By Beverly Cramp

Rowe’s Construction celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2015. The company is part of a successful, diversified company started by Northern-born brothers Jack, Mike, and Owen along with other members of their extended family. In addition to a real estate arm, the construction subsidiary offers road maintenance, gravel deliveries, equipment rentals, and building design and construction from offices located in Hay River, Yellowknife, Fort Smith and Fort Simpson. Rowe’s Construction employs 80 full time staff and 200 seasonal employees. The company boasts that 70 percent of the staff are aboriginal or were born in the North. What makes the rise of Rowe’s Construction such a compelling story is not just that the company grew from relatively humble beginnings but that it has staked its fortunes almost entirely in the North.  

In 1975, Mike and Jack approached B & R Construction, then owned by their father, Bill Rowe, and partner, Keith Broadhead, to purchase a loader and two tandem gravel trucks.  At the time, Mike was working with B & R Construction and was aware that both partners were looking to get out of the business. “We struck a deal and our company was born,” says Jack Rowe, now president of Rowe’s Construction. “At the beginning, we worked away trying to pick up contracts in the transportation sector. Initial clients included ATL, NTCL and CNR. They needed gravel delivered to their premises. But their ground operations were tied to the barge season when the ice melts, which is end of May to the end of October most years and that made work very cyclical.” The seasonal work made it hard for the Rowe brothers to grow their operation. “We couldn’t offer long term employment because the work wasn’t regular. And the lack of year-round work meant we couldn’t capitalize our business either,” says Jack Rowe.

“In the North, you have to be over-capitalized. You can just pick up equipment on a short-term basis.”

They started looking further afield, outside of Hay River, for contracts. In 1979, Parks Canada awarded Rowe’s Construction some work. Shortly after, another big client emerged. “My father had done work for the territorial government,” says Jack. “We looked at that as a big new market for us too but we had no experience at the formal bidding process. We recognized we would have to gain this expertise.” An opening occurred when the Public Works and Highways department of the Government of the Northwest Territory (GNWT) began to sub-contract work. “We did our first work with Public Works and Highways in 1976 at its ferry landing in Fort Providence. We extended the slipway where the ferries landed to prevent shore erosion caused by water currents. From that point we saw that the GNWT would be a bigger marketplace for us.” Another boon to Rowe’s Construction was the GNWT’s Business Incentive Policy, introduced in the early 1980’s, that gave a ten percent bid price preference to Northern-based companies. “Before this, southern companies, who already had a wealth of available business opportunities throughout the year, would come here to do a job and then leave, with no benefits left in the north. The new policy allowed northerners to grow their organizations by keeping staff around and making it easier to get loans to buy additional equipment,” says Jack Rowe.

Prior to the implementation of the Business Incentive Policy, Rowe’s Construction consisted of Jack, his brother, Mike and a cousin. “For the first year, we had one casual employee, and by the second year we added a second casual employee but we had no full-time employees, “says Jack Rowe. “After the GNWT Business Incentive Policy, we began to hire long-term staff and grew from there.”Rowe’s Construction also found opportunities when the GNWT began contracting for highway maintenance. Jack Rowe recalls that the steady government contracts helped the company develop. “We worked on the road to Inuvik, which went to tender. And then in 1984, we were the successful bidder to do highway maintenance in Fort Simpson. Working with Nogha Enterprises, (the economic development arm of the Liidlii Kue First Nation in Fort Simpson) we have had that contract for over 30 years,” he says. “All this government work provides us with an established base of operations. From that, we began doing contract work with other companies. For example, Enbridge has been a big customer of ours for many years. And we have provided a freight service from Hay River to Fort Simpson for the past 30 years.” As part of establishing a stable base of operations, Rowe’s Construction got into the building construction business when it started putting up its own buildings. The additional services bring another level of stability to the company. When one sector is down, the other can pick up the slack says Jack Rowe: “Some years, we’re busy doing general construction and other years we’re busy with civil work. All together, these various sectors have led to us establishing long term relationships with suppliers, sub-contractors and our aboriginal partners.”

Now Rowe’s Construction goes to Northern locations as the work demands. One of its largest jobs was the Colomac Mine remediation in 2007, which was done by the company’s joint venture company, Metrow, 51 percent owned by the Hay River Metis Development Corporation and 49 percent by Rowe’s Construction. “We had a $14 million contract with them. We had to invest $4.5 million in equipment to do the job, which was condensed into a one-year project. That went real well,” says Jack Rowe noting that even though they had to buy extra equipment that isn’t used regularly, that’s what is required of a successful northern company. “In the North, you have to be over-capitalized. You can’t just pick up equipment on a short-term basis.”

The big push into real estate began in 1993 when Rowe’s Construction won a bid to construct housing for the GNWT. “After that, we got into owning, building, leasing and maintaining houses,” says Jack Rowe. “Between 1996 and 1998 we started a job in Hay River that involved leasing 11,000 sq. ft. of commercial space to the GNWT. With them as anchor tenants, we developed our first design/build project that was 27,000 sq. ft. in total. Later we added 65,000 sq. ft. of commercial real estate. Since then, real estate has been a very important part of our business.” Throughout it’s business life, Rowe’s Construction has built strong relationships with aboriginal communities. “We have a duty to consult on projects and economic opportunities with First Nations. It can be a challenge to figure out what that means. What’s fair? Our view is that if we are going to work within a small community, we don’t sit back and ask them to ‘fit in with us.’ We try to figure out how to maximise the community’s involvement with us. The ideal situation is that we get invited back. We’ve been successful at this in the last twenty years.”  CN