Theodore Roosevelt National Park: DLM Contracting, Bozeman, Montana
Brad Lewis is a co-owner of DLM Contracting in Bozeman, Montana. The seven-year-old company normally has 25 to 30 employees during the peak summer construction season. They had no work in 2009 until the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“We bid on 20 jobs last winter and got zero until the Recovery projects,” Lewis said.
DLM has two Recovery Act projects now. One of them is a $7.1 million road project in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. The company will start another project next week for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers along the Missouri River south of Bismarck, N.D.
Funding for the road project at Theodore Roosevelt National Park comes from the $170 million appropriated for the Federal Highway Administration to spend on roads in national parks.
Lewis said the Recovery Act “made the difference for the company this year” after the Montana housing market for new homes fell apart. “It just died last year,” Lewis said. “When housing prices started to fall, new housing starts went to zero.”
The companies that had been building houses began to bid on just about every other kind of construction project available. “Before all this happened we’d be one of maybe six bidders on a project,” Lewis said. “When this hit, suddenly we were one of 18 bidders” and companies were submitting low bids just to keep any kind of work going.
When DLM landed the road project in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Lewis put an ad for workers on the Internet. “I had applications from all over the world - Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, Canada.”
DLM brought some of their Montana workers to North Dakota but hired local people and brought in workers from Texas, Alaska, Washington state, Nevada and Ohio.
Lewis said it will take time for the housing market to stabilize which means those former home builders in Montana will either continue to bid on projects outside of the housing industry or go out of business. “We’re grateful for the work this year and are hopeful we can pick up more Recovery Act projects next year, too.”
Contact: Jeffrey Olson, National Park Service, (202) 208-6843
