Roger Hickel Contracting Inc.: ABM salutes the contractor of the year; formed seven years ago, this company now boasts revenues of $34.5 million.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa
• Position: Company Profile

Editor's Note: This year marks the first year Alaska Business Monthly is honoring the Contractor of the Year as part of its Building Alaska special section. Many contractors were considered for this honor, but Roger Hickel was selected based on his longevity working in the field, his success in the industry and on the quality of recent projects.

In 1995, when Roger Hickel started his own construction company, Roger Hickel Contracting Inc., he probably didn't foresee that in only seven years he would be named Alaska Business Monthly's Contractor of the Year. What is even more surprising, however, is that the people who have helped take his company to the top are the same people he's worked with for more than 25 years.

"For 20-plus years, I worked with the people who now make up our main management team when I was at Baugh Construction and Engineering," explained Hickel. "I was one of the first to leave when the owner decided to semi-retire, and I started my own company. As more of Baugh's personnel left, some of them came to work with me, and some of them went to other companies because I didn't have enough work for them right away. But as we continued to grow, we picked up those people, and now our main management team is back together again."

This management team, led by Hickel, has helped the contracting company make its own way in a competitive business; 2002 billings are estimated at $34.5 million and last year's billings equaled $36.5 million. The company's average for the previous five years was $15 million a year.

"As our bonding company says, it takes time to build the balance sheet," explained Hickel of the leap his company has made in the last two years. "For five years, we built the organization and the balance sheet, and now we're able to take on the larger commercial projects that we couldn't before. From now on, we hope to average billings between $25 million and $40 million a year.

"When we were doing $16 million three years ago, we were just as busy as when we did $36 million last year," he added. "The difference is that now we're doing a Lowe's or a Home Depot job for $13 million, whereas before we would need to do three or four $3 million jobs. So we're doing less jobs, but they're larger."

Some of the projects that the contracting firm are currently working on include the $9.5 million Safeway Store on Abbott Road and 88th Avenue in Anchorage, the $6.5 million Diamond Airport Parking and Storage Facility in Anchorage, the...