Business View Magazine | January 2021

66 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021 our bookkeeping and payroll and a lot of the administrative tasks. These were just not our core competencies. In the construction world, we’re very good at building precast buildings, we’re very good at erecting steel structures, but I’m not very good at tracking the intricacies of various state payroll laws – so to have someone else manage that side is key. In that regard, we are very lucky to have partnered with Clear Management. They’re great people; basically at this point we’ve maneuvered into a relationship with them where they basically provided an outsourced CFO for us, and they do all the data entry for our bookkeeping and handle all our payroll. The reality is, if I had to hire a CFO and the full bookkeeping staff, I would probably pay two to three times what I pay to Clear Management.” Another key factor for PPE’s growth is access to a skilled workforce and working together with Ironworkers Local 14. LaVé admits, “They have been a critical part of our success and very supportive of our efforts. From a moral standpoint, it makes me sleep very well at night to know that I’m hiring union labor; that everybody that comes out to me from their Hall is coming as a trained professional. And, in return, they’re getting a very handsome financial package. It makes me feel like we are taking care of our employees at an incredibly high level and, in turn, I believe they take care of us at a very high level.” 2020 has been a challenge, which most companies could claim without any sense of irony. For PPE this has mostly been true because of a slowdown of concrete production, and the ability to work on sites because of the effect COVID-19 has had on the workforce. As LaVé attests, “We’ve seen several projects that we’ve been working towards in the development phase get pushed back six to 12 months. At first it was the pandemic, and as that settled down there was the election turmoil, and I think a lot of the construction world was kind of waiting to see how the dust settled before they commit. It is