BY NOEL K. GALLAGHER

MaineToday Media, Inc.

In 2002, Pittsfield-based Cianbro sent 800 workers from Maine to Maryland where the company was helping to build North America's largest cement plant. It was good work, but Cianbro's then-Chief Executive Officer Peter Vigue saw the impact on the workers, said Dottie Hutchens, a company spokeswoman.

"They had to leave their families, their homes. It was awful to see. Pete said, 'Find a way to bring the work home,' and that set the stage," Hutchens said. Since then, Cianbro has targeted contracts that allow the construction giant to win projects in other parts of the country and bring the work back home to Maine, even if that work would seem hard to transport.

Each of these jobs employs hundreds of workers on projects ranging from retrofitting large vessels in Portland Harbor to manufacturing large parts of an oil refinery in Brewer. Those projects represent a change in the traditional paradigm for construction companies, which usually send workers to a job site to work on projects for months at a time. Cianbro tries to bring big projects to the workers.

On Friday, the company unveiled a new Brewer facility, where Cianbro will make huge 500-ton modules for a Texas refinery expansion. More than 500 skilled workers will be employed during the 15-month, multi-million-dollar contract.

"Clearly our people would prefer to live in the state of Maine," said Vigue, who started out as a laborer at the company almost 40 years ago and is now chairman. "They have families here, they have ties here. Nobody likes to travel unless they absolutely have to.

"We've all done it and nobody likes it," he said. In addition to benefiting workers, it's a sound business model, according to Habib Dagher, a University of Maine professor of civil and structural engineering.

"By manufacturing in a controlled environment, where you have all your tools, all your people, all trained to work at that site, you can significantly reduce the costs, the risks and the time it takes to finish the job," Dagher said. Vigue said the company's able to save money on these jobs through efficient work processes and primarily, a well-trained and skilled work force.

"Cianbro is a leader of this trend and, in particular, Peter Vigue is really leading a trend nationally to manufacture these structures off-site," Dagher said. Other construction companies are now tackling large-scale component construction jobs, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. "Larger, successful companies are using this as a way to manage control and efficiency," said Kelley Keeler Short, executive director of public affairs at the association. "It's becoming more common."

Cianbro, she said, led the way: "Over the years, Cianbro has been a leader and an innovator."

AFTER MILLS CLOSED

Vigue said Cianbro's business model started to shift in the late 1990s, when local paper mills that provided the bulk of Cianbro's work started shutting down in large numbers. At first, Cianbro sought and won contracts out of state, sometimes sending hundreds of Maine workers away for extended periods, but it was hard on workers and lacked the efficiency of working in established Cianbro facilities. Vigue quickly developed the idea of competing for contracts that allowed him to bring the work back to Maine.

"It was a natural progression," Vigue said. Vigue said the first project that brought jobs home was a 1998 contract to make power-plant components in Portland. Although it was on a small scale, it helped steer Cianbro toward bigger jobs, Vigue said.

"Bit by bit, we began to realize we could do these things," he said. "As we began to gain confidence, we began to market outside of our geographic regions."

The first large-scale project was Cianbro's unexpected success in winning a $100 million contract in 2002 to complete two oil rigs begun by a bankrupt shipbuilder in Mississippi. At the time, Cianbro had no experience with oil rigs, but made the case that the electrical and mechanical outfitting work was similar to building a power plant or upgrading a paper mill, which is Cianbro's traditional expertise.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Cianbro employee Holly Hall of Gardiner said she's glad the company is trying to locate jobs here in Maine. Over the nine years she's been with the company, she's had to travel out of state several times. For one project she was in Maryland for nine months, away from her farmer husband and three young children. "It was hard in the beginning, as would be expected," she said, describing the family's efforts to travel back and forth on a regular basis. Today the jobs are closer to home.

"It's just nice to know that if something happened with my family or my children, I would be able to get there," said Hall, an office worker who moved as part of the support staff on projects.

Keeping jobs local is important on several levels, Dagher said. "(Employees) can work in a stable environment and have a normal family life. That is a huge plus for the state of Maine and for the people who work at Cianbro," he said. The company that awarded the current refinery contract to Cianbro said its philosophy of keeping the jobs in Maine was a plus when they considered the bids.

"Cianbro's commitment to the local work force makes them a perfect fit for our project team," Motiva Enterprises project manager Mick Heim said in a press release when the contract was announced in 2007.

"(The contract) is just as important to strengthening our nation's energy supply as it is to creating jobs here in Maine." Motiva, a joint venture of Shell and Saudi Aramco, is undergoing a $5 billion expansion of a Texas refinery.

Cianbro is expected to produce about 50 of the 500-ton modules, which will be sent to Texas by barge. The company's Maine workers are in place to get the job done.

"I have deep roots here, the company has deep roots here," Vigue said. "We have a tremendous team of people, many of whom have worked here a long time."