Building a new career as the boss

Artisan has 10 full-time employees including Lewis and his senior vice president of sales, Christopher Miller. Most of its work has been in California, but Artisan has shipped fences to a dozen states and is negotiating some overseas contracts, including one that would use company molds to build walls for inexpensive houses. Lewis expects the company to gross $6 million in sales this year.

Lewis' training and business background may help him be efficient in a field that is notoriously disorganized, said Barry LePatner, a New York attorney and construction industry analyst who wrote the book "Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry."

Construction, LePatner said in an interview, "is essentially a mom-and-pop industry" that has "the worst per-employee efficiency of any nonfarm industry in America." He estimates that those who hire construction labor are getting only about half the value they paid for. The other half is wasted through such inefficiencies as late deliveries and workers waiting for instructions or engaged in activities such as riding hoists at the job site.

The highly fragmented construction business is slow to change and has been disgracefully slow to embrace new technologies, LePatner said. "It's the industry that time forgot."

Lewis acknowledges that development sites with their armies of small subcontractors can be inefficient, especially if someone falls behind, but construction work is not as predictable as, say, making a car. "There are millions of steps in any construction project, and a slight delay affects equilibrium," he said

Organizing multiple subcontractors is tough, Lewis said, but top job site supervisors "are as good as managers at any service company in America."

And for smaller companies like his to succeed, "You have to do what you say you are going to do," Lewis said. "That's just basic service."

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roger.vincent@latimes.com

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Artisan Precast

Business: The Los Angeles company makes concrete fences that look like stone, wood and other materials.

Owner: Craig Lewis

Employees: 10

Revenue: $6 million estimated for 2008

Products: The firm makes seven fence styles that range from $15 to $50 a linear foot.