Blackinton & Decker builds on name.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: Smallbiz

VINCE McDONALD WAS A 22-YEAR-OLD APPRENTICE CARPENTER BACK in 1969 when the construction firm's owner showed up at the job site one morning.

"I didn't know who he was or anything," says McDonald of the owner, Dan Porter. "I'm just working along and he walks up to me and says, 'Are you going to do this for the rest of your life?' And I looked at the man like, 'Who are you? Why are you asking me this? I'm enjoying what I'm doing.' And I said, I don't know.'"

Fifteen years later, after working his way through the ranks, from journeyman to foreman to superintendent and up the corporate ladder, McDonald bought the Company, Denver-based Blackinton & Decker, in 1984.

"I happened to be in the right spot and willing to work hard, and here we are," McDonald says. Today Blackinton & Decker is one of the largest African American-owned general contractors in the Rocky Mountain region, with 55 employees and annual revenues of $12 million to $45 million.

Steve Shepard joined the firm in 1987 as administrator of construction and, was later named vice president and co-owner of the company.

Although the company has been around since 1956, one of the breakthroughs for the firm under African-American ownership came in 1997 when it won the largest contract ever awarded to an SBA-designated "8a" company by the federal General Services Administration. The GSA contract called for Blackinton & Decker to build the National Water Quality Water Lab in Lakewood, a $22 million project. (The designation "8a" applies to firms that qualify through the SBA as small and socially or economically disadvantaged; Blackinton & Decker has since graduated from the program.)

"The 8a program gave us the opportunity, that edge that we needed. Kind of a springboard to get things up and running," McDonald says.

The company also has built or completed several Denver Public School buildings, including the first two DPS schools ever built from the ground up by an African-American contractor.

In November, McDonald and Shepard were honored by the Colorado district office of the Small Business Administration with a place on the SBA's newly formed Wall of Fame, recognizing prominent...