Business View Magazine | August 2020

28 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2020 Some recent company projects include: the White Furniture Storm Drain, Durham Loop, and Rooms to Go. White Furniture was a large storm drain project located in downtown Mebane, NC, and paid for by the city. The White Furniture Company, which was founded in 1881, had been converted to apartments, and the existing storm drain system was enlarged and re-directed. Durham Loop was a $10 million, major system upgrade in Uptown Durham, NC. Many old, undersized water and sewer lines were replaced with new larger ductile iron pipe. New services were connected to the office buildings, and new fire hydrants and fire lines replaced the old, smaller diameter pipes. “Rooms to Go was actually for the town of Dunn,” says Patrick. “We put in some above ground water storage for fire suppression, a fire suppression pump, and ran the water mains to them. That was the agreement they had with the town to get that distribution center there, so that was a public bid, as well.” Like many companies in the construction trade, a challenge for J.F. Wilkerson is in finding skilled labor. Patrick explains: “If they’re skilled labor in this business, they’re working. The only way we’re going to find labor is either advertise or word-of-mouth, sometimes. We’ve even gone to temp hiring agencies, especially for entry level. It’s hard to do when it comes to the skilled positions of foreman and certain kinds of project managers – things of that nature. It’s challenging; we could be a lot bigger than we are, but we’re limited to the skilled labor portion. I cannot expand without some of those key positions and there’s not the personnel out there unless I’m willing to go and rob from competitors and that’s not a good practice. Everybody knows everybody; you start doing that and it can turn into a price war – it goes bad in a hurry.” Of course, if someone should want to work at J.F. Wilkerson they’d be plying their trade in a safe and secure environment – the shop has accumulated hundreds of thousands of