Pasadena construction contractor C.W. Driver Cos. spends its time building shiny new structures, but the company itself has achieved a pair of historical milestones: This year, it turns 100, and it claims to be “the oldest active licensed builder headquartered in Southern California.”

And unlike many other construction companies that seek a national or global reach on their own or through mergers, C.W. Driver has for its entire existence stayed almost exclusively focused on its own backyard − the Southern California market.

“We’ve watched over the years as our competitors have expanded nationwide only to shrink back when times turn rough,” said Chief Executive Dana Roberts. “But we have felt all along that the six-county area of Southern California is big enough and dense enough to keep us in business for a long, long time.”

That focus on Southern California has allowed C.W. Driver to leave its impact on the local landscape over the decades, including with such projects as the historic Warner Bros. Theatre in downtown’s Jewelry District, the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church, an extension to the original Southern California Gas Co. building in downtown’s Historic Core and the Jonathan Club’s Beach Club in Santa Monica.

These days, C.W. Driver has developed a specialty of buildings on academic campuses, from the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts at Cal State Northridge to the just-completed Student Services Center at Cal Poly Pomona and the science building now under construction at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Another specialty is the entertainment sector: C.W. Driver has done work on the Sony Pictures Studios Inc. lot in Culver City, the NBCUniversal’s lot and adjacent CityWalk in Universal City, and Netflix Inc.’s campus in West Hollywood.

Overall, the privately owned company reported $647 million in revenue last year and has roughly 350 employees in seven offices throughout the state (six in Southern California and a small office in San Jose). The company has 55 projects in preconstruction or under construction; about 80 percent of the work is on new construction, with the other 20 percent consisting mostly of remodeling and renovation work.

Independent streak

Given its size and the lucrative market it serves, C.W. Driver would appear to be an attractive takeover target. But Roberts said the company had rejected a couple offers from international companies over the last 30 years, saying he did not want to sell to an international firm. And, he said, there are no plans to put the company on the market anytime soon or to go on an acquisition spree; in fact, he said, the company plans to turn over ownership in coming years to roughly two dozen of the firm’s top executives.

Preferring to remain independent for so many decades is not unusual in the construction industry, according to Gary Tulacz, senior editor with Engineering News-Record in New York.

“Large construction contractors that have remained independent for many years is the rule rather than the exception,” Tulacz said. He noted that St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Cos. Inc., which had $3.7 billion in revenue in 2017 according to Forbes magazine, will be celebrating its 155th anniversary this year, while San Francisco-based Bechtel Group Inc., which had $25.9 billion in 2017 revenue, celebrated its 120th anniversary last year.

Early action

C.W. Driver got its start in 1919 when Clarence Wike Driver left his job as construction manager at another venerable Los Angeles firm, A.C. Martin Partners, to start his own firm. He had just finished working on the Million Dollar Theater in downtown’s Broadway district.

For the next half-century, the company stayed in the Driver family. Current chief executive Roberts’ father was a superintendent in the company for roughly 30 years, retiring in 1986. Roberts himself started working at the company as a teenager and used his earnings to help pay his way through college. He returned to the company full time in the mid-1970s and worked his way up the ranks. Roberts said he obtained an ownership stake in the company in 1981 and then took full ownership in 1987 when the Driver family relinquished its control.

Roberts, who is now 70, chose to keep the C.W. Driver name and gradually expanded the company regionally, opening offices in Orange County, San Diego and San Jose. In 2001, the company moved its headquarters to its current location in east Pasadena from Eagle Rock.

Roberts said one of the keys to the company’s growth has been its insistence that it get involved early in the project design process, instead of coming in when the design is complete to execute the projects.

“Our most prominent role is in preconstruction, when choices are being made about the overall design, building materials, budgets and deadlines,” he said. That way, he said, C.W. Driver can have a say in shaping the project, so it meshes better with the company’s strengths and capabilities, and makes it easier to communicate with the various subcontractors.

Roberts said C.W. Driver was one of the first general contractors to use this strategy, which has since become standard practice as the construction industry has trended toward the “design-build” model for project delivery.

In recent months, as steel prices have risen, this involvement up front has been even more crucial, allowing the contractor to suggest alternatives that use less steel instead of using a preset amount of steel and then having to put in change orders for cost overruns.

This approach is what prompted one of C.W. Driver’s customers to work with the company on an extended basis. Westwood-based AMA Project Management, which manages all phases of projects for its clients, has worked with C.W. Driver on roughly a dozen projects over the past two decades. AMA Project Management founder and Chief Executive Anthony Mason said he first worked with C.W. Driver on a project for Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda.

“What I liked about them is that they got involved so early on and took an interest in the entire project, not just looking for that quick turnaround profit,” Mason said. “They also communicated constantly with the entire project team, which is something that doesn’t always happen.”

With one project, Mason said, C.W. Driver had to deal with an architect who was constantly expanding the project and adding to the scope of work for the contractors. “Driver did everything they could to bring the project back in line, and ultimately, the project came in on budget,” he said.

Technology boost

Roberts said the project management side of the job has gotten a little easier with the introduction of new technologies, especially with the spread of three-dimensional computer modeling. “A lot of the work that used to take us days, painstakingly going through paper blueprints – such as mapping the location of every pipe – now takes just minutes. This has sped up construction tremendously.”

These days, Roberts said the biggest challenge is dealing with labor shortages and resulting project delays. He said C.W. Driver has long had partnerships with building trade unions and the unions representing specialty contractors, which has allowed the company to lock in commitments for many of the subcontract workers. But the greater impact has been in raising costs for the clients, which has resulted in some projects being sidelined, he said.