training program that partners with the R.I. Department of Labor and Training, is seeking to provide a long-term solution to the need for skilled labor.
The nonprofit trained students through the pandemic, although classes were cut by half to allow for social distancing. Now, Executive Director Andrew L. Cortes can’t wait to return to full class size.
“We try to target how many people we train [based] on the market demand,” Cortes said. “Now that the industry is really ramping back up and we have a reduced class size, we could place more than what we are training right now.”
The program aims to place a minimum of 30 graduates in jobs annually.
An apprenticeship-utilization program, which incentivizes companies to hire Building Futures graduates and first-year apprentices, is in place at most major work sites across the state, Cortes added. The program, created in 2007 by Building Futures to funnel young workers into the state’s construction industry, requires 15% of the work on projects over $5 million to be performed by apprentices.
Currently, Building Futures has apprenticeship-utilization agreements spread among $462 million in projects across the state, and is anticipating future agreements on projects totaling $1 billion, Cortes said.
“Times will be good for Rhode Islanders who are looking for new careers in construction,” he said.
According to the DLT, the construction industry now employs 21,500. That’s a 3.3% increase over the 18,200 construction jobs at the same time last year.
Although the numbers reflect a thriving industry, Marcantonio cautioned that quantity needs to be tempered by quality,.
“Training is by far the industry’s biggest issue,” he said.
APPRENTICESHIPS
To that end, a $4 million federal grant announced in June will fund Building Futures’ Apprenticeship FORWARD project, a partnership with the DLT.
Grant funds will also be used to create an incentive program for employers who hire Building Futures graduates.
In addition, the money “will provide technical assistance to register 625 new apprentices over the next four years,” Cortes said.
The grant will also support businesses looking to create new apprenticeship opportunities.
Training within companies is one way to respond to scant numbers of skilled workers, Lamontagne said.
“We are seeing a bit of a shortage in subcontractors,” he said.
Still, the trained labor shortage is not new, and most businesses are able to work around it, Iannuccillo said. “The work right now for infrastructure and school building projects is coming in at a good … pace,” he said. “
