Highway, Street & Bridge Construction Contractors Industry Profile

The US highway and street construction industry includes about 11,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $85 billion. Major companies include divisions of large construction companies such as Bechtel Group, Fluor, Jacobs Engineering, and URS Corporation. The industry is highly fragmented: the 50 largest companies account for about 15 percent of industry revenue.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Demand is largely driven by the availability of government roadbuilding funds. The profitability of individual companies depends on operating efficiencies and the ability to correctly estimate costs. Big companies have the resources and engineering skills necessary for large construction jobs. Small companies can compete effectively by bidding for smaller projects or by working as subcontractors on large projects. The industry is labor-intensive: average annual revenue per employee is about $300,000.

PRODUCTS, OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY

New street and highway construction can involve complicated engineering, and skilled operations like earthmoving, grading, and bridge, curb, sidewalk, and water drainage system construction. The US has 2.7 million miles of paved roads and 1.3 million miles of unpaved roads. The typical small construction company does light new construction work and concentrates mainly on reconstruction and maintenance. Engineering design work is important for new construction. The typical large construction company designs and constructs complex road and highway projects.

Streets and highways consist of several different layers of materials, earth and various grades of gravel on the bottom. Paved roads have cement or asphalt on the top. The typical street ...