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Quad State Business Journal – Page 1. Vol. 15 No. 5, March 2004 Supplier to Home Builders is Sold on Steel/Stucco Panels by Maggie Wolff Peterson Mounted behind Donald Stevens' desk are photos of iconic steel structures: the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge. Stevens believes in steel, and wants to make his own mark with it internationally. His intended structures, however, are not soaring landmarks but modest family homes in developing nations far from glamour. Stevens' Frederick County, Va.-based company, Stucc-On-Steel, is founded on a couple of ideas he developed to condense homebuilding to some basic procedures, using materials that can be found or manufactured virtually anywhere and employing local, unspecialized labor. The company's structures are assembled like simple puzzles, from steel panels that snap together using little more than a rubber mallet. They're finished with a specialized stucco for which Stevens is seeking a patent that is far sturdier than regular stucco and therefore able to be load bearing. His goal is to forge development deals in nations in which common people currently live in substandard structures that are especially vulnerable to devastation from natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Stevens' is a virtual company, in that its staff and equipment can be assembled onsite as each job is undertaken. He and a partner are headquartered in an office in Fort Collier industrial Park, and have some assembly machinery in a warehouse nearby. But the idea is not to export product as much as expertise. "You must use materials close to the job site, using labor that is indigenous to the area," Stevens said. The inspiration for Stucc-on-Steel came to Stevens as he sat in bed one night, mulling the process by which steel framing is clad in exterior siding. To make a product that could be constructed easily anywhere, the traditional method of attaching siding with screws would have to be abandoned as too labor intensive. Eventually, Stevens came up with a system in which the stucco-supporting lathing snaps into place. No fasteners are required. Stevens was on the verge realizing his vision, with a plan to construct 38,000 homes in Juarez, Mexico, over a period of ten years. Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 changed the landscape of international business. As the mood of the United States became insular, the domestic economy turned sour. Concurrently, the value of the peso fell. "When the U.S. gets sick, Mexico gets pneumonia," Stevens said. The Mexican plan was scrapped. Since then, Stevens has restructured his business plan to keep his company afloat until an international deal comes through. He is building houses, one at a time, in custom subdivisions in Virginia to maintain cash flow, while networking globally for future plans. "The international ventures are very difficult to close," Stevens said. "We have to make sure we are profitable and can keep the lights on." Stevens has begun working with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, a state-run group that does a lot of the legwork to promote Virginia businesses abroad. For example, a $900 fee to the partnership gets Stevens a coordinated trip to Brazil and Chile this month, with meetings set, a translator provided and potential business partners pre-qualified. "I want to make sure I'm meeting with a guy that has the financial wherewithal," Stevens said. "They help you with the cultural stuff, too." Stevens said he's already been invited to go to Iraq to negotiate that country's rebuilding. Under Governor Mark Warner, the VEDP will support the venture. "When the time comes to build [Warner] wants Virginia there," Stevens said. And he plans to go. "If you're in business, you have to take risks," he said. A basic three-bedroom, one-bath home takes 23 steel panels and goes up three times faster than a stick-built house, Stevens said. It has superior durability, since steel is impervious to termites, mold and rot, and resists fire, and the method by which the walls are grounded in the foundation makes it hurricane and earthquake resistant as well, he said. The exterior "skin" is made from spread-on stucco that even covers the roof. "It makes the building a lot stronger because it integrates everything together," Stevens said. "Now the building is an integrated mass. In concept, an earthquake, a tornado, couldn't get at all these components. Only a man-made blast could shear the steel out of the concrete." Worldwide, Stevens said, wood is considered an inferior building material. Internationally, construction engineers find it curious that Americans construct their homes from it. Besides, it takes an acre of trees - about 40 or 50 - to make one average house that in steel, takes the equivalent of six recycled scrap cars. Steel housing is much more environmentally friendly than American stick-built homes, Stevens said. A steel skeleton covered in a mud-like substance is "technology that makes sense and is culturally acceptable," Stevens said. And simple, onsite construction and finishing creates jobs. "Eight guys can stucco one house in one day. It can create an economy," Stevens said. Educated as an architect, Stevens began a design/build company in 1994 that was contracted by a custom-home client to build a steel house in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. “When I learned about light–gauge steel, I was hooked," he said. Stevens' subsequent venture into steel-only construction fell through because of a falling out with a partner, he said. Even now, he faces hurdles. His patents for the system by which homes are fitted together, as well as his formula for high-strength stucco, are still pending in Washington, D.C., where they have been traveling through the federal bureaucracy since 2001. As much as he wants to send his products into the world, Stevens is concerned that they will be copied before they are copyright-protected. As Stevens inks the contracts he believes will come, he expects to add personnel in Winchester, to travel internationally and train on-site construction workers. He will also need sales personnel, a laboratory facility to test product upgrades and some manufacturing workers to construct sample homes. "My technology is going to create some serious jobs here when it hits," he said. |
