From left to right: Paul Halayko of Newburgh Brewing Co. standing with Chris Carfora and Joe Flynn of Commercial Industrial Construction Corp. (CICC). Halayko affirms that CICC is “the best general contractor you’ll ever work with.”

The Blu Pointe restaurant, located along the Hudson River, exemplifies Commercial Industrial Construction Corp.’s ability to meet client specifications.

Commercial Industrial Construction Corp. (CICC) doesn’t advertise because it doesn’t need to. The Newburgh, New York-based company prospers with repeat and referral business—almost 80 percent of its customers.

“Not only do the majority of our clients come back to us,” says Chris Carfora, co-owner of CICC, “but now we are working with the children of some of our clients. Our reputation for treating clients like members of our family has become multigenerational.”

CICC has been taking care of clients in the Hudson Valley since 1986. The general contractor also offers pre-construction planning, construction management, design-build services and pre-engineered structures to clients in the education, hospitality, health care, commercial and residential markets.

Carfora and co-owner Joe Flynn have built their company by getting jobs done on time and on budget. “That’s our focus—getting the job done right,” Carfora says. “And doing those things has some great by products, like growing relationships and becoming like family with clients. But that comes with time.”

Doing good work over multiple generations is a trend at CICC. Carfora got his start in construction as a teenager working for his father.

“My dad was a real hands-on guy,” Carfora says. “He was a pickup truck contractor. He never built his business larger than his truck. But he did it on purpose because he didn’t think you needed fancy infrastructure to get the job done. And he cared about getting the job done right.”

The Handshake

After some years of working with his father and other relatives in construction, Carfora knew that he wanted to go out on his own. His father gave him advice that would change his future: Never sign a contract.

“You want to work for people who say, ‘Start a job with a handshake,’ ” Carfora says his father told him.

His logic, Carfora explains, was that a legal document implies potential problems. “He never signed a contract because a contract, to him, was an assumption that something would go wrong,” he says. And Carfora’s dad never did.

Instead, Carfora’s dad told him to do the best possible work, to plan ahead to identify potential problems and then avoid them, and to be honest when things do go wrong. “To this day, even on our larger projects, we regularly don’t sign contracts with our clients. We take people at their word,” Carfora says. “Just like in my dad’s day, someone’s word still means something.”

Poised for Growth

Flynn joined CICC in the early 1990s. “From the beginning, I knew something was different with Joe,” Carfora says. “He’s a real can-do guy. He gets things done, he’s not afraid of making a decision and he treats the business like it’s his own.” In 1998, Flynn became a partner in the business.

Through the mid-1990s, CICC grew by taking on projects that ranged from small residential jobs to large industrial projects. Then, with Flynn’s help, the business went after new markets. “Soon we were going in a new direction working more with just the private-sector projects and moving away from public works projects,” Carfora says. “Suddenly, our world expanded.”

Yet, CICC has remained relatively small, with 20 employees. Its size is often its strength, allowing the company to be nimble in uncertain markets. “Our size allows us to respond to market forces without having to lay people off or downsize our operations,” Carfora says. “We can keep our institutional knowledge.”

He cautions, however, to not correlate size with capabilities. “We can do almost anything the big guys can do and work on the same large, complex projects for large, complex clients,” he says.

Clients, Big and Small

Those clients include IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York. In the late 1990s, CICC was tasked to build IBM’s e-business building—about 10,000 square feet in less than six months. “Between staffing issues, a complex design and other problems, it wasn’t an easy task,” Carfora remembers. But the team was relentless.

“We had shirts made up that said, ‘Setting the Pace,’ because that was our daily goal,” Carfora says. “Be better, faster and more efficient than our competition. That focus paid off, and the team finished on time and on schedule. We still work there today.”

Another satisfied customer explains why CICC is “the best general contractor you’ll ever work with.”

“The highest level of professionalism, perfect work product, flexible when encountering obstacles, competitive pricing and wonderful people…those are just a few of the many reasons,” says Paul Halayko, President and COO of Newburgh Brewing Co., a brewery based in Newburgh, New York. “But the most important reason is this: Once you work with CICC for the first time, you’ll never work with another general contractor ever again.”

What draws these and other clients—such as Marist College in Poughkeepsie, Bonura Hospitality, and Gold’s Gym in Newburgh—to CICC?

“We like to think of ourselves as the ‘best small contractor in New York,’” says Carfora, who names three reasons for the title.

For one, Carfora says, the staff genuinely cares about each project. “We want the projects to work for our clients,” he says. “We don’t churn and burn projects. We take our time and take it personally when something goes wrong.” And while there are always problems on projects, he says it’s how you solve them that counts.

Second, he says, the team builds relationships. “We don’t want a project; we want a relationship. We treat our clients with respect, honesty and loyalty,” Carfora says. “We treat them like friends because at the end of the day we want them to treat us the same way.”

Finally, his team is diversified in the construction industry. Carfora says, “We have the ability to compete in the commercial, industrial and residential markets. We understand the economy and the market and keep our overhead down in order to survive in bad times. We know that being low bidder is not always the best thing and if you want a job too badly, it sometimes does not end as planned.”