Phylway Construction philosophy pays dividends

She wanted to do business differently. She wanted it to be run her way – Phyllis’ way. Her way has been successful.

Phyllis Adams, who was working in dispatch and equipment management for her father’s contracting company, decided in 1992 to branch away from the family tree and create Phylway Construction. The lack of on-hand capital failed to serve as a deterrent.

Nineteen years after Adams started Phylway, the construction company is working on four levee projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Greater New Orleans area. Its only initial assets – $2,000 and a dump truck – are but a fractioned percentage of the company’s latest contract, a $13.9 million job to raise the West Bank levees.

The Corps of Engineers announced late last month Phylway was the low bidder for the V-line levee project. The newest job, estimated to include at least 35,000 truckloads of dirt, will complement three other corps-ordered jobs, worth more than $70 million collectively.

Auburn Wessman, a 38-year-old quality control director and project manager for Phylway, said the Thibodaux-based company was hopeful it would secure the job.

“It keeps our people employed,” Wessman said. “We had been looking for a good dirt job here lately to move into because we’ve had some other corps jobs that were in completion stages, so we were looking for another good job to move those resources to, so it fits very nicely.”

Wessman said the company keeps a core employment of about 100 people throughout the year, with peak employment as high as 150 people in 2010. But the recent breakthrough in government-ordered work won’t lead to a sharp increase in employment.

“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves too much,” he said. “It’s easy to hire somebody, but it’s certainly more difficult to fire somebody or let them go or lay them off.

“We are going to continue to grow employee-wise, but at a controlled place. To get in wild swings the way the construction industry is difficult to do.”

The small staff has to be versatile to keep up with its competitors, Wessman said. “In pinches, everybody is cross-trained for quality control and safety amongst other roles so they can fulfill those positions when necessary when there are vacancies in the field or vacations, people are sick, what-have-you. For a small company, to be efficient, you have to be able to wear numerous hats, but everybody here does it and does it gladly. I like the work atmosphere for sure. You can’t beat it.”

Wessman lauded the state-run Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which helps keep small companies owned by a minority or woman competitive in the competitive business world. Phylway was certified by the state Department of Transportation and Development in 2004.

“[The company has] been a great model, and an exemplary model of the DBE program and she’s been very successful,” Wessman said. “She has a good management style, a great philosophy.”

Adams started the company with cleanup work after Hurricane Andrew, building a fleet of trucks and hiring third-party drivers. After the cleanup work was finished, Phylway went into utility work before the economy turned and out-of-state contractors made the business even more competitive.

“What we’ve done, she had the foresight to see the corps work coming and the downturn in the utility side and we made adjustments in training our employees, our crews, to start doing corps work,” Wessman said. “Then the corps works started coming. It was a very shrewd move.

“About a year and a half ago, I believe we got our first bid [on New Orleans levee work]. We recognized that the work was finally starting to flow with the corps, which was great. We could start seeing the start of what we had been preparing for. It was certainly nice because the corps had been promising for some time, ‘The work’s coming, the work’s coming,’ and finally, it came.”

Phylway doesn’t have the budget of many of the contracting giants, so they are often fighting to beat the low-price bid or provide a better package to secure the contracts. Wessman said they are always receptive to being brought on as a sub-contractor if they do not get the prime job.

The company specializes in below-the-surface work, hauling and processing the dirt. Its area of operation stretches from Lafayette to Hammond and south, Wessman said.

In addition to the foresight of transitioning and preparing for the Corps of Engineers’ projects, Wessman credits Adams with maintaining an exemplary work environment.

“She knows all her employees by name and face, and it is a very personal, hands-on management style that she has,” he said. “I would say that anybody that stays here employed for any period of time, what I like to think, is she doesn’t employ ordinary employees. I think she employs extraordinary employees.

“Quality every step of the way is one of her mantras,” Wessman said. “Phylway’s way is quality every step of the way. That’s one thing that all her employees, that she drills into us, is that quality is number one. We definitely always want to satisfy the client the best we can.”