North Carolina People; Nello Teer, Jr., General Contractor

You're you're you're good evening ladies and gentleman saving I want you to meet now low to your junior who has a very interesting life that he leads. He has one of the world's largest and most active construction companies but he's one of North Carolina's most distinguished citizen than honored by North Carolina State with a doctor science degree. You've been recognized by scouting with its very highest awards and that's a great part of his life. He's a very active citizen churchmen and the good friend of all those who work in North Carolina the best of the society of this state now it's I'm glad I could catch you get you on the program by you moving around the world so often. Thank you for that I look forward to being you. Well I was reading about you and it said that. Your father started the Nello tour company with two mules in the

wagon and here you are the second generation traveling a hundred fifty thousand miles a year by air checking up on what you do all over the world. Where are you working in the world today and that what. Well below our biggest current project is we are participating in the construction of the air bases in Israel the Camp David Accord provided for. We enter joint venture with two other firms and we're building either the gav desert an air base that will cost five hundred million dollars and we only have 30 months to get it built and from designed to finish requires a lot of household it's a lot of hustle and a lot of expenditure of money. When I your company and all this experience you build roads you build air airfield dams you always said you want to build a bridge. Have you gotten that ambition satisfied. Not exactly We've just finished a substantial bridge in a little country in West Africa but it's not the kind of bridge that I think you had referenced that I would like to go to like the George Washington Bridge the Verizon Oh now is bridge and New York there was a real construction project so I hope you

someday find that I'm going down the pike now might I get it done. Nello. If you were going in to like the project in Israel they obviously have many factors you have to worry with the staff to do the job the personnel on the scene the load just excess supply. What happens when you get to bidding on a big job like this and get it. Well the Negev job with his radio job is probably not a good comparison because that's a crash program John by our government we're working for the US Corps of Engineers. It's a cost reimbursable job and we make a lot of mistakes and cover up right quick and continue on. Under the crash program on Sept. 1 a normal country that we went to a foreign country we carefully analyze what era of stability is and if we don't have a little bit of confidence in that government we just don't go. But where we are working in developing countries where we our government

provides a guarantee insurance program that most nations have similar programs. And if that program applies to that country and if Uncle Sam in some way is involved in the financing one way or the other and after some careful analysis we will go in and look the country over and if we think it's stable and then we'll submit it. Of course moving a bit the big thing to contract or most anyone can figure out what it cost. Today a day to do they have so many crews and so much for equipment but the productivities is where we think we stumble. And so that's the big gamble when you go in the country of what can we expect in the way of productivities out of the workforce and basically recognizing it's an undeveloped country we've got to train the workforce. Well let me ask this then that you're you. You've got the contract you're going into a new country an emerging country who goes in there for you and they say do you have your own core of highly trained and experienced professionals that you send in.

Yes there's a cadre of foreign construction workers that are professionals at it. Most I've been following this work for 20 or 30 years they've worked for other companies as well as ours although we have some of them with us in overseas work for more than 20 years. But they are professional workers accustomed to working overseas dealing with the problems and we basically rely on them to run the jobs. After one of these gigantic airport projects. All these great big machines that I see your name on. You transport them to this country or that kind of work. Yes there are U.S. manufacturing industry and construction machinery is the world's best. And so it's more economical for us to ship Caterpillar tractors Priore Illinois to the coast and ship it to the project site near sport and into the overland to the projects and we basically these undeveloped country where even the Israel which is a developing country and has a lot of nohow they don't have the machinery that it takes to do that job in the time frame. So we take and basically we start off with new equipment because of the

down time the problems with maintenance and so forth that we can't afford to have them sitting still waiting on a spare part that becomes a real problem. Now you're known as one who trains people on the job to do that when your folks get in there and they start these projects what levels of competence do you develop locally still look at the personnel of that country will benefit from your presence also. Well Bill take a little country like Tanzania we worked there we did two large highway jobs one 150 miles long was the first one the next one was one hundred twenty five miles long. It's a developing country and they want their skilled people taught the skills of construction and so we take them in right out of the bush. And if a man can ride a bicycle we make a truck driver out of him. He's a truck driver we make an equipment operator out of him. And when they come up sometimes barefooted with a spear in the head and a blanket wrapped around them and want to work on a bridge we give my hand when he just drives nails. Give another man a soul and somebody draws a line and he's told to sell that land so we have a hammer a man a soul man and we

have. We break it down to the lowest possible component till a man can learn and you'd be surprised at how rapidly they advance on to another stage in the time we get those bridges built. The regular native working there barefooted have all shoes and a jacket and pair of pants and he can do two three things but he also has a skill he has a skill that stays with him. Now you've moved all the way to the Arctic Circle almost to Antarctica and I read of you being on nearly every continent. I guess you happened. How do you how do you adjust to the different political climates and geographical arrangements are you just that sort of stuff and your sort of wellness of adjusting from a personal point of view with jetlag I used to do better when I was younger but that stays with you know. But basically as I mentioned earlier we try to only go into areas where we have confidence and we don't go helter skelter in some place without carefully examined. And we like Uncle Sam to be with us all the way. It's a great comfort to know

that we've got a good embassy there and then we've got somebody that that recognises the needs of the American people. So it's basically our expatriate workforce who are Americans and we have a reasonable number of these each operation and they need to be looked after. Well I noticed that you have actually have company executives and the Latin American region and in Africa. Now I also notice that you spent a lot of time in the Central American region and I gotz course very fine because our country needs all the contact with Mexico and these other nations with them. What about that region do you see it now as one is really going to emerge now and astrally resource next 20 years against opened. Speaking of Central America. Well we've been in Central America 25 years more or less and we've seen a lot of things come and go. I personally have known to the dictators that got shot and much to my horror and

walk obviously I would layer them but I mean they started off working Guatemala with the president there was a dictator and he was later assassinated in Nicaragua we worked for a number of years. President samosa who was the most interesting man and a good friend of capers way Nixon the stickers you know papers was you invested in down there at one time and they were great poker playing friends. So they gave me a good entree to that man and it's very interesting I think that we carried the American flag where we go. We care American know how wherever we go. We care good American working ambassadors wherever we go and I think it's it's money well spent and I think it's time well spent. We let those people know that we're friends and that we compassionate to their needs and their problems to teach them skills. Of course as these countries emerge and their economy grows they have someone restive comes along as has happened in the Iraq war and it was long overdue. It's the people who ran the country. Understood and recognized the undressed and done something about

Erica and what happened to her beloved list. Let's she had been very insensitive sidelines watch one be a little part of it too. What are some of the most interesting projects you've undertaken all over the world. Well I'd say right now of course this new air base in Israel is a most interesting one we've ever undertaken because of the logistics and the short time frame. The Camp David Accord requires that the Israelis move out of the Sinai desert by April of 82 and so we started in the fall of 79 airbase and Israel is just an X on the map and no drawings no plans no anything and no equipment and now we've got a camp there that houses close to 3000 people. That one job alone and we've got a fantastic amount of construction machinery there crushers quarries asphalt plants concrete mixing plants and this in the time frame and the excitement of what's going on there and the involvement and incense history like the Camp David

Accord makes it very interesting to me. But there are other things that I've enjoyed too I've enjoyed watching a man that you in Tanzania. We first went there and I was there one time when we first started laying down hot mix asphalt and I saw a very aggressive young man lady. It was ragged years clothes he had on worn tennis shoes and he was very he was hustling is what word I'd use round and I didn't know he was doing it just for my benefit but I was back about six or eight months later and with the same crew same man was running the machine that laid the asphalt and he had on nice khaki clothes good shoes heavy brogue and had on the cap sunglasses and a wrist watch and then I guess maybe a year went by a washroom on our second project. And he was a foreman of that crew. And I was I mean I got a big kick out of it. You see that man develop in that way. An interesting thing about it I asked him I said What do you do with your money that you've been making and he says most places don't have banks that the natives have any confidence and savings and loans or whatever. He says aloud five bicycles. And I got three wish watches and I got two

radios and he was put there. We saved you the hard items if you could do something with it and it was interesting a man like that develop in a situation like that. You really teach after working hours it's when your man would take him aside and become a craft instructor. That's right in course we have it's available to us that a lot of our manufacturers have slides programs. And we have text books that are written in Swahili or that we used in Tanzania where we have in Spanish and most any language you get those and we actually have classrooms to teach them the fundamentals of the maintenance and safety of and we try not to put a man on a machine until he's been schooled in the safety fundamentals what can happen to him if he pulls wrong lever does a wrong thing at the wrong time. We're back to this project in Israel a minute. Where do you get all the raw materials you were calling off. Are they necessarily imported to the job where raw materials are

basically are not to mean we are out in the Negev desert and course that people have a different idea what in the desert is this is a very rocky barren ground blowing sand and we are using the materials on site for the for the quarries the core stone and goes on asphalt and concrete. Israel has a cement making capability and we are buying cement off of the local economy. But most all the other products we are shipping in because a part of the Camp David Accord was it we should not impact on the Israeli economy which they got inflationary rates of 100 like this years out of 25 percent. And so we're not supposed to impact on their economy. So mostly everything else is American products made in the United States ship where we can on American bottoms over there and put in place. Now when you're all through there what you ultimately want to have finished is a complete air unit complete airbase for fighters to come in with housing for families or Dhamma Tory's for enlisted men mess whole hospitals underground communications

hardened hangars and everything. You know that's really a fascinating analysis when I was all rhubarb spent all this time talking about what you're doing outside the continental limits. I've seen that loyal to your company patching a little piece of street right here in town and you deal with a very small as well with these great wonderful things but what about the you work interior that is in the United States. Well we but we're basically on the eastern seaboard in the United States because there again of logistics. We would go to far away would bump into another contractor that is equipment roll there and have an advantage over us where we have worked when we were involved in the missile base in Arizona a few years ago and we're building a dam up on the river in joint venture with Charlotte which is a very large project. But basically we work in the Carolinas Pennsylvania to the Georgia so to speak in West Virginia quite a bit. And we do a substantial amount of highways. In fact there are a number of years ago we figured up and I think at that time we we claim we don't know how anybody else in the

world that time is over 12000 miles of highways it can be built and I'm sure we must have added another five to it since then. Some day I go back to get up and have something to do. But in the last quarter century I'm sure the construction industry has felt the impact of computerization and electronics and all these wonderful means you have from science and technology of speeding up facilitating improving. How has that impacted on your industry. Well it's saved us a lot of agonizing hours over where a lot of the items that we need to know where they are that we take. We use computers for many things we don't use it too much in estimating cost estimating it's basically back to a judgment factor and where they have brilliant machines they don't substitute for somebody's judgment learned the hard way. Our inventories of items and in our long lead time items that we need to know we have to have

three months downstream which you've got a maybe a full month's delivery on it. How these impact on future operations is what we need to know that computers help us a great deal with most all of our counting all of our payroll with all of my inventory control computer. Peter arrives and the design feels the computers save countless thousands of man hours and working on drawings. They have some beautiful programs now that you design and you put the basic datum in there and jump back in a lot of paper comes out you've got a complete runway and grazing elevations and everything you need for your runways saving countless man. It's fantastic when I ask you then a question about highway construction because all of us get in our car get on the interstate ride along it's pretty and green and but there's a lot that's going on to make that possible. I know it particularly when you're driving up one of the interstate systems and Asheville is one of the prettier drives through this state now we know

but I know it's the grades on the side for example of 45 degrees or something like that to prevent massive washing up. Has this emerged as a policy or the federal policy in our state. Yes it has it. It really grew out of a safety requirement or a need to make the highways safer. We have flattest slopes with the top down to the bottom field slopes are all flat out more gradual turnouts and you've seen them recently putting in guardrail to stop you hitting bridge abutment. And we've had quite a design criteria that now that incorporates many safety features it's saving lots of lives. The highways course long years ago and when the front page was the start of the road program in North Carolina it was to get people out of the mud and try to connect the county seats. And once that crash program was over which was a minute in some areas. Then they got to realizing that we were killing too many people when the roads were not safe and the economic damage that's done by

death accidents far over weighs the cost of this safety audios. So it's it's cost effective. It does a good job it saves lots of lives. Well our highway system cares and enormous amount of traffic. At least it looks that way to me. Big tractor trailers in our state particularly volumen problems. It's a great industry in North Carolina. How thick is the road bed what do you do bellow to get that you know at the back of their five years and start patching what course the design of the road is basically the it's in that State Highway Department does its own design and. And there depends on the type materials you're working with. What if you're in some souls have greater bearing than other souls you get by with a lesser pavement. But in some places when you take from the subbasement your wishes the first application we put onto the base material to the asphalt or the concrete some place we have 30 inches of improved materials to carry those loads because that's the cheapest time to build a good road. When you first got to get

these patches come back to harbor expensive. What does it cost to build an interstate system. Just an average trip somewhere. Bill I don't know. We've done we've had jobs that ran 20 million dollars of Mao right. They were only the mountains the wild the mountains of Pennsylvania West Virginia and in western North Carolina those jobs are in the rugged country has become quite expensive dealing with lots of rock. But we also have some that well remember Governor Scott a number of years ago head of. A rule program and we did roads then and we actually developed a technique of getting about a mile to save a lot of man hours of engineering and so forth and we came up with 15 to 20 25 thousand dollars a mile for improving rule road. So you go from A to Z depending what the needs are. How do you get so interested in the Boy Scouts. Let me say I'm glad you are. I thank you for all you've done but I think it's wonderful.

Well Bill as you well know fathers kind of follow their sons or sons fathers fathers lots of time. My younger son got interested in Scouting course I was in the film my job to take him to Boy Scout meetings even when I was home when I was one away that was there that much but I went to Boy Scout meetings where he became an Eagle Scout. I was very proud of him. And so from then on I took an interest in scouting and I've been active on the local level and on the council level and all the southeastern region level and it's a great program. They do a fantastic job for the money they get. I'm real proud of this guy. He's done an awful lot of volunteer work for the engineering foundation at NC State too. Looking since some young people look in on this program much to well Nello What about the construction field as a career option today. But what do you see for the future of the industry. Well when I first started working for my father I said. I don't know what I want to go into highway construction goes ahead all the roads built and I said the son said don't worry about that they live in a mall built and coarse engineering and stick to the civil field

embraces many disciplines of this highway. And as our economy expands and our population grows no need for new cities and new solar energy use all those types of things just going to be a requirement for me. I think if I recall correctly NC state now has something like 5000 euros shooters or role in engineering. Now they pick up and down as you know or if there's a demand all the sudden we get an influx of additional engineering students and then the four while the it's the supply and demand fall out of balance and it drops off. But I was when I was I want school to Chapel Hill and I forgot just before they moved all engineering go to NC State. And my recollection is we didn't have about 200 students and I think a 5000 population is gone. I think times have changed. But you're getting into so many interesting things to build you know we talk about construction we're not just talking about highway systems. You've done a lot of building work all over the world.

Yeah we built a five star luxury hotel in the little country of gutta. Q 88 Arsenal thumb sticks off the Saudi Arabian Peninsula into the Persian Gulf. We built it for Prince private investment and that was a lot of fun I mean when I go to visit the project he would invite me to dinner his palace where women you never saw the women folks or the children in the wreckage or you know just man and he was a very interesting man. Would you would you get a railroad that you own and operate a railroad where we are now out of the railroad business we bought a German cell and for a number of years ago 25 or 30 years ago and operated it up until about a year ago and we sold it to the coastline seaboard. And basically my guess my father always had a great love of railroading he had worked as a young man before he went to construction as a brakeman on the railroad. Then one of his first construction jobs was filling in a trestle for the drum and selling and so I guess nostalgia got him yesterday and it was marginal for an investment for a hero tell you that it's

not all about all that you ever bothered to build a home upbuilding all they're always interested in the materials of their ability and longevity and all these things. Where does the construction industry turn for that kind of research that keeps you moving ahead and in the elements of construction. Well there's a great deal done and each each of the basic industries have their own research areas a national cross stone Association has research asphalt institutes and our government through the National Academy of Sciences branches of the national government sciences check in new areas new materials of course the private enterprise system. Some are trying to build a better better mousetrap comes along with new materials that speed up construction reduce costs try to keep pace with inflation but unfortunately not so these new programs are constantly coming to us and new types of materials. Most everything you see in a building today is different than it was two years ago plastic pipes. A

lot of standardization of items are going to have. When I asked Has the country completed the interstate construction system not exactly I think it's about 95 or 96 percent complete of the first program that was designed in 1956 which was some forty two thousand miles of super highways. Some areas have been difficult to acquire right away and they've never got it all the way through Baltimore all the way through Boston fell into disrepute with the environmentalist and people like that. So some areas are taking the interstate highway funds that were allocated for those legs and putting it into mass transit subways and things of that category. Do you anticipate that there be an updating of that system. What has to be asked to be with Durham I-85 dream their own dreams were as you mentioned earlier the trucks that Piedmont Crescent destruction and only ends up in Norfolk or something it was just carrying. Terrific volumes of traffic and I think when I 40 if and when ever it comes from the research try

alone up there near hills where that that road from Hillsboro to Greensboro will very shortly after that be constructed six lanes wide so just for what do you see looking ahead in terms of water as a power generating source and building more dams you with your harnessing Leo. It was with Jerry Jones Now how about what you see around the country even in our region. As we all know after last season the best sites have already been picked and built on a course like water is one of the great resources that we need to be paying a lot of attention to because some of these days we can't run out. Chapel Hill only has its annual problems of water and some one of these days maybe they'll face up to the issue but I don't see many very large dam projects in the future I think the more tributaries and more small dams that don't impact on the environment as much as the very large projects where they inundate thousands and thousands of acres at one time.

As you ride around looking at new plants now low and dust from the station as it's curried country you don't see the great six and seven story structures anymore you see along with low lying facilities. Is that a product of choice or materials or design or which are basically economics. If you've got a reasonably low land cost of course that's the cheapest way to build a limited lots of elevators lots of high price higher level construction costs. The course still in the big cities. They're turned down 30 storey buildings and building 40s and 50s. Everywhere you look I think about our own state where do we need to be finishing up and highway construction or is it pretty well complete or well known that being complete course of our waste from Raley's this area of Durham Chapel Hill to the two ports of Morehead and Wilmington the just now getting really underway and there are contracts and that's badly needed as I see it

and I think the improved but I think I've forgotten how many hundreds and hundreds of bridges in North Carolina that are named say for our school buses and we need to be paying some attention to that element of our highway construction program and we are but some out of funds whether we get the funds now as a lot of us a lifetime of moving around and traveling and all the interesting places we written down any of this. You ought to do a book said. I felt almost like going to go but you can talk about it but it's really been a great and wonderful experience that has been thoroughly enjoyed It's been a wonderful life and I want to experience it. When I have as far as our state is concerned we're back in just a second you see a good future. Well I think the victory in this triangle area growth is spectacular and I think that research triangle is just unbelievable. I've got to cut us off. We've run out of time but thank you for coming on. Mark a lot of people think such an interesting game. Thank you it was great.

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