Native Sons, Ltd., of Plainville, isn’t looking for the easy way out. The minority-owned subcontractor, which does wide-ranging electrical and low-voltage work, is always seeking out bigger, more challenging projects.
“In the types of work that we pursue, the electrical work is a higher percentage of the total work load of a normal job,” said Michael Oles, general manager of Native Sons. “If normal is 15 to 16 percent, and you pursue jobs that have electrical in the 20- to 25 percent range, that makes us a very large portion of the success or failure of the job, instead of being one-eighth or one-quarter.”
For its performance, Native Sons, Ltd. has been named the Connecticut Small Business Administration’s subcontractor of the year.
Native Sons was formed in 1997 and currently employing 24 people. Its president is Frank Chapman, a member of the Mohegan Tribe of Indians. The firm does work in large-scale municipal, commercial and tribal construction projects on specialty office buildings, laboratories, hospitals and process control facilities such as waste water treatment, boiler and chiller plants.
The company’s other major focus is in the hospitality industry, including casinos and hotels. Doing work from Boston to Norfolk, Virginia and as far west as Buffalo, New York, Native Sons, which also has an office in Maryland, averages $14 million a year in revenue.
Oles said what sets Native Sons apart is its attention to detail.
“We try to understand very well what the customer really wants, as opposed to just what’s on the paper,” he said.
As electrical work follows many other segments of the construction industry in terms of the project schedule, Native Sons does its part not to be at the mercy of other contractors who may run behind.
“Our style is to push all those trades ahead of us so that we have plenty of time to get our work done,” Oles said. “If we’ve taken an active role in the schedule, we can focus more on the trouble spots and help the other trades get out of our way.”
Robert Gervasini, senior project manager for the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, said that is exactly what Native Sons has done with several projects it has completed at Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville and Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, the authority’s property in Wilkes-Barre, Penn.
“They’re very responsive,” Gervasini said. “They have high-quality trades people that work for them. Michael is very schedule-conscious — not only about his only schedule for the electrical work, but he’s also very conscious of the owner’s overall schedule.”
Gervasini said the electrical work in casinos is a major factor, as many of the games are electronic and there’s a wide array of lighting. Projects at Mohegan Sun are often fast-tracked, where incomplete design plans are sometimes used and many changes occur with the design over the course of the project. One of the sensitive areas in a casino environment is lighting, and some of the best plans don’t work in reality, Gervasini said.
“For changing things that aren’t working correctly, that’s when they become very valuable in terms of their background and their knowledge,” he said. “They’re very helpful in getting it right. There are no cookie cutter plans you can go to.”
Native Sons was nominated for the SBA award by The Haskell Company of Jacksonville, Fla., for its work as a team member on the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, RD&A and T&E Consolidation Project in Dahlgren, Virginia. The project called for a subcontractor that had detailed knowledge of an unusually wide variety of materials and installations. One such project involved the construction of a special chamber to lessen sound and electromagnetic energy.
Â