Frank Gavlik & Sons: Bridge construction company's specialty
Knowing the nuts and bolts of bridge building has long been a family tradition at Frank Gavlik & Sons Inc.
Frank Gavlik and his wife, Anne, started the Fallowfield Township-based business in their Bentleyville basement in 1958.
It specializes in bridge construction and handles road and drainage work.
Gavlic's son, Robert J. Gavlik, and grandson, Bob Gavlik, currently handle the company's operations.
Robert J. Gavlik is now the company president and Bob Gavlik is secretary and treasurer.
The youngest Gavlik said he was first exposed to the business' inner workings as a child.
"He always took me around on projects," he said of his father. "He pretty much started by digging foundations with a backhoe.
"You just get around the work and it kind of gets in your blood. I think I could say the same thing if my father had a restaurant and I took over the business. You have to really love what you do."
Bob Gavlik, 43, of Fredericktown, worked for the company and then spent six years as a patent attorney in Pittsburgh.
He ultimately decided in 1999 that the family business was his niche as one of the company founders, his uncle Vincent Gavlik, was on his way out.
"I loved it. I just love this more," Bob Gavlik said, comparing legal work to the family business. "My uncle was deciding the time was right for him to kind of wind down his career and the opportunity came for me to come back into the family business, so me and my father became partners."
In the early 1970s, Gavlik & Sons began exclusively working with PennDOT, which accounts for about 90 percent of the company's contracts.
Contracts have been steady for the last several years, Bob Gavlik said.
"The federal govern-ment, this is going back a half a dozen years, designated some money to Pennsylvania to go fix their bridges," he said. "That was over and above their general budget for highways and bridges. PennDOT did shift a lot of money to their bridges.
"Through the recession in the last few years, we were able to maintain our normal volume. We really didn't get hammered by the recession. Right now we're working down in Rogersville. We're putting in a 115-foot span bridge on state routes 21 and 18. It's an interesting project because we are actually running traffic on a temporary bridge."
Bob Gavlik said every project is unique and working for PennDOT provides a distinct set of challenges.
"It's a love-hate relationship with Penn-DOT," he said. "It is largely different than say those that do private development work. It's a different way to doing business. It's quirky, and it's quirky in the way that you adapt or you don't do their work.
"There are barriers to entry. Every two years we have to prove, through an audited financial statement, that we have the financial wherewithal. We're given a bidding capacity, a work capacity. (PennDOT assesses) how much work you can have with them that they feel you're competent, and not only that you're qualified financially but through experience classifications. I can pretty much bid any job, but to not be disqualified ... I have to be pre-qualified for that particular type of work. It's very rigorous."
The bidding process is the most unpredictable and stressful part of the job, Bob Gavlik said, adding that there have been times that he has won or lost a contract by a only a few thousand dollars.
"It's tough. We see a lot of competition from out of state, is what I've noticed in the last few years, as Ohio's, New York's and West Virginia's highway programs have really suffered," he said. "You never know what it's going to be. In December, we had a good day and we picked up four large projects in the area. Three of the four of them, we were around $40,000 bid less. The jobs were between $1.1 and $1.8 million. That's a good day."
Rapport never ensures that the contract is a lock, Bob Gavlik said.
"We still have to put the low dollar on the table," he said. "At the end of the day, when they open those electronic (bids), the low bidder will prevail. All the good relations we built with PennDOT over the years don't get you anything."
Bob Gavlik said his company works off of conceptual designs PennDOT provides, but no design is iron-clad.
"There are always changes in the projects ... but we have flexibility to really build a bridge that can be economical as well as easy to build," he said. "You always can make changes and suggestions are made.
"Every project is unique. Things do get cookie cutter at times, certain aspects of it. The hardest challenge really is scheduling. There are so many unknowns; nonstop problems with utilities and relocations. Now a new one is the state controls the acquisition of the right-of-ways."
Most of the work Gavlik & Sons does for PennDOT takes place in its District 12, which comprises Greene, Washington, Fayette and Westmoreland counties.
"We've been fortunate that really the lion's share of our work has been in the district," Bob Gavlik said.
A standard bridge project takes four to six months to complete.
Being able to deploy a work force quickly is an industry prerequisite.
"You get a call maybe on a Monday. You're bidding the job by Wednesday or Thursday and you're starting work the next Monday," Bob Gavlik said. "When Katrina hit several years back, more to the western part of Washington County and Greene County, roads were just washed away left and right and we were called out to repair the roads. That's usually what happens in an emergency situation."
Gavlik & Sons is currently on the tail end of its off-season.
"You beat your equipment up for nine months and then you fix it up for three months," Bob Gavlik said.
This year, construction season will be a busy one for the company, with several projects on the schedule.
And while Bob Gavlik appreciates the architecture he sees on the job, he is more focused on how to make what will replace it last longer.
"We're more function based," he said. "When I look at a bridge or my father looks at a bridge, it's not, 'Wow, that's a great-looking bridge.' We're more like, 'Wow, look how it works.' We're looking at things that maybe aren't on the aesthetic level as interesting, like how many hundreds of tons is it bearing from point A to point B.
"We're rebuilding a lot of bridges that have those old stone cut abutments that probably were put in during the Depression. Sometimes, because something had happened, we might be replacing bridges that may be only 30 or 40 years old."
Bob Gavlik said he plans to be a lifelong fixture at the company.
"When you see the ambulance and the black bag coming to take me away," he said of calling it quits. "Contractors, we don't retire. You can't retire. It's like, what do you do when you get up in the morning if you don't have work?"
Frank Gavlik & Sons Inc. is located at 1871 Grange Road in Fallowfield Township and can be reached at 724-239-2431.
