Top Louisiana Specialty Contractors
Revenue stabilizes as market begins to rebound

By Sam Barnes

Revenue woes continued but some stabilization in the market is evident in this year's Top 80 Specialty Contractors ranking. Declines were most prevalent among specialty contractors in the industrial sector.

Still, many contractors maintained or improved their rankings within this year's list.
Significant "movers" in the list include:

• EXCEL Group of Baton Rouge, from 10th to 4th
• FitzGerald Contractors of Shreveport, from 25th to 15th
• Intrepid Enterprises of Harvey, from 26th to 18th
• Westgate Inc. of Port Allen, from 27th to 20th
  

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In the breakout rankings, Bernhard Mechanical Contractors of Lafayette tops the mechanical contractors list, followed by EXCEL Group Inc. of Baton Rouge, Berg Inc. of Shreveport, FitzGerald Contractors Inc. of Shreveport and Gallo Mechanical Contractors Inc. of New Orleans.

The electrical contractors list is lead by Red Simpson of Alexandria, followed by The Newtron Group Inc. of Baton Rouge, MMR Group of Baton Rouge, Industrial Specialty Contractors LLC of Baton Rouge and Plant Performance Services LLC - P2S Seco of Metairie.

Other breakout rankings in the pages that follow target roofing, insulation and painting, all of which had increases in respondents from the previous year.

The "creation" of the rankings. Louisiana Contractor defined specialty contractors in the broadest sense to include companies from all market sectors.

During the formation of the list, Louisiana Contractor's staff contacted the various local chapters of both the National Electrical Contractors Association and the Mechanical Contractors Association, along with the major construction associations in the state.

Each of these chapters was asked to develop a list of the largest specialty contractors in their area or on their membership rosters. Louisiana Contractor staff also researched previous large projects bid within the last three years to add to the list, and consulted with known large electrical and mechanical contractors for their assistance.

After the list was developed, it was then faxed to these same organizations for review in hopes of pinpointing any companies that may have been inadvertently omitted.

This year, we had a decided advantage since we already had the foundation list from which to work, although we faxed surveys to our entire database of electrical and mechanical contractors to create lists for both mechanical and electrical contractors.

For the purpose of ranking the contractors, we verified the following:

• Revenue for calendar year 2003
• Average number of employees (office and field personnel combined)
• Name and title of highest ranking officer
• Year company founded
• Current address of company