During the past four years, Dimeo Construction Co. has boosted its efforts to train employees beyond the basics in construction, safety and management of projects.
“Our company has really gone from a point where we try to train on a couple points each year … to helping [employees] develop their careers,” said Brad Dimeo, third-generation president of the 250-employee company. “We’re trying to build a foundation for people to really grow their careers from beginning to end.”
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The training program’s topics range from teaching a rudimentary understanding of how to construct a building effectively in the field to business-writing classes aimed to improve the way employees communicate.
Dimeo has seen improvement in the quality of his employees’ work as a result, and in fact attributes much of the 77-year-old company’s success to the training program.
With $421.8 million in annual revenue, Engineering News Record last month ranked Dimeo Construction 135th out of the 400 largest contractors in the United States.
“We’ve had a strong run,” Dimeo said. “We’re doing a nice mix of projects.”
As the Providence-based company nears completion of 450,000 square feet of additions and renovations at Twin River and a vertical expansion at South County Hospital, it is also working on a high-profile, 550,000-square-foot expansion and renovation of the 1.1-million-square- foot Natick Mall in Natick, Mass., which is the company’s largest project to date.
Its pipeline for new work is well in hand as well. Dimeo Construction has broken ground on the new Ocean House hotel and residential suites in Watch Hill, a high-end replication of the original hotel that is expected to be complete in spring 2010.
And, last month, Dimeo Construction was hired as the construction manager for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island’s new 325,000-square-foot, 13-story corporate office building on Exchange Street near Waterplace Park downtown.
Dimeo said the amount of expansion he has seen take place from the late 1990s to today is remarkable.
“Clients continue to allow us to take on new and challenging projects as we move forward,” he said.
Dimeo became active in the family business in the 1980s, when his father was running the company that was started by Dimeo’s grandfather, who immigrated from Venafro, Italy, in the early 1900s. Dimeo’s grandfather was a mason before becoming a general contractor in 1930.
The company has evolved since then. But, Dimeo said, it continues to place an emphasis on performance, meeting schedules, meeting budgets and delivering the quality that clients expect and want.
The company’s history is also part of its success. Long-term relationships with property owners, architects, engineers, subcontractors and vendors help differentiate it from competitors, Dimeo said, as does the company’s participation in a national peer group comprised of eight firms that meet annually to discuss best practices, from pre-construction to safety practices, and how to implement them.
“I am very fortunate,” he said. “My dad … gave me the opportunity to really dig in and understand the business, to be at his hip for a number of years and, for the last 10 to 15 years, allowed me to take a few steps to grow and expand the company.”
Dimeo said he foresees opportunities in the college/university, hospital, corporate office and retail realms of construction.
The company also recently relocated its Massachusetts-based office to downtown Boston in order to be closer to clients. Dimeo has had a presence in Massachusetts and Connecticut for 30-plus years.
“[Boston] is not a new territory for us, but certainly a focus on our part to take on more assignments in the area,” Dimeo said. •
