This article originally appeared in The La Jolla Light
— BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:
Murfey Construction first opened with five employees in a small office in Pacific Beach in 2009. On Aug. 1, 2016, the company is scheduled to move its 26 employees to a recently-acquired office building at 2150 Hancock Street in Mission Hills.
“We wanted to look for something that would give us an opportunity, if we continue to grow, to add people to the team and not be constricted by our space,” said Jesse Lyons, business development manager.
He attributes the company’s growth to two catalysts: “The construction economy has skyrocketed in the last two to three years, and smart decisions made by the principals here, aligning us with larger-scale projects.”
With more than 25 projects completed in the past few years, Lyons said that, at any time, the company has a variety of projects in motion. “We are finishing up a 36-unit luxury apartment in Hillcrest, and we are finishing the planning and about to break ground on a 78-unit luxury apartment building in Point Loma,” he said. In total, Murphy Construction is managing the building of almost 200 units countywide, and a number of “from the ground up” custom homes, several in La Jolla.
“La Jolla is our bread and butter, the place where even in bad times, people are still building custom homes,” Lyons said.
To handle this volume of work, Murfey Construction has developed a team-based operating system. The company has groups of people who work together to ensure that everything goes smoothly when building or remodeling people’s homes.
“As of today, besides the principals, there are groups of project managers, project engineers, project coordinators, superintendents, and skilled tradesmen who work interchangeably on the project side. There is a dedicated accounting team to support the project efforts and manage company finances, and I handle the operations side of things, which includes marketing, business development, and IT,” Lyons said.
Technology also plays a role in the connectivity of this team. “We are,” Lyons explained, “100 percent cloud-based. This allows all of our employees the flexibility and capability to work from anywhere in the world, provided an Internet connection and a cell phone. More importantly, while we are not yet a global company, locally we have projects all over town, and technology allows people to move between them as need be.
“We are using technology in a way that no one else is, to really drive the decision-making and the management of construction, which at the end of the day, increases our ability to communicate between all the partners, the client, the architect … it allows us to track things more efficiently, and the bottom line is that it saves the client money and keeps the project on budget and on schedule.”
Their technology-savvy team also has well over 100 years of experience in the field, Lyons pointed out. “We have a large team of really knowledgeable construction professionals. We are not training people how to do this, we are hiring experienced professionals who have the know-how,” he said.
The company offers full-on contracting services in both residential and commercial areas. “We also do consulting and preconstruction work for folks with a project in mind, but who have problems working through all the steps. Another plus is the real estate side of the business, which is Veritas Urban Properties,” Lyons said.
“Quality. Honesty. Integrity,” is Murfey Construction’s motto. “We can show you a tangible list of processes and explain how we do each one of those things, and then if you look at the projects we’ve completed and their success, I think they speak for themselves.”
The company’s gross revenues have doubled on an annual basis for the last three years, Lyons said, and it’s on track to sustain that level of growth. To do so, he said, “We hope to continue to do larger and more complex projects, to offset some of San Diego’s housing crisis, as well as become the go-to experts for getting urban infill projects where we’ve already proven ourselves to be an industry leader.”
— Murfey Contruction is at 1571 La Playa Ave. until August 2016 when it will move to 2150 Hancock St.. Business hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday. (858) 459-1855, E-mail info@murfeyconstruction.com or visit murfeyconstruction.com