Louis Richardson interview, July 29, 2016: transcript

i AN INTERVIEW WITH LOUIS RICHARDSON An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2016 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans and Israel B. Salinas Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea and the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iv v PREFACE As a youth, contractor Louis Richardson followed opportunities that would take him across the U.S. and to Sierra Leone, Africa. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Richardson attend Hampton Institute, in Hampton, Virginia, a historically black college/university (HBCU); there, he majored in construction and engineering and joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). After graduation and U.S. Army service in Vietnam, he received an offer from U.S. State Department to teach young adults math and construction in West Africa. That experience led him to work for various Housing Authorities in New Jersey, Los Angeles, and finally, in 1978, to Las Vegas. In this interview, Richardson talks about how his early experiences shaped his vision of the types of projects he would undertake. He speaks about his focus on engineering how he came to Las Vegas and of the public works projects in schools, parks, and libraries that came to define his body of work. He explains the bid process as the owner of a minority-owned business and talks of his involvement with disabled veterans. Regarding his forty-plus years of owning a construction company in Las Vegas, Richardson notes that “Most of my staff has been here with me almost from the time I started. And so you keep them working, keep their families going, because some of [their kids] are now working for me.” Louis Solomon Richardson passed away in Las Vegas February 8, 2019. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Louis Richardson July 29, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee D. White and Stefani Evans Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………v–vi Early years in South Carolina; Hampton Institute; Fort Campbell and Vietnam; teaching in Africa; designing for Campbell’s Soup; remodeling for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and construction; Las Vegas and Dalton Properties; first projects with the Las Vegas Housing Authority…………………………………….. …………………………….……………….… 1–9 Public libraries and community centers; steel construction for fire stations and schools; Lorenzi and other Southern Nevada parks; multi-family units for the Housing Authority; greenery in Las Vegas; technology and design; Doolittle Community Center……………………………….. 9–17 Bid process; disabled veterans and good design; Riverside and Boulder City cemeteries; former supervisors and early years in Las Vegas; Bechtel Corporation; UNLV Wright Hall and restoration of Moulin Rouge…………………………………………………….……………………… 17–30 Appendix: Funeral program .…………………………………………………………………31–35 1 This is Claytee White. I'm with Stefani Evans in Mr. Lou Richardson's office, North Las Vegas. It is July 29th, 2016. So how are you doing today? I'm doing fine. Great. Could you pronounce and spell your name for me, please? Pronounced Louis Richardson. Spelled L-O-U-I-S; Richardson is spelled R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N. Thank you. So I'd like to get started just by talking about your early life; where you're from, the family formation, and what your parents did for a living. I'm from Charleston, South Carolina. I went to high school and grammar school in Charleston, South Carolina. I went to Catholic school. I had a Catholic upbringing mostly, but my mother was Methodist and my father was Episcopal, so we had sort of all religions in our house. I had two brothers and three sisters. So we grew up on a street called Smith; it's now in the historic neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, and I still own the house. So we go back there every couple of months, check on it, and that's where we stay. Wonderful. So where did you go to college? I went to college at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. I'm from northeastern North Carolina. My brothers live right there in that area right now. So tell me a little bit about what your major was in college and who inspired you to go that route? Well, I wasn't really inspired. I was kind of lazy. So my brother had applications from Fisk University, Hampton University, and I also had an application from UCLA [University of California at Los Angeles], and so I took his old applications and filled them out and I was 2 accepted to all of the schools. How I decided to go to Hampton was that I had an uncle that lived in California and if I went there, I would have had to stay with him. I didn't want to stay off campus. So, I decided to go to Hampton because I would be staying on campus. The university had books, these college handbooks in those days in which the curriculum was pretty well set. So not having the counselors like they have today, I went through the book trying to find what was the easiest thing for me to take. I selected subjects which I thought were easy—which I thought was one thing, but when I got there I found it was something else. Of course, I didn't find that out until the second year in school. In those days you didn't really change around and say, "I don't want to do this; I want to do that," because you had a certain time, a certain time to get out, and a certain amount of money to spend. So you couldn't be going back and forth like I believe a lot of people are doing now. You had to sort of stick with it. STEFANI: What was that major? I majored in building construction and engineering, and it was a five-year major. I graduated from Hampton Institute in that major and, also, I was in ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps] and I graduated as a second lieutenant and I went right into the service. I was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. During my last few months at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, I was supposed to get out and then I decided, well, I'll reenlist for three more months so I can still be here in Kentucky and go to the graduations and all of the happy things that happen in Nashville, and then they decided to send me to Vietnam. So I went to Vietnam, I stayed there for four months. And then I came out of Vietnam and I worked. I applied for a job at Mead Corporation in Chillicothe, Ohio, and I worked with them as a design engineer for almost a year. Then I got an offer from the State Department through the Hampton Institute. They had a program in which 3 they worked in Africa, Sierra Leone, West Africa, and I was offered a position there to teach out-of-school youth and young adults. I really wasn't interested in going, but then the secretary of the college came and met me. We sat down and started talking and he started showing me brochures. And I still wasn't interested. Then he made the offer and the salary was like almost double what I was getting—and tax free—and I said, "When do I leave?" And so I stayed in Africa for two and a half to three years, and I taught out-of-school youth and young adults in Sierra Leone. We were supposed to work in eleven provinces over there building schools for out-of-school youth and young adults. So when I first went over there, I was a teacher and I taught math, I taught construction and... There was another subject; I don't remember what it was. Anyway, then the head of the party—they call them party leaders—left and I was promoted to head the party. The party consisted of maybe sixteen people. It had seven people in two different provinces, and we were building a campus in a place called Kenema [Sierra Leone’s second-largest city] and a campus in a place called Bacanu, and we built two college campuses. After we finished those campuses, we were supposed to go to different provinces and build other campuses, but then they ran out of money. So the program sort of closed and we came back. After that I worked for Campbell's Soup Company. So before you start talking about Campbell's Soup, tell me more about the atmosphere in Africa at that time in that part of Africa. The atmosphere was—actually they had a dictator. His name was [Andrew Terence] Juxon-Smith, and during that time they had a coup. They had a coup, and then another leader called Siaka Stevens took over. During the coup they were shooting in the streets and doing all the things that you would expect a coup to be. That was the first time I was an eyewitness and 4 right in there. And so I started asking some of the policemen and people who were doing the shooting, "Why are they doing that?" And they said, "Well, that's what we see on TV. That's what you Americans do." I said, "No, we don't do that." I said, "What you see on TV isn't real. It's just movies, cowboy movies." They said, "Yeah, you guys go over there and you shoot all your leaders." That was during the time when Martin Luther King [Jr.] and Robert [Francis "Bobby"] Kennedy were shot. He said, "If you don't like your leaders, you just shoot them." I said, "No, man, that's not the way we live." I said, "Those are just movies. You shouldn't believe all that stuff." Then we started educating the kids that we were teaching that what they were seeing as movies and those kinds of things weren't real. But really, I didn't know that they (truly) took those things to heart. Now, what years were you in Sierra Leone? I was (in) Sierra Leone I think it was '67 through '69—'66, '67, '68. So you were born mid-forties? I was born in '40. Wow. Amazing. So this was more violence than you had seen even in Vietnam? Well, actually no. I think I saw more violence in Vietnam. This was just kind of... They weren't really shooting people per se. They were just mimicking what they saw on TV, the ones I saw. Now, back where they really had the real coup, I really didn't hear of any people being killed. It was just sort of one faction just taking over the government and going in there and doing what they had to do to take over. Matter of fact, it only took like two or three days. It wasn't a long thing in which it was broadcast like it probably would be now. Like Turkey was the other day. 5 Yes, it wasn't broadcast like that. It was just sort of an internal thing. Life went on and people didn't bother much. But what I was surprised by... So I was in school. I asked one of the team leaders who was one of our students. I said, "Who do you like, Siaka Stevens or Juxon-Smith?" He said, "Ooh, Juxon-Smith." He said, "He's the greatest." He was the leader at the time. And so when Siaka Stevens won the takeover, I said, "So what do you think of that?" He said, "Oh, Siaka Stevens, Siaka Stevens." So then he said finally, "You never talk bad about your leaders." Like we over here, we can say whatever we want to say about whoever; that wasn't the thing. Whoever was in, you were on the side of whoever was there. So where do those names come from, Stevens and Smith? That was just their name. I don't know where it came from. I wouldn't expect those names at that period. Wow, that's weird. So tell me how you got to Las Vegas. Well, we got to Las Vegas—I lived in New Jersey for seven years with my first marriage. I lived in New Jersey and I worked for Campbell Soup [Company] as a design engineer. What were you designing at Campbell Soup? At Campbell Soup they have disciplines just like you have in the regular world. I mean, I know Las Vegas...They think regular people don't live here. But anyway, you have designers, and they built buildings, and we designed the buildings that they build. We built pet food plants. We built chocolate factories, Godiva Chocolates [Godiva Chocolatier], Pepperidge Farm [American Commercial Bakery]. So Campbell’s owns Godiva Chocolates? At that time they did. I don't know. Then Pepperidge Farm was a part of Campbell Soup. So it had a lot of different branches. So I went around, and I was on the design team, and we designed 6 different facilities. Then they had to maintain the chicken plants that they had. They have chicken plants all over the world, which does the soup. Then they had design centers, which designs the designs on cans and foods. When they do all of their pictures on cans and food, they come from real places of food; they're just not drawn up and put on the can. So they had to have a special department that did all of that. I wasn't on that side, but I was floating around, and I had something to do with those when they did that, because they had to have a facility for that particular operation. And so I worked for them for seven years. When I was in New Jersey, I was doing remodeling work for FHA [Federal Housing Administration] doing housing and doing housing projects on my own with another guy that worked for RCA [Radio Corporation of America]. So that's how I kind of got into construction. I was doing a redesign on my house and a friend of mine said, "Hey, let's go in business." And so I said, "Okay." We started doing things. Then he was home when I was doing all the business. It was a good gig for him. Yes. And so I got kind of talked into doing construction. Because even when I was overseas and through school, I didn't expect to be on the construction side, although that was my major. I was more or less interested in doing the engineering side. So we had trades and all that, and I guess they selected me to go over there. But anyway, so when I moved to California, I moved because a friend asked me to come and help him out with his construction company. I moved to Los Angeles, and I worked in L.A. for a year. The driving just got too hectic in L.A., and Vicki, my wife, said, "Come on, let's go to Las Vegas. I have family there." So we visited Las Vegas, and I met her brother and some other people here. Then I interviewed with some construction companies and got an offer and that's how I got to Las Vegas. 7 Wonderful. So what was that construction company? It was named Dalton Properties [Dalton Properties of Nevada, LLC], and they're not here anymore. What year was that? I think it was '78. They were one of the larger minority companies in Vegas. They used to do a lot of work on air bases and they did a lot of Housing Authority projects and things like that. They got into that kind of work after I got there because I was the main estimator, and the guy said he wanted to get into that kind of field, and so I helped him do that. I worked with him for a year and a half and then I got my license here in Nevada and started my own company [Richardson Construction]. Have you always been at this location? No, this is my third location. I was initially on the corner of Martin Luther King [Boulevard] and...It was where the D and L—right across the street from McDonalds. That used to be the Westside Gallery. So Lake Mead? No. It was Martin Luther King and Jimmy, right on the corner of Martin Luther King and Jimmy [Avenue]. That was where they had a building; they had a back building, and the front building was a gallery. We used to call it the Westside Gallery. My office was in the house in the back of the gallery. I stayed there for three years and then I moved to A Street, 1400 North A Street. Which is under the freeway now? Which is not exactly under the freeway. It's the building just next door to Ewing Brothers [Ewing Bros Truck Repair]. It's the brick building that's next to Ewing Brothers. I built that building and that was my office building; I stayed there until '79 and then I moved to this building. I've been 8 in this building since... Well, I've been in this building since '88. So how do construction and art work together? Well, really I don't know too much about art. I just happened to be on the other side of my wife [Artist Vicki Richardson]. So she's mostly the artist. It works together in some things. On the side that she works out of, she started the gallery and it was never a conflict. She did what she had to do and I did what I had to do. When we needed help we'd just ask each other for a little guidance and it worked out. Great. So tell me about some of your first projects. Tell me about your first project on your own. One of my first projects was working for the Housing Authority. I chose to do public works work because I believe that they had the money and then you wouldn't have to be burdened with chasing clients. So I chose to do that kind of work. I was familiar with the federal and governmental paperwork, so that wasn't a problem. And so I started building jobs for the Housing Authority, for the [Clark County] School District, for the [Las Vegas-Clark County] Library District and those places. We had to have the insurances, the bonds, and all that kind of thing. I started off small and gradually worked up to where I am now. So did you do on Martin Luther King Boulevard the Westside Library? Yes, we did the Westside Library [West Las Vegas Library]. So tell me about that job and what your contribution was to that job. My contribution to that job was—I think the architect was Cambeiro, Arturo Cambeiro, at that time. It was just a small [project]. That street was not as developed as it is now. It just had the library on it. It had vacant houses across the street. It had empty lots to the right and the left and across the street. The art center to the east of it wasn't built and the theater wasn't built at that 9 time; it was just a library. The library consisted of what libraries consist of. Then they had an art program, which I think my wife's gallery won the bid to put the art pieces up and they did that. So we built the whole library there. Then later on the job came up to do the theater, and we did the theater [Contemporary West Dance Theater]. Then later on the job came up to do the Doolittle [Community] Center. We did the Doolittle Center and then we did the Doolittle Senior Center. Then Housing Authority did Sherman [Gardens] Annex and Vera Johnson [Manor Apartments], and we just went right on down J Street. Wow. So you built all that on J Street? Yes. That's wonderful. And it started with the library. It started with the library. That's fabulous. What kinds of records do you make as a contractor? What kinds of records does your work generate? Well, now it's generating more paperwork than it has, because just the way it is. But on the jobs we have to keep all the documents for at least seven years, and I try to keep them longer than that because I found out that most of the clients just go around and around. A lot of times you have to rely on some of the old documents for as-builts when you go back to the property for a remodel or whatever. Like with the library and the theater? Like the library, the theater, and then we did the park [Doolittle Park] next door, too. We did some modification to the track at the park. And so it kept going just like that. So we got familiar 10 with that. Our first library was Sunrise Library. Where is that? Sunrise Library is on Harris [Avenue], not too far from the Mormon church down there, Harris and... Oh, way up there. Sunrise Mountain? Near Sunrise Mountain, yes. Our second library was the Flamingo Library. We didn't build the library. We remodeled Flamingo Library a couple of times. We did Spring Valley [Public] Library; we remodeled Spring Valley Library a couple of times. Then I think about four years ago or five years ago we remodeled Flamingo Library again. The gift that keeps on giving. Yes. Then in Henderson we did the Black Mountain Recreation Center [& Aquatic Complex]. If you're familiar with Black Mountain Rec Center? Walnut Cecil Recreation Center. Then we did day-care centers. We did three day-care centers for the City of Las Vegas and Clark County. The [Little Homestead] Learning Center on Tonopah [Boulevard] and the [Little Homestead] Learning Center on Walnut [Street], they're just like each other; they've got little pencil things in the front of them. So those are the types of projects we did then. Then we graduated into doing parks. We did the first phase of Lone Mountain Park. We just completed last month the fifth phase of Lone Mountain Park. We didn't do two, three and four, but we did the fifth phase of Lone Mountain Park. We worked on Craig Ranch [Regional Park]. We did all the steel on Craig Ranch. We also did fire stations. We did Fire Station 5 [Las Vegas Fire and Rescue – Station 5], 11 which was sort of a memorial dedicated to the Twin Towers [New York World Trade Center]. They've got a piece of beam there that came from the Twin Towers, not in a cage, but displayed as an art piece. Where is number five? Number five is on Hinson [Street] and Charleston [Boulevard]. So Hinson is just below Valley View, correct? Yes. We did Fire Station 48. We did Fire Station 42, 5, 15. We did the one right down the street, which is 53. We did 107. Do they like to work off a standard plan for those? Some of them are standard plans and some of them are brand-new plans. We've done the steel. We do steel construction and erection. We did that for various fire stations. We're working presently on Sandy Valley [Middle School] Gymnasium in Sandy Valley. We're going to be doing the steel for the Antelope Ridge School, which has just started. Where is that? Right there on Antelope [Ridge] in Summerlin. It's called "Unnamed School" presently. It's called Unnamed School? Well, yes, they don't have a name to it. I guess they'll name it later when they find somebody to dedicate it to. Maybe me, huh? There you go. Tell me about Lorenzi Park. Lorenzi Park; yes, that was sort of a challenge out there. We did Lorenzi Park. They drained the lake. We made the lake larger. We put an island in the middle of the lake. We also built a dome, which is where they have most of the activities. The dome has a seating area right in front of it. 12 We remodeled the existing restroom there and we put in two other restrooms. They had a new pump for the lake. What else did we do there? A couple of playgrounds, a splash park, many seating areas, a lot of canopy, a lot of covered play areas and play structures. So that was quite a big job. How many splash parks have you done? Three. We worked on Centennial [Centennial Hills Park] and Durango [Durango Hills Park]. We did the first phase of that job, which is on Deer Springs [Way] and Buffalo [Drive]. We did the first phase of that job with volleyball courts, tennis courts, and those kinds of amenities. That was for the City of Las Vegas. So we do work for City of Las Vegas, for Clark County, Henderson, Boulder City, a lot of the entities like that—the State Department. We're presently working in the prison right now. That's where I was this morning, the women's prison [Southern Nevada Womens Correctional Center], which is on Interstate 15 and Lamb [Boulevard] at Smiley Road. We're renovating the bathrooms at the women's prison. Oh, downtown. On Smiley Road. It's right off I-15 and Lamb. Wow. I didn't even know there was a prison there. We did work at the detention center. We did the cages at the detention center for telephones and enclosures. We did all the steel work for those at the detention center, which was just recently completed, I think two years ago. So you started out wanting to do FHA remodeling houses, but— Well, that's what I did in New Jersey when I was working at Campbell Soup; that was sort of my side job. 13 I see. But you haven't done houses here. You've done mostly government work. I do government work, and I do multi-family for the Housing Authority. Matter of fact, we're working on Marble Manor [an apartment community] right now. I've done many phases of Marble Manor since I've been here. We've remodeled all of Marble Manor at one time [or another]. We did Gerson Park, which is now no more. We did Sherman Gardens; we remodeled Sherman Gardens back in the day. So what is the possibility of having more greenery so it looks more livable and beautiful? Is that possible? It's possible, but it's not up to me, and it's a result of not having enough water. That's why a lot of greenery that you probably used to see in the earlier years has disappeared, because they have water conservation. You can only water certain times of year and it's uncertain what Lake Mead is going to be looking like in a couple of years. So they're trying to conserve, and all the greenery requires water. So a lot of landscaping is hardscape, like sidewalks and DG, which is small rocks and gravel, and such as that. So when I go to Summerlin and Henderson, Green Valley area, I see all of this lush greenery. It's just beautiful. Then I go to the Westside and I don't see any greenery. I don't understand that. Well, I can't help you with that. I'm not a designer. What we do, when we get the drawings, they're already designed and they have specifications on what to do; we just follow that as closely as we can and build it. I was driving here coming up Westcliff [Drive]. Are you familiar with what they've done along Westcliff? They've turned it from two driving lanes on both sides to one driving lane with a bike lane alongside it and then the parking [lane]. Then up the middle they have these little 14 islands that are rockscaped with metal cactus and yuccas. Yes, metal. Metal sculptures. And it's beautiful. It doesn't generate coolness like the greenery does, but it is attractive and drought tolerant. Like, for example, on Buffalo-Washington Park, we did all the metal flags, all the metal sculptures, all the people, the people with the tennis rackets. We did all of that around that park. So you do do that kind of work. Yes. How has technology changed the way you do your work, the computer and all kinds of...? So when we started it was no computers. Then fax machines came in. Some of the agencies accepted faxes and some didn't. So then we went from faxes to computers. Now it's scanners, computers mostly, and almost all of the agencies accept electronic files instead of paper files. So you just have to keep up with the technology; otherwise, you'll be looking like the Dark Ages and be really, really behind times. So what have you done with all of your paper files? Well, fortunately, the paper files are over ten years old or seven years, so we just have them shredded. Oh, you're killing me. So you know that UNLV would love to house and archive those kinds of records. Like what kinds of records? The ones that [we could rescue] before you get to the shredder. Well, of all our records we turn in what we call close-out documents with respect to the projects; those close-out documents go to the owners. Those owners, we believe, keep those files in some 15 kind of good order so that the next projects or their people who come behind us can do whatever they need to do to find it. I know West Las Vegas Library and in Doolittle and some of the fire stations, there is a box. What do they call that box? Anyway, there's a box they put all these little momentos and things in. I think in a hundred years somebody is supposed to open it. A time capsule, like that? Something like that, I guess. I forgot what they call it. But anyway, you're supposed to open that box and then you can see what really happened then. It's not a big box. It's about this size. So that block on J Street where you've done most of the buildings, what are the cross streets? You start at Lake Mead [Boulevard] and you go south on J Street and everything on the east side. Yes, where Doolittle is. Yes, where Doolittle is. You go down Lake Mead, and you can start on the corner, and you go down as far as the end of the library. We did not do the art center. But on the other side of the art center there's a driveway and a parking lot and that little... We did that. You turn around and go behind there, and we did that also. And you did the park. Yes, we did part of the park and I think it was just recently completed by another contractor. They had another renovation in the park. We did not do that. That park is really well used. People in the community actually go there and go walking, beautiful park. So did you work with different architects for those project along J Street? Yes. Besides Cambeiro, do you remember who any of the other architects were? Cambeiro did the library. Cambeiro did not do Doolittle. 16 Who did that? I don't remember. And he did not do the Doolittle Center. I don't remember those architects. I could probably get the names for you. They used to put a plaque on the buildings, but they don't do that anymore—well, the city doesn't. And when they do they don't put the contractor's name on it anymore. Really? Yes. Have to have those trustees up there, though. Yes. So one of the reasons that that sounds like a wonderful... We have a photographer who's going to work with us throughout this project, Building Las Vegas. When someone does the kind of work that you've done all in that one area that would be such a great photo opportunity. Then on the other side we did the [Dr. William U.] Pearson Community Center. We also did that public art piece that's in front of the center on Lake Mead right next to...whatever street that's on; I think it's Lake Mead and Carey [Avenue], right next to that public art piece, which is called...What's the name of that art piece? It's twisted metal. [Ed. Note: The sculpture, "Reach," dedicated July 17, 2009, was inspired by a quote from George Washington Carver and created by artists Dayo Adelaja, Sylvester Collier, Denise Duarte, Adolfo Gonzalez, and Vicki Richardson.] So you're talking about—okay, so the Pearson Center. Yes. In front of the Pearson Community Center there's an early childhood center. We did the steel on the early childhood center. We weren't the general contractor, but we were a subcontractor for that. Then we did the first park, Pearson Park. But now the park was just 17 redone by another contractor. I think they just completed it last month. Now, what about the other side where the Martin Luther King Jr. statute is, did you do anything over there? No, we didn't do anything over there. We didn't win anything on that side of the street. That was our unlucky side. So how do you go about bidding? How do you even find out about these projects? They have to find you? Well, publications. We get notified on some jobs, but most of the jobs are published through various publications like Construction Notebook [a source for construction related news], like BidMail, like Dodge Reports [a list of construction projects bidding by area]. We get some of those reports and we look when we are ready to look for another job and we just sort of put in our bids for them. So what is the process then? So you're looking at these advertisements and you say, "Hmm, this one looks interesting." So what is the process from— From looking to doing that? —from looking to getting the notification that you either want it or...? Well, we look at the job. Then we request a set of plans from the owner and whatever entity is going to give the plans. That puts your name on the list to let other people know that you're bidding the job. Then you have to apply for your insurance, apply for your bid bond and those things. You fill out all the documentation that is required and the specifications, called the bid package. You complete the bid package, you put your price on it, and you turn it in. In between that time, you get prices from people for diffe