MEMBER SPOTLIGHT


federal contracting work. A decade or so later, he decided to head back to school to obtain his degree in construction management. Sixteen years ago, Galarza hung out his own shingle working as a HUBZone and Small Disadvan- taged (SDB) firm specializing in heavy civil, marine construction, infrastructure, building construction, emergency response and environmental restoration work. Over the years Yerba Buena


Engineering & Construction has built a wide array of public projects in the Bay area and beyond. Projects span the gamut, and have included the Hunters Point Shipyard seawall construction project (2018) for the U.S. Navy, Gun Mole Pier building demolition at Hunters Point Shipyard, an emergency tiger exhibit project at the San Francisco Zoo, the Redwood Creek Bridge placement in Muir Beach, and the Telegraph Hill Rock Bolts Installation project in San Francisco, to name just a few.


Nontraditional Track Trough it all, Miguel Galarza has


never forgotten his roots. “We’ve had good years and bad, and


all along I’ve kept in mind where I came from, my background,” he notes. “Not having come from a traditional track, in the world of construction and business ownership, I’ve looked to find talent where others may not be looking.” Some of his best employees came


straight from the non-traditional hiring playbook. Take Priscilla, the first employee that he brought on board after opening the company. “She was a woman of color who was 60-plus years old, recently divorced, hadn’t had a job in years,” he said. “She stayed with me 10 years and was the best guardian of the gate. She answered the phone professionally, she appreciated her job, and you couldn’t have anybody more loyal working for you.” And then there was the young


man from the local (Bayview/Hunter’s Point) neighborhood, who came in to talk to Galarza about his aspirations to


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tials do you bring, what degree do you have. Sometimes, you lose out on somebody who is hungrier. Te talent might be right there in front of you, but you’re not looking.” As a regular guest lecturer


Gun Mole Pier Bldg Demolition, Hunters Point Shipyard


do more. “He had been doing flagging work for a competitor – and he hated flagging,” Galarza says. “I could see he was much more talented than that. We put him in the operating engineers’ union, and he also became a mechanic. He stayed with me for two years, then went to Kiewit, and now he is a manager for Caltrans.” Galarza shares another story of


“one of the best hires I ever made” — a 60-plus, out-of-work engineer who had lost his job when an established general contractor went out of business. Where others had overlooked him,


Galarza saw a diamond in the rough. “He hadn’t had a job in three years


and didn’t have a degree or computer skills. But he had skills none of my young engineers had – organizational skills, letter writing, RFI writing skills,” Galarza says. “To this day, we use a lot of the templates that he developed for the company. He just needed a break, and somebody to believe he had the experience without that degree to be able to help a team.”


Entrepreneurial Spirit It is that willingness to look outside


the box, develop from within and invest in people that Galarza feels sets his firm apart. More than pedigree, he looks for an entrepreneurial spirit – and the hunger to succeed. “We are looking for that fire-in-


the-belly entrepreneur type spirit. I’m a firm believer those are the ones who will treat your business like it’s their business,” he says. “As business owners, we often can get stuck on what creden-


to engineering and construction management students at San Francisco State University, Galarza stresses the importance of “soft skills” – the ability to speak to a client and develop business, write a cogent letter, or articulate a position without being overly aggressive. “We need the guy who can look at a budget, understand what’s in


it, convey why it’s not in the scope of the work and why the client should be compelled to pay us,” he says.


Mentoring Others Mentoring has played a big role


in Galarza’s business success. He has been a mentor with the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, and formerly participated as a mentor in the AGC-Caltrans Mentor-Protegee program. “I’ve tried to always make myself


available to the young men and women that are starting their own companies, to make sure they know I may be your competitor, but I’m not here to put you out of business – I want to see you grow,” he comments. He considers it a personal source of


pride when his own employees move on to seek and achieve success on a larger scale elsewhere. “I have had the honor of having


at least three or four women leave my firm with the knowledge and experience to really take off and become senior mangers at other organizations,” he says. One ended up running the bond program for a school district in Contra Costa county and is responsible for several hundred million in construction program. “We’re all busy as business owners,”


Galarza concludes. “But it’s really just about taking the time to pay attention to who our employees are, what their goals are, what their aspirations are and making sure that we try and position them as best we can to succeed.” 


Associated General Contractors of California 19


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