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A time to reflect
At Bay Mechanical,
founder steps back after brush with death
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by
Lynn Waltz
for Virginia Business
July
2004
In 1963, Rod Rodriguez was 19 with a
baby on the way and a weekly paycheck of $42.35. Today,
the 59-year-old owner of Bay Mechanical Inc. is wealthy.
In 1980, when Rodriguez and a partner launched their
mechanical contracting firm, they grossed $225,000 the
first year. In 2002, the Virginia Beach company pulled
in about $45 million.
Today, says Rodriguez, sitting behind
his black metallic-flecked granite desk, it’s
time to start handing over control to a new generation.
Hard words for a driven perfectionist who transformed
Bay Mechanical into a leader in mechanical infrastructure
in the Southeastern United States. It’s difficult
to gaze over any cityscape in the state and not see
a building whose inner-workings were built and installed
by Bay Mechanical.
The company’s 450 employees will
still tackle challenging projects, but Rodriguez is
choosing a slower pace after double pneumonia and a
sucker punch of bacterial infections left him near death
last January. The man who walked out of the hospital
had different priorities than the one who had walked
in 36 days earlier. “It made me realize that I’m
59,” Rodriguez says. “And I have worked
so hard and taken on so much with boards, city work,
charities, fund-raisers. I started letting somebody
else take over.” While Rodriguez doesn’t
want to be as involved in every single project, he looks
forward to spending more time with customers and building
owners, much as he did in the early days.
Bay Mechanical will continue its legacy
of taking on big jobs. Past projects include Nauticus,
Virginia Beach Marine Science Museum, Children’s
Hospital of the King’s Daughters, MacArthur Center
Mall, the Norfolk Southern Tower and the Virginia Air
and Space Museum. A team of three long-time vice presidents,
including Rodriguez’s son Michael, Al Ward and
Jeff Cash, will oversee operations.
Never a micro-manager, Rodriguez encourages
creative freedom, personal respect and a team approach
that will sustain the company, he believes. “I
never raised my voice. I don’t chew people out.”
Rodriguez has a slow, easy way about
him, a dignity, and an understated smile in his crinkling
eyes. He presents a calm, confident demeanor. Never
let them see you sweat. Always deliver on time. Always
deliver a quality product. But inside, he admits, was
too much stress. It’s not a life he wants for
his vice presidents. “I don’t want them
to have to do what I’ve done,” Rodriguez
says. “So we want less volume with better margins.
It’s a lifestyle choice.”
Growing up in Chesapeake, Rodriguez
burned with inner drive. By 11, he was stocking grocery
shelves and hasn’t stopped working since. As a
teenager, he kept his car immaculate. Right out of high
school, he tackled the plumbing trade, digging ditches,
learning pipefitting, dead-set on mastering each job.
By 23, Rodriguez was running Parker/Sparks Inc., a Virginia
Beach mechanical contracting firm with 40 employees.
At 35, he launched Bay Mechanical.
From the start, Rodriguez focused on
complicated hospital systems. His first contract was
installing lights in operating rooms at Virginia Beach
General. He found his niche because not many companies
bid on the exacting standards of medical systems. Today,
Bay Mechanical is installing the mechanical infrastructure
in the medical tower at the University of Virginia Medical
Center, including medical gas piping for surgical procedures.
A turning point came in 1994 when the
company won the bid on Ericsson Stadium for the Carolina
Panthers in Charlotte, N.C. One year later, the company
built its new 220,000-square-foot headquarters on 23
acres near Lynnhaven Mall. This facility produced the
largest sheet-metal job on the East Coast, 2.5 million
pounds of ductwork for the EPA’s science and research
center in Raleigh, N.C.
Over the years, one of the company’s
biggest challenges has been the lack of skilled artisans.
To cope, Rodriguez revolutionized procedures, leveraging
skilled labor by integrating prefabrication. “I
put the older craftsman with five people under them,
each one doing part of his job,” Rodriguez says.
The systems are built in-house, then numbered, dismantled
and rebuilt on site.
In many ways, Rodriguez’s values
haven’t changed. He’s always followed the
Golden Rule, giving more to charity than he can remember.
He has served on dozens of boards for business, cultural
and philanthropic organizations. He still loves nice
clothes, fancy cars and Cigarette boats. But, he says
he found out money isn’t everything. “Anyone
starting a business has to remember. It’s good
now, but it may not stay that way,” he says.
For Rodriguez, it’s a time of
reflection. His greatest accomplishment? “That
my son lives on one side of me, my daughter on the other
with my two grandchildren and my mother a short drive
away. It’s having a close family.” It’s
a good life, he says, one to be savored.
Return to Virginia Business - July 2004
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