Jay Dacey
Title: President, Integrated Builders
Age: 57
Industry Experience: 35 years
Integrated Builders keeps busy in the construction business by sticking to what it does best, co-founder Jay Dacey says. The Rockland-based project manager shies away from residential projects and work in Boston, but has a steady pipeline of work doing commercial fit-outs and ground-up new construction in the suburbs. The company’s projects range from conversions of industrial space to offices and flex space to construction of daycare centers, retail plazas and warehouses throughout eastern Massachusetts. Integrated Builders also has found a niche working with car dealerships on recent projects such as construction of Greenfield Toyota and Ford and renovation of Haddad Toyota in Pittsfield.
Q: What was your first job in the industry?
A: I was a laborer in Local 22 pouring concrete over at the Westin Hotel in Copley Square. I’d always done a little bit of home framing, but after a couple of years in the union pouring concrete outside on a day like today, I said, “I didn’t go to college just to do this.” I worked on management consulting and then went to The Flatley Co. in Braintree. I was the vice president of property management.
Q: How has Integrated Builders’ business model evolved since the early 1990s?
A: Our slogan is “from a client’s point of view.” That hasn’t changed. In fact, I think you have to be more customer-focused now than ever. Companies think they’re in the construction business, but they’re really in the service business. We’ve always felt that way and operated that way.
There’s a lot more third-party asset management. There was more developed-owned product in the late 1980s, like a Flatley. Now it’s all publicly-traded REITs, a lot more out-of-town ownership. The Europeans are buying stuff, the Canadians are buying a lot of product. It’s all managed by third-party owners.
Q: Does that make it harder to compete for jobs?
A: No, we’re selling to owners’ reps and big property management firms like CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield and Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. But there’s still good, local developers. You’ve got to be able to manage your way through that and know what people want. You just have to rely on your history.
Q: How did Integrated Builders pick up the slack during the recession?
A: We had a good core of clients and we just did smaller projects for them. I’ve got almost 30 people in my office. We might have gone down to 22, but I kept all my good superintendents because they’re very difficult to find. And I kept my best project managers.
Q: Are you seeing more demand for conversions of industrial properties?
A: We just a year ago finished our last piece of a former Digital plant in Salem, New Hampshire with 600,000 square feet of manufacturing that is fully leased, mostly office space. That’s what we do a lot of: we’ve done four former Raytheon plants. Those became office space primarily.
Q: How tight is the labor market right now and what positions are you having the most trouble filling?
A: We’ve always made it a practice that we use three or four of the same subcontractors for every trade. We’re a $40 million to $50 million company. If you’re $150 million and above and you need a lot more labor, so those are the guys that are finding it more difficult. Most of our work is construction management and our fiduciary responsibility is to get three or four bids per trade. It’s certainly more difficult, but we can still do it.
Q: What’s the fastest-growing piece of the business?
A: We’re doing more ground-up projects, and for a market niche, we’re doing a lot of car dealerships right now. I try to negotiate most of our work. If data centers or biotech is hot, we don’t necessarily chase the hot market. We’ll get on a team early with an architect and an owner and ourselves and a design team.
Q: What’s the biggest way that technology is changing the construction process?
A: A lot of the technology is aimed at the superintendents. There’s (building information modeling) certainly, which is more on the design end, but the technology that’s available is getting better. You can take a photo and make a (request for information) out of it and send it to the architect. Some of that is around, but it’s being more embraced. I could give a superintendent a laptop 15 years ago and he’d use it as a doorstop. A lot of technology still falls back on qualified superintendents. We’ll be 25 years in business next April and we’ve got four guys who could build anything who have been here for 15 years.
Dacey’s Top Five Vacation Spots:
- Palm Springs, California
- Italy
- New Zealand
- North Conway, New Hampshire
- Naples, Florida
