Equity in Energy: Blaze Contracting

The "Equity in Energy" event adopted its keynote address' title "Beyond Ordinary" as its theme. A panel discussion among four diverse subcontractor leaders was inspiring as well. The CEO of Trice Construction, the Presidents of APC Construction and EVS, and the Business Development Director of Blaze Contracting all brought unique perspectives on how they and similar companies nationwide can take on increasing roles in the energy transformation.
 

PUF's Steve Mitnick: Talk about the origin of Blaze Contracting.

Gayl Turk: That's the owner's name, spelled Blaise. Kerlin Blaise went to college at the University of Miami. He played with a championship team there.

He played for the NFL. He was a walk-on for the Detroit Lions. He won a starting position in year one. He was an offensive lineman.

During that period, every year something had to be fixed on his body. Mostly his knees. He had five operations in five years.

He started thinking about, "The NFL means not for long for me." That's the way he tells the story. He started his business while he was playing, during his off season.

His financial analyst set up a meet-and-greet at Comerica Park with different investors to help him with what he wanted to do after football. He happened to meet a gentleman from another major construction company. They were about the same age, hit it off, and became close.

That person was looking to leave where he was after seventeen years of progressing to the highest level. He wanted to start his own business.

His father said, "Why don't you two get together and start a business instead? Kerlin, you're a minority and can get a business going and take advantage of minority opportunities."

Kerlin always wanted to be his own boss and thought of construction as putting down sidewalks. That's how he started.

Kerlin played during the season while his partner Chris was trying to get work using his experience and contacts. During the first three years, he came across me representing some other client, often when Blaze thought they had a good chance of getting a contract with an owner, when he was the low bidder.

Several times he'd go in expecting a contract, but I won the contract for my client.

He watched me. He did his due diligence to find out who I was.

I met him but knew him as a football player. I was a consultant for a company that competed for the same kind of work he was doing but my client had a lot more experience.

When he found out I was available, I was planning to go back into the asphalt paving business. My dad and I owned a paving business after I left the military, and after I worked in corporate America for a short period of time many years ago.

Kerlin, Chris, and I worked out a business arrangement that continues to this day.

PUF: What does Blaze do now with the energy and utilities industry?

Gayl Turk: In the city of Detroit, Blaze performed the site work for Little Caesars Arena. The design had you walk in at the ground level and go down to get to the playing surface. It's built into a big hole. The project was in the downtown area, and we had to excavate and dispose of all the dirt out of the hole.

About a million tons of dirt had to be excavated. We had to reroute all the utilities that kept all the other businesses working. That's the water main, sanitary, and storm. And then backfill around the structure and build the site according to plans and specs.

We joint ventured with a competitor to bid the project, because of the city's requirements, the proposed accelerated schedule, and the city gave an equalization advantage for local businesses. Instead of competing against one another, we joined together to bring more value and resources in our proposal. It represented more value to the city and a better chance to meet the schedule.

Both of us already had a satisfied customer base, so our resources were allocated to contracts we had. Because of the delays due to local politics, the arena schedule was impacted making it difficult to get it finished by opening day.

We didn't get the go ahead until it was late and gave us a small window to get it done for opening day for the Pistons. Our joint venture was a major contract with big visibility. Blaze gained significant publicity and credibility due to our success.

Right now, we're working on the Gordie Howe International Bridge, point of entry on the American side. Been working on that for four years. That's about one hundred twenty million dollars for us now and still increasing. It's a design build project.

PUF: The conference is called Equity in Energy, and you were on a panel about diverse contractors. Why is this an important topic?

Gayl Turk: First, we have the capabilities to take advantage of future opportunities because of our success in the one lane we operate in. That area is mostly negotiated business development.

When you get into utilities and municipal work, that's somewhat different because of the bureaucratic processes involved. You're not dealing with an individual assigned to get the job done. Usually, it's a person who is just doing his job and going to do it the way it's written.

A lot of boilerplate language in the contracts and specifications are not conducive to getting work done in the field in the most productive and efficient way. You have to allow for that and learn how to work through that.

We have worked through it. We do some of that work, but we don't primarily focus on it.

PUF: You said on the panel you moved some high voltage transmission systems.

Gayl Turk: Yes. High voltage. The point of entry area for the bridge is a huge lay down area. They estimated the area involved to be at least fifty or sixty acres and would encompass realigning the exits off the freeway to take vehicle traffic right onto the bridge.

All that rework had to be designed. It was out for international bids. A joint venture of two international companies won the bid.

They won the bid to design, build the bridge on both points of entry for Canada and the United States, for a fixed number on a contract, and to operate over a period of twenty years. They have experience in that.

We had an interest in participating because we saw it was going to have a lot of our type of work involved. We started attending the outreach, like this event.

Until now, most of our work with Burns & McDonnell has involved the installation of high-voltage transmission lines, which is a nice job. It's high voltage electrical duct banks that are backfilled with concrete and they're underground.

They transmit high voltage electrical power from one location to another, anticipating the power needed for whatever's going to be built. The idea is to have all the major voltage that's needed to support a proposed project having already been installed in the ground for them to hook up to.

This is all underground. That's what we do. The underground piping, everything that's under the ground.

We also do the grading and the excavation for structural foundation work, which supports buildings and other structures. We do the digging, and the backfill. We install all the utilities that bring the water main, sanitary, and storm sewer, as well as electrical duct banks to the site by design.

'Equity in Energy' articles at fortnightly.com:

• Tremese Davis, Nicor Gas VP of Operations and Taiwan Brown, Entergy VP of Diversity and Workforce Strategies
• Cornell Johnson, Center for Energy Workforce Development Director of DEI
• Keith Porta, APC Construction President
• Gayl Turk, Blaze Contracting Director of Business Development
• Stephanie Hickman, Trice Construction CEO
• Andy Kim, EVS Engineering President