Gary Bernardez has a lot on his plate.
Since early June, he’s been piloting the ship at AMECO, an equipment, construction and maintenance services company based in Greenville, of which Bernardez is the new CEO.
But even though it’s a familiar role — Bernardez was CEO of the company from 2001 to 2012 — everything else has changed.
A new future
Bernardez spent his years away from AMECO teaching, consulting and running a concrete pumping and placement company in Denver, but he’d long harbored a notion about what it would take to acquire AMECO from Fluor Corp.
Middle-market private equity firm One Equity Partners bought AMECO from Fluor Corporation for $73 million earlier this year. Soon after, they brought in Bernardez to chart a course forward for the company as an independent entity, all while dealing with the drastic upheaval wrought by the lingering effects of the pandemic.
No easy feat, he admits.
“It’s a very different feel for people who’ve been associated with a multi-billion-dollar company over the years, and then moving forward very quickly as a nimbler, independent company,” Bernardez said. “Am I concerned about how fast we can do that? Yes, because that’s such a significant change.”
There are many challenges. Once a global operation, AMECO now hopes to reconnect and build business within the highly-competitive U.S. and Canadian markets, Bernardez said.
“We’ve got to duke it out with our competitors,” he said. “It’s not as if they’re all clapping their hands and saying, ‘Hey, let’s get AMECO into the mix.'”
An old challenge
And for a company built on delivering a broad range of products and services, examining and reinforcing the supply chain is a near-Herculean task.
“The concern I have there is how quickly can we validate the AMECO business into the marketplace where we’re intersecting with these new customers,” he said. “How quickly does that take hold? How fast can we build the pipeline of work to support the growth we’re expected to deliver?”
Other challenges revolve around how well the company can integrate new employees into existing teams and maximize profitability by shedding operations that aren’t adding to the bottom line.
All would give Bernardez worry, he said, were it not for the overwhelming opportunity to capitalize on a chaotic, post-pandemic landscape where competitors are struggling to regain their footing.
“Benches aren’t strong, and if they had equipment divisions, some are just being let go,” he said. “It’s a dynamic where AMECO can step in and say, ‘Hey, we have the capability to do soup-to-nuts with you. We’ll pick up the slack, be your partner, providing cost-certainty and delivery certainty.’”
A clear goal
The goal is simple: replicate the relationship AMECO had with Fluor across a wide range of new clients with a wide range of different needs.
“That’s the challenge we’ve got to embrace, the fact that everybody doesn’t work that process like Fluor,” Bernardez said. “But with so many coming out of the ground without the bench strength and internal resources they may have had previously, and so many not even wanting to build it again, we can take that headache off their hands and minimize the risk. For us, that’s the very definition of ‘value add.’”
