With over 600 employees and $1.2 billion in revenue in 2022, Samet Corp. is the largest general contractor in the North Carolina by revenue, according to the 2022 ENR 400.
Founded in 1961, the Greensboro-based firm has six offices in the Southeast, largely in the Carolinas and Georgia. The company delivers multifamily, education, healthcare, technology and high-rise projects throughout the region.
Here, Samet CFO Doug Beane talks with Construction Dive about the economic health of the region, booming project areas and what he predicts for 2024.
The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CONSTRUCTION DIVE: What sectors are you seeing perform well in your region right now?
Doug Beane: Multifamily remains in high demand because of the people continuing to move to the Southeast. We are also seeing public work in high demand, although slowed a little bit by interest rates right now. We have seen interest from police and fire stations, but also educational buildings like schools.
We anticipate both institutional and multifamily to pick up as the interest rates change.
And additionally in the life sciences area we have seen a strong interest into the Raleigh/Durham region. We have not seen as much of a spike in data centers yet, but there is discussion about more projects moving in this direction. We anticipate they will most likely be in the Hickory, North Carolina, area where the last Google center was built.
Doug Beane
Permission granted by Samet Corp.
How is the labor market in your region? What are some of the challenges to recruiting?
We are getting more opportunities on the construction management side, as other builders have had to slow down. So, as a result, we have been seeing opportunities for very talented people.
On the skilled laborer side, it still seems to be in very high demand. Specifically, we are still having challenges with electrical and plumbing subs as those areas are having trouble getting skilled labor.
What are the biggest pain points for your projects right now?
We are still seeing very long lead times with electrical and HVAC. More recently though we have seen a slowdown in availability of Sheetrock. To help combat this issue, Samet is buying equipment ahead of time, even to the point of buying two spare HVAC units that are stored in warehouses. We are also buying Sheetrock directly as much as we can to help out the subs that are having trouble getting it.
What do you foresee for the remainder of 2024 and beyond?
I think we are going to see some slowdown in the third and fourth quarter because of higher interest rates impacting developers. Once the interest rates lower it will take some time for those projects to get back in line and get back to the market.
We are starting to hear from multifamily projects a lot now that if interest rates cut in the next quarter, they will want to be the first to market in 2025.