Doing It Right
Redwood Construction Management offers years of experience in a young company
For some construction management companies, the job calls for taking the plans they’re given and translating them into reality. For others, the job means poring over the plans and finding any potential problems long before the first hole is dug or the first sticks go up. Steve Alister, founder and CEO of Redwood Construction Management (Redwood), believes in the latter.
“What we bring to the table is a wealth of experience in estimating and project management,” Steve says. “We put together smart estimates. We plug the holes the design team may have in their drawings. We help save the client from change orders. We go into each job with our eyes wide open and the right budget number.”
Redwood is a new company, founded in January 2017, but is already making a splash in the crowded and competitive New York City market, providing services as an owner’s representative, construction manager as agent, construction manager at risk, general contractor and design-build turnkey contractor to its clients.
“General contractor and construction manager at risk are the biggest parts of our business,” Steve says. “When you function as an agent, you don’t have any skin in the game.”
Around the World
It was a long and winding route that brought Steve to New York City. Born in Wales, he attended university in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in quantity surveying. After graduating in 1986, he worked in South Africa until 1989, when he moved to neighboring Botswana and continued his construction career there until 1997. That’s when he came to the United States.
“After arriving in the U.S., I worked on projects in Florida, Philadelphia, north and south New Jersey, the five boroughs of New York City,” Steve says. He helped to build facilities in a variety of markets, including hospitality, self-storage, restaurant, medical, warehouse, office, pharmaceutical, education, retail and not-for-profit. “I worked for a company on Long Island doing construction management, then was director of construction for Safeguard Self Storage for six years,” he continues. “After that, I was part of a partnership until the recession hit. I then was offered [the chance] to start another company, again with partners, and I took that company from zero dollars to $8 million per year over a period of four years. Eventually, I decided I should start my own company without partners so that I could be a director of my own destiny.”
With 30 years of experience in construction and a network of contacts accumulated over that time, it didn’t take long for Steve to find work for his fledgling company. By April 2017, three months after going into business, he was in an office in Bohemia, New York, before expanding and relocating to his current office in Ronkonkoma. He has two employees in the field, and his workload has grown to the point that he needed to hire an office manager earlier this year.
Hanging a Shingle
“Last year, I won a contract for $5 million,” Steve says. “Unfortunately, the start of the project was delayed a year, so we’re only now about to start that job. It’s a building renovation with 27 apartments, four stories high. Being awarded that job, then having it delayed, meant I needed to go find something else. I did consulting work for different clients, site inspections, progress evaluations. This July we were awarded a $2.5 million contract to convert 18,000 square feet of warehouse into high-end office space.”
That project is particularly close to Steve’s heart, as the office space in Oceanside, New York, will be used to house the new corporate head office of the Sunrise Association, a charitable organization devoted to restoring the joys of childhood to children with cancer.
“This is such a good cause, and the work they do is so important,” Steve says. “I cut my prices quite a bit to assist them. It’s a fantastic organization and I’m very proud we were selected by them to help out with their new offices.”
Steve’s extensive professional experience includes many phases of construction across an impressive number of industries, working for both large and small contracting firms as well as real estate development companies. He is a critical asset to real estate development because of his knowledge of construction methods and construction costs. During estimating, procurement or site coordination meetings, Steve tries to bring balance and promote attention to detail as he continues to move the project forward.
“I did a job down in Babylon, New York, that was very close to tidal water,” Steve says. “The engineers called for an over-excavation and a subsequent import of crushed stone. It was a 15,000-square-foot building, and the plans would have required the underpinning of an adjoining building and an expensive dewatering and cart-away operation. I basically motivated a redesign with helical piles and saved the owners a quarter of a million dollars.”
The owner’s director of construction on that job is now with another company and has reconnected with Steve based on that prior experience. Steve is currently assisting with pre-development services on upcoming projects for the other company.
The Extra Mile
Something Steve read long ago (he can’t recall the source) has stuck with him over the years. “ ‘Quality is long remembered after the joy of a low price is forgotten,’ ” Steve says. “This quote drives our general contractor service, which starts with detailed communication with our clients to identify the correct scope of work. This enables us to get the most competitive and realistic price while the significant goal of quality is always in mind.”
He adds, “When we go into bidding, based on plans and specifications, I always put in a separate addendum to the bid covering everything the plans do not show.”
After three decades in the industry, Steve is proud to bring all that experience to bear for customers of Redwood. He started the company with the intention to make customer service and honesty hallmarks of his business, and believes he has done so.
“What I’m proudest of is the fact that we’re honest, sincere and trustworthy,” Steve says. “I don’t lie to people and have never cheated a subcontractor in my life. We try to impart the highest integrity with everything we do. People have businesses to run and budgets to keep, and we want to keep things as easy as possible for them. We give our clients all the information they need to make informed decisions.”