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Tom Ralston Concrete,
Santa Cruz, Calif.
A passion for innovation keeps this third-generation contractor excited about the trade. Ralston learned the concrete trade, working beside his dad on driveways, curbs and gutters, sidewalks, and small foundations.
by Brad Jeske

He has been creative behind the scenes as well, where he and his office staff have developed a software package called Job Manager. “This software allows the entry of literally thousands of detail items,” he explains. “We may have a house that has a driveway with bands that are Oyster White with Antique Amber acid stain, and the panels are Victorian Swirl finish with a Sandstone color hardener.”

All this data can be entered into the program, and with one click of the button a bid is created. “Although the program was expensive and took some time to develop in-house, it has brought a huge benefit to TRC,” he says. “For example, we can track pours, and mix designs, record client conversations, check payment schedules, and more. It even has a place to record the temperature of the concrete and note what the weather was like on the day of the pour. We constantly feed it with information to help us grow our business intelligently.” The software was a $60,000 investment.

Ralston believes that most people working in the decorative concrete industry are pioneers. “You can become very creative out of necessity when you have $15,000 or $20,000 on the line,” he says.

Recently, while working on a thin-top overlay, the wind started blowing bits of bark onto the site. “The pieces didn’t really reveal themselves until we poured the Ardex. Because the bark was much lighter than the Ardex, they began to float to the surface. With Ardex we only have about twenty minutes and after that you are done.”

The crew had to get on their hands and knees to fish out all the bits of bark. “The longer you wait, the harder it gets. Trowel marks will remain and the product refuses to self level,” Ralston says. “We had one area that had all of these trowel lines. The next day we went in and cut score lines every two feet on center. After, we sanded the trowel lines that were most noticeable, and made it look like a pattern that was designed in the entry.” In the decorative industry, one needs to be inventive out of necessity, he says, adding that “many a project gone awry has prompted us to restore it with a creative effort.”

In early 1992, after listening to a weatherman say that there were possible light showers in the late afternoon north and 75 miles away, Ralston poured four driveways in a subdivision only to get hammered by driving rains shortly after 10:30 a.m. “We shortly thereafter became ‘experts in polymer overlays’” Ralston says with a grin, “and even pulled in a bit of profit on the job.”

When you’re working with as fickle a medium as concrete, you always have to prepare for the unexpected, he says, especially when you consider the variables of inaccurate concrete batches, admixtures, acid stains that don’t promote a good color, or concrete color batches from a ready mix plant that vary from one batch to the next. So how does a contractor minimize these issues?

Take notes while on the job, he says, so that when problems arise there’s a database of information that can be referenced. He is a strong advocate of keeping an eye on details, holding weekly meetings with his lead employees.

He also sends his lead workers to outside seminars as often as possible. Ralston himself has been teaching at decorative concrete training seminars for nearly 10 years. He speaks at industry conferences for the Decorative Concrete Council (and serves on the board) and spoke this year at the World of Concrete on concrete countertops and acid staining. He has recently teamed up with countertop manufacturer Buddy Rhodes of San Francisco to do training seminars for concrete countertops.

Managing 52 employees in various divisions provides a unique challenge, he says. To have a successful team, you must have people who can bring both talent and work ethic to the job. “Without work ethic, they aren’t going to bring the project to the level we expect,” he says. “Without talent or experience, they can’t pull it off because they aren’t at that level yet.”

Over the last fifteen years, he has seen lots of turnover because employees just didn’t fit into the company culture. “They either didn’t have the work ethic, talent, or the temperament, so they didn’t last here. We try to promote our culture as being cooperative and respectful, but we drive hard too. It’s the nature of the beast, and concrete doesn’t wait for anyone.”

Positive values, friendly service and quality work are the cornerstones of the company.

“It is so easy to make an ordinary job extraordinary,” Ralston says. “Just add some decorative deep joints or round a step … there are hundreds of things you can do for little or no extra cost and clients will love you for it.”

But operating a decorative concrete company and trying to be on the cutting edge is tricky, he says. “Our ultimate goal is to put a smile on our clients’ face, but we have had to learn the hard way that the flip side of this goal is to be profitable at the same time. So many decorative projects can easily run over budget. There are a lot of starving artists out there — and we really don’t want to be one of them.”