President and CEO Carl Wesely of contracting firm Wesely Thomas Enterprises started his business 23 years ago, but he says it took his company 10 years of trial and error to discover its strengths. “You can’t be everything to everybody and it took us a while to learn that,” Wesely said. Wesely Thomas concentrates its contractor business on the healthcare, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The Thousand Oaks-based company oversees all levels of construction, from pre-construction to post-construction but it subcontracts the physical construction out to other companies. It has 28 full-time employees, recently adding two of them. Wesely says his company’s revenues are between $30 million and $45 million. Construction jobs it oversees range from $1 million to $10 million. Some of the clients that Wesely Thomas has serviced include Amgen and Pharmavite, Disney Imagineering, Teledyne Technologies and Northrop Grumman. The company has also done work with The Getty Foundation and Great Western Bank. Within the healthcare sector, the company has designed facilities for Valley Presbyterian, The Dialysis Center of Ventura, Mission Oaks and Los Robles Medical Center. Wesely went to work as a project planner for Kaiser Aluminum after graduating from college in 1972. That job was followed by a six-year stint at Panco before Wesely and two others started Wesely Thomas Enterprises. Weseley was recently honored by Cal State Channel Islands for his work. Question: Why did you choose the healthcare and biotech construction sectors for your focus? Answer: Until about 1999 we weren’t really focusing. In 1999 to 2000, we got to a point where our billings were high and our profits were low. We were spending a lot of time working very hard and not making any more money than we did five years earlier. We asked ourselves what was the work that had made us the most money, what is the work that we like to do and we have fun doing and what is the work people keep calling back and asking us to do. It came down to working in the operating facilities and highly controlled facilities. There was the pharmaceutical, the biotech, the healthcare and food service sectors, so that’s where we decided we would concentrate. First we concentrated on the pharmaceutical and then concentrated on healthcare. Now we’ve really hit both of them and we’re really going to expand out. We work on relationships and we don’t do any public work. We help with people doing projects from the beginning to the end. It is trial and error over time. Q: What do you consider to be your leadership and management style? A: I set goals, monitor those goals and help them accomplish those goals. I don’t direct the projects. It’s loose . . . My job is to keep the company focused on the goals. Every month I monitor every project and activity and measure it against some benchmark. I have a great group of people that are free to do what they want to achieve those goals, as long as it’s honest and ethical. Q: How has focusing on biotechnology, healthcare and pharmaceuticals impacted your business? A: We’ve been very lucky because we’re busy. In fact this year we added two people. We’ll be adding a few more this year. Hospitals are busy and expanding. Pharmaceutical vitamin sales have been good. We’re expanding work with companies like Pharmavite. Q: Explain how you work on these facilities. A: What we really concentrate on is operating facilities and keeping them up and running while we take and tear off the old and put in the new. We keep them up and running at the same time. We excel at manufacturing facilities, clean rooms and data rooms. All of that fits into that . . . Hospitals you have to gown up and make sure you don’t make any mess or anything. This is really what we concentrate on is that type of a project and these industries fall into that. We just completed a project where we added two manufacturing lines that had six there already . . . The trick is to add without contaminating or disrupting the process. They can’t shut down plants. That’s their profit. That’s where they make their living. Q: What types of challenges do you face dealing with construction in the healthcare industry? A: The biggest challenge is if it’s a remodel the challenge is doing it for the budget, which is always tight. Getting it completed on-time and getting it on-time because that’s important to their cash flow. Also, maintaining a working relationship with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and making sure we keep them informed and we don’t have delays become something that don’t meet the requirements and have to be changed. Q: Do you face any challenges with lead paints or the new glues being used for floors? A: One of our biggest problems is glue for the floors. For the vinyl tiles, glues are not as strong as they used to be because they can’t use certain types of materials in them. We find out the biggest problem is finding glues that will hold down the tiles over a concrete floor that has a moisture content in it. The old glues you could put it down and not worry, as long as the floor was dry. The new glues – now you have to keep testing that floor. If it isn’t a low-moisture content the newer glues will not hold. It has caused delays because it has caused moisture underneath. Then you have to get a variance, which is where we find more problems than in the paint. Q: What are some things you consider in a remodel such as the one you did at Valley Presbyterian Hospital? A: Before you get a thorough remodel you get in there to start and you make sure that you go up into the ceilings and look around and check everything as to what’s existing . . . Doing all of the upfront planning and research is important to making your schedule and having an excellent rapport with the inspectors is also important. We have to ask if is it alright if we have raw materials down this hallway or will we disturb anything? In a hospital sometimes they may have certain operations that they can’t have the noise or vibration. We try to find out what everybody’s requirements are and then plan and make sure they get taken care of. It all goes back to good planning and trying to think ahead. Q: What are some of the ways you plan ahead? A: We’ll send some people in upfront and thoroughly investigate what is existing. If we get up in the ceiling and thoroughly investigate the AC units and electrical units and try to find out where the major runs are and when can you access and when can’t you . . . We’ll go in and try to chase down the special gasses where they’re coming from. Along with the electrical and the heating and AC try to figure out how you get access and where the plumbing is because sometimes people get access and they’ll say ‘we’re changing the plumbing here’ . . . They don’t tell you there are all of those operating rooms down below and you can only get in between midnight and 6 A.M. They don’t tell you it’s a hard ceiling and there’s no way to get in there without shutting down that operating room. If you have an operating room below and can’t get in there you try to figure out where else can you come in. We have utilities that we can pull from and what are our other ways to do it. Most all of our projects we come in and we work with the architects and engineers during the design. Q: What are you doing with marketing? A: We’re concentrating on marketing for the first time in 23 years. We’ve always relied more on word of mouth. We’re into letting everyone know who we are and what we’re doing and why. I think now’s the time to spend the money out there. When the recession is going to be over there will be even more work out there. I don’t think it’s the time to pull your name back. Then all of a sudden when people pull your name back they will say, “Who are you?” That has happened up into the 1990s. People thought we went away. . . We’re really putting a lot of last year’s profits into the sales and marketing. I think it will pay off.
Healthy Building
