Central Penn Business Journal
By: Michael Yoder September 30, 2019 11:44 am
Paul Navarro stands in the lobby of his business, Navarro & Wright Consulting Engineers Inc., which has been in New Cumberland since 1996. (Photo: Submitted)
From an early age, Paul Navarro was familiarized with construction sites and what it meant to be industrious.
During the summer months of high school, the Mexican native worked for his uncle’s residential construction company, the former J.J. Navarro Inc. Custom Builders in Steelton, where he did everything from digging ditches to pour footers for basement to carrying lumber up on decks to frame a house.
Navarro’s industrious nature and a love of building things led him to establish one of the largest minority-owned businesses in Central Pennsylvania, Navarro & Wright Consulting Engineers Inc., where he serves as president and CEO. Initially starting with four employees and an office in New Cumberland in 1996, the engineering firm has grown to nearly 200 employees and branches in Philadelphia, Allentown and Maryland.
“It’s all happened because of blood, sweat and tears and the desire to offer our employees opportunities for growth,” Navarro said. “If you’re not growing, you’re dying, so we’re always looking for new markets and offering new services. It’s our culture and business model.”
Navarro said always had an aptitude for math and science. After emigrating from Mexico with his family when he was 13, he graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School and later attended the University of Pittsburgh where he received a degree in civil engineering.
He went on to work for East Pennsboro Township-based Gannett Fleming after graduating from college and would eventually land with a firm in Lancaster doing municipal projects like water and sewer systems.
When Navarro and former business partner Chuck Wright teamed up in the late ’90s to create Navarro & Wright Consulting Engineers, both decided to take their expertise in civil engineering to go out on their own after the company they worked for in Lancaster was sold off to another group.
They originally targeted municipal authorities that owned and operated water and sewer systems, later moving into the transportation sector with highway and bridge projects. Navarro said he can still remember his excitement when the firm picked up its first municipal client in 1997, designing a retaining wall along a busy roadway in Steelton to allow access for fire trucks.
Overcoming early hurdles, Navarro said the firm took a leap forward when it became certified as a minority owned business under the Unified Certification System. He said that certification allowed them to competitively bid on projects in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and through entities like PennDOT, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and the Delaware River Port Authority.
Navarro said federally funded projects carry a minority participation requirement, and those requirements allowed the firm to enter the transportation field, providing surveying, geo-technical engineering and other civil engineering and to eventually add services that grew the business in different divisions. The certification also allowed them to work on projects in neighboring states, including Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.
“That certification was sort of our ticket into the game,” Navarro said.
The growth of the firm was something Navarro said he never would have imagined when it first opened in 1996. He said he spoke to a reporter and forecasted they would be up to 15 employees by the end of 1997 and finished with $96,000 in revenue the first year.
Today, Navarro said the company has been steadily inching its way into breaking onto the Engineering News-Record Top 500 list, an industry publication listing the largest engineering firms by revenue. He said an annual growth of between 6 and 7 percent per year for the last seven years has brought the company’s annual revenue to $22.8 million, just outside the No. 500 company on the list with $23.5 million in revenue.
Challenges still remain in his business, Navarro said, including the uncertainty in public works funding that remains at the mercy of politicians, deciding where and when they want to see money flow for infrastructure projects.
The current low unemployment numbers has also made it difficult to find qualified workers to fill needed positions, Navarro said, all while dealing with a constant stream of phone calls from “head-hunters” trying to steal his talent away from the firm.
A creative alternative Navarro has attempted to facilitate in finding young talent is to bring in interns as part of their development process, especially focusing on Hispanic and other minority students for mentoring. He said he has worked with Gloria Merrick, executive director of the Latino Hispanic American Community Center in Harrisburg, to try and mentor students interested in science and engineering.
“If I could do it, then anybody can do it,” Navarro laughed.
Another way Navarro has attempted to give back to his community was helping to create the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Central Pennsylvania in 2007. He said the goal of the chamber was to promote the growth of Hispanic-owned businesses through cultural and networking events.
The chamber has been inactive for several months as funding sources dried up, but Navarro said the group was looking to host an event at the State Capitol building on Sept. 16 to commemorate Mexican Independence Day.
“We wanted to move the entire Hispanic community in a positive direction while recognizing some of the challenges that Hispanic businesses and startup businesses face in trying to become a mainstream business and an establish themselves,” Navarro said. “It’s not an easy path.”
Navarro said he has accomplished most of the goals he set in his 30-plus year career in engineering, but he would still like to have more opportunities to work overseas. In the past, he has worked on infrastructure projects in Venezuela and Chile, but Navarro said he would like the chance to conduct a water infrastructure project in his native Mexico, especially around his hometown of La Barca near Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco.
And while Navarro said most days he’s “chained to a desk” and doesn’t get out into the field as much as he would like because of business needs, he said he still enjoys seeing a project take shape from a concept into a physical structure, something that started with his uncle in Steelton.
“My exposure to the construction industry was what led me to what I do today,” Navarro said. “I thought, ‘Uncle Joe makes a pretty good living doing this. I think engineering is something I at least want to study.’ And I do enjoy seeing construction projects coming out of the ground.”