Oakview Leadership

John Crampton had 23 years of experience in the concrete industry when he came to work for Oakview in August of 2006.

“I grew up in the concrete business,” Crampton recalled. “I started out as a general laborer and worked my way up through every position. I worked for a concrete company during the day and attended college in the evening to get a degree in estimating and project management, and then I worked in the office as a construction estimator and project manager for five years. Then I went to work as General Manager for another company for 13 years. We were quite successful, doing between 10 and 12 million dollars of business per year as a subcontractor.”

When Mike Gawley and Robert Leidig approached Crampton with an opportunity to head Oakview’s concrete division in Las Vegas, he wasn’t interested at first.

“I indicated that it would be a real struggle to keep a concrete division functioning in a general contracting environment. Other contractors have tried it and been unsuccessful, because a general contractor usually is not able to secure enough work to keep its concrete division busy 40 hours a week. When you don’t have enough work, you lose guys and your team has no cohesion. Once you put down concrete, you’ve only got a certain amount of time to work with it. You have one shot at it, and you have to get it right the first time. You need to have good crews that are cohesive and are familiar with one another and experienced in working as a team. You don’t want to have to hire new people on each job and go through new learning curves.”

Gawley brought Crampton back for another meeting and asked him, “If you wanted it to succeed, what would you recommend that we do?” Crampton’s recommendation was for Oakview to start a new company called Armada Concrete that would be free to subcontract for other contractors and ensure a steady supply of work.

Gawley and Leidig liked Crampton’s proposal. The plan has worked well, said Crampton. “Seven or eight different general contractors are allowing us to do work for them now that would not have given it to us if we were still called Oakview. So it’s turning out to be just what we planned it to be.”

Most of the work done by Armada Concrete is within the immediate Las Vegas area, but the company will go as far as 100 miles away if the budget is right. “We are going out to a project that’s about 65 miles out of town in a new area called Coyote, Nevada. It’s going to be a bedroom town to Las Vegas, and we’ll work on some commercial projects in that area,” Crampton said. “We’re pretty excited about what the future holds for Armada Concrete.”