Specialty Construction Inc.

California’s Central Coast is one of the state’s best-kept secrets. Tourists regularly flock to Los Angeles and San Francisco, but not as many discover the beauty, warmth and culture that lies in the communities between those world-famous cities. Specialty Construction Inc. (SCI), a full-service construction firm in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is doing its part to help reinforce the region’s continuous growth through providing superior construction services to corporations, private individuals, partnerships, joint ventures, government agencies and public utilities. Operating with a continued commitment to quality, safety and integrity, SCI promotes a personal and professional culture that has a positive impact on clients, staff and the public.

Rudy Bachmann, SCI’s president, outlines the company’s history in the industry as follows: “I founded the company with my wife, Melissa Bachmann, in 1990. We were originally called Bachmann Enterprises Inc. and we focused on telecommunications projects for major and minor wireless carriers and some general construction contracting.” SCI’s telecommunications division has built a large number of cell phone towers for high-profile clients such as Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless.

Growing Roster of Loyal Clients

The company’s focus on hard work, fulfilling promises and completing projects on time rapidly grew the fledging company’s client roster. The company endured the market demands and the Bachmann’s continued strong commitment to customer satisfaction helped to secure SCI a major position in today’s construction markets. In 1996, SCI was incorporated in its current inception, and the company has since applied its outstanding abilities to construction projects including commercial, industrial, institutional, medical, civil engineering, facilities and pipelines.

Adding to the roster of telecommunications and building construction, SCI established the civil engineering division in 2001 to handle the infrastructure that the region’s growing population needed and the company has been flourishing ever since. By 2004 SCI had ownership of a large and diverse fleet of heavy equipment supporting the successful delivery of major civil engineering construction projects including underground sewer, water main, water and wastewater treatment facilities, and environmental remediation projects.

The company’s 85 employees across its three divisions work on a wide variety of projects in the Central California coastal region from Los Angeles to San Jose. SCI’s team of professionals has recently been building a 100,000-square foot manufacturing facility at the Paso Robles Airport with a 30,000-square foot clean room, a 15,000-square foot veterinary clinic, a corporate hangar for a private jet services company at the San Luis Obispo airport, and has been providing pre-construction services for a wide variety of projects across many industries.

“One of the things that I’m most proud of is the dedication and knowledge that our employees have,” notes Bachmann proudly. “They have worked on a large variety of projects and their skills are really unmatched by any of my competitors.”

Projects Sustain Company During Slowdown

SCI’s civil engineering crew has remained active throughout the economic downturn as well. That division has recently completed a single-span bridge near Ventura, the construction and installation of a reservoir system for the town of Porterville that contains nearly 2 million gallons of water, the installation of 23 miles of water line for the State of California, and installation of over five miles of deep sewer mainline for the County of Ventura.

One of the many common attributes found at successful companies in the construction industry is a strong adherence to safety, and it’s no different at SCI. The company has a very strong safety culture that has resulted in several years of no loss-time accidents and a very low EMR. In addition, SCI has been involved with Cal OSHA Consultation for many years and has achieved Golden Gate recognition on over 20 projects.

One way that SCI has been able to control the quality of its projects and maintain its impressive safety record has been by self-performing a number of the trades needed for a project. The company self-performs all aspects of earthwork, site utilities, wet pipeline, carpentry, and structural and site concrete. The self-performed work is dependent on type of project, resource, crew availability and economic sensibility related to specific tasks. Projects that typically utilize self-performing resources include civil projects, public works projects, maintenance and emergency work. The company has a very strong working relationship with the subcontractor community, which is a foundation to delivering the larger commercial projects.

Over the past two decades SCI has applied customer care and hard work to the general building sectors for both public and private clients. With the company’s large number of high-profile technically challenging projects and its impressive safety record, Specialty Construction Inc. has held to its initial vision to provide project owners comprehensive management of commercial, civil and telecommunications projects along California’s Central Coast.