Executive Summary

With projects as diverse as downtown’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and Century City’s Constellation Place still in the build-out phase, local commercial and industrial contractors continued to experience a boom over the last year.

Los Angeles County billings for the largest local contractors in 2001 totaled more than $2.7 billion, a 12 percent increase over the previous year and a 17 percent jump over 1999. The three largest contractors on last year’s list Tutor-Saliba Corp., Turner Construction Co. and Swinerton Builders repeated their rankings last year, having worked on the Alameda Corridor, Arclight Cinemas and Howard Hughes Center, respectively.

Despite continued demand stemming from legislation requiring seismic upgrades for heath care facilities, next year’s billings could plateau. With many private projects approaching completion, some falloff is to be expected said Stephen Smith, vice president and general manager at Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co.

Danny King

The Pacesetter

Tutor-Saliba Corp.

Despite a 22 percent drop-off in local 2001 revenues from the year before, Tutor-Saliba Corp. topped the list of commercial and industrial contractors in Los Angeles County for the fifth straight year.

Tutor-Saliba reported $314 million in billable countywide work in 2001, besting No. 2 Turner Construction Co. by more than $46 million. Local billings represented about 28 percent of total revenues for the Sylmar-based company, which billed more than $1.1 billion last year.

Last year’s local revenues represented the first year-to-year local billing drop-off since 1997, but the decline was not surprising to Ronald Tutor, the firm’s president.

“In essence, the construction industry in 2001 and 2002 is quietly dropping off,” said Tutor. “We’re no different.”

Tutor-Saliba’s largest project was its $771 million contract for the Alameda Corridor. The company completed its work on a 10-mile rail trench in time for the opening of the 20-mile port-to-downtown project in April.

Other projects still in process are the $400 million UCLA Medical Center in Westwood and the $130 Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. The company is also doing $51 million of work on a facility at the port of Los Angeles for Maersk Pacific Limited.

Danny King