Caretti Inc.: Delivering Exceptional Quality Every Time

Caretti Inc. (Caretti) is synonymous with exceptional quality masonry. Caretti sets itself apart from the competition by emphasizing the importance of professionalism in every aspect of operations and by encouraging employees to continually pursue additional training and educational opportunities. Continual professional development is just part of Caretti’s competitive advantage, as a deeply ingrained hard-work ethic keeps the company always reaching for the next challenge. Whether crafting a single stone park bench or tackling a major historical rehabilitation, Caretti works closely with clients to mobilize resources efficiently and ensure projects aren’t just delivered on time and on budget, but are also delivered to the Caretti quality standard.

“We concentrate on providing a complete package to the client,” asserts Mike Mantua, vice president at Caretti. Caretti operates from a total of three offices with headquarters located in Camp Hill, Penn., and secondary outposts in Woodbine, Md., and Berwick, Penn. Commercial masonry contracting makes up the lion’s share of Caretti’s portfolio of projects. Additionally, the company also operates a specialty masonry restoration division where the team’s decades of experience can truly shine.

As a union-affiliated employer, Caretti has the ability to draw upon the local union halls to augment its staff as needed for any given project. The company provides the gamut of performance masonry installation, employing a team of professionals well-versed in structural masonry, architectural masonry, precast masonry, dimensional stone work, rubble stone work and ornamental cast stone. Even when a client requests something beyond Caretti’s immediate expertise, the company can reach out to the network of allied tradesmen to weigh in, guaranteeing all ancillary work will be up to the union’s and Caretti’s standards.

The Cornerstone of Quality

The company proudly self-performs as much of the work as possible on any given project, regardless of whether it is a new construction or restoration job. Even with 175 employees and 10 masonry restoration specialists, though, Caretti occasionally needs to look beyond the local union halls for support. In such cases, the company sends out the signal to a network of loyal, experienced and similarly results-oriented subcontractors to ensure the team will be able to keep pace.

“We’ve really made a push to assemble complete packages for contractors in the last four or five years, but sometimes we get requests for things that are more economical for us to sub[contract] out,” adds Mantua. Subcontracting various components helps the team stay on top of scheduling by keeping its most vital resources focused on the most pressing needs of a project at any given time. According to Mantua, the most regularly subcontracted components are caulking and the final wash down of finished and installed stone products. Even then, the items are only occasionally entrusted to outside help on an as-needed basis to keep costs under control.

Though a large majority of Caretti’s work is concentrated within Pennsylvania, Maryland and the greater Washington, D.C., area, the team will travel as far as New York for certain clients. Caretti’s loyalty has accumulated a faithful client following in both public and private sectors for its efforts to keep its work in-house. The company regularly works with some of the region’s most active general contracting operations for higher education, healthcare, religious and commercial retail clients, as well as a select group of cultural institutions and museums.

Leaving a Lasting Impression

“One of the largest jobs we ever had was the Milton Hershey School’s new Senior Hall,” adds Mantua. The original Senior Hall building boasts an 80-foot-tall clock tower looking over the town of Hershey, Pa., and Turner Construction tapped Caretti to oversee the complete replacement and replication of the building’s exterior wall. The project called for a complete renovation of the 150,000-square foot historic space, adding 170,000 square feet of additional space to accommodate increasing enrollment. Milton S. Hershey founded the school in 1909 with his wife, Catherine, to provide life-changing opportunities for children in need. The new Senior Hall complex has been fittingly renamed Catherine Hall.

Caretti reached out to its most skilled professionals for the Catherine Hall project, as crews would be working with granite, limestone and brick veneer materials as well as pavers, treads, risers and concrete masonry units. The company was charged with ensuring that all building foundations remained in original positions, using matching pier sizes and zero-tolerance in placement to preserve the building’s architectural character. Caretti took extensive field measurements of the original components down to the limestone caps perched atop every pier. The company contacted Glen-Gery to source over 1.2 million bricks from Belden Brick in Ohio, and Ottey and Hoppes came through with Indiana limestone cut by Bybee Stone Company, which produced pieces as large as 10,000 pounds.

Built to Last

More recently, Caretti partnered up with Gilbane Building Company to construct the Center for Communications and Information Technology at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Md. Construction began in fall 2012 to build a facility capable of housing the university’s most technology-intensive programs, as well as the school’s public radio station and cable television station. Caretti is mobilizing its skilled workforce to install the center’s signature brick and precast concrete facade that helps anchor the building’s contemporary design in the context of a more architecturally traditional campus.

The next few years should yield a wealth of opportunity for Caretti, especially because the company challenged its employees to become as lean and efficient as possible to maintain its competitive edge throughout the economic downturn. “It’s definitely a different environment now, but watching every penny isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” expands Mantua. “It just means that the best businesses with the best people will be the ones to survive. We take pride in the fact that we continue to get calls about larger jobs, because it means those clients have confidence that we can handle it.”

Mantua has seen signs of improvement in the local marketplace with more work coming up for consideration than in recent years. The company’s restoration team is already finding success through Caretti’s bundling strategies. As Caretti Inc. expands its client base, the company’s name will stand for quality craftsmanship in an ever-broadening array of market sectors.