46 Business View - January 2015
roster during the most difficult days of the Great Re-
cession. Those were obviously trying times, according
to Troy Melnick, Carrick’s director of operations since
2002, but the efficiency lessons learned by necessity
have carried forward to current success. “We decided
to stay lean and mean and evolve with the times when
things got tight,” Melnick said. “We kept a core group
of people here and slowly but surely added on when
needed.
An additional office in Charlotte, N.C. has operated
alongside the Florida headquarters for the last 15
years, which has led to a primary focus on clients in
the Southeast region of the United States. But work
is done far beyond those boundaries, Watts said, as
evidenced by projects done in such far-flung areas as
California, Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin and New Mexico.
“We don’t stay only in one area,” she said. “We go
where the work is. We opened a third office in Rich-
mond, Va. last year and brought on some people as a
result, but we’re still in the habit of keeping it tight and
manageable for each employee.”
Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint are significant and
frequent customers, though the need for diversifica-
tion into other industries was another tough lesson
learned during the global downturn years.
“The most typical Carrick client is involved in telecom-
munications, however over the years we learned that
we needed to branch back out into the commercial
and government arenas and diversify our customer
base and that has been key to our continual work and
success,” Watts said.
The ability to attract that work now is a residue of the
reputation built since 1992. In fact, the longevity of
both the company as a whole and the majority of the
employees within it – most have been affiliated for
more than 10 years – are frequent selling points to
CONSTRUCTION
