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Volume 17
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Number 10
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OCTOBER 2015
From father to son
A captain of industrial
At JV Electric, Jesse Villarreal Jr. is carrying on the legacy his father started building almost half-a-century ago.
Robert Ober found his niche in the industrial market when he formed EPC contracting company, Robert Ober & Associates.
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ith 45 years of history surging through JV Electric, Jesse Villarreal Jr. is working to make sure the company that his father started has a bright future. Jesse Villarreal Sr. was the president and general manager of Jesse & Chandler Electrical Contractors. He was also one of the owners who started the business in 1952. In 1970, he went out on his own and established Jesse Villarreal Electrical & HVAC Contractors. “In high school, I worked for my dad during the summers,” recalls Jesse Villarreal Jr. “I got my journeyman’s license soon after graduating from college in 1983, and after that I went to work for my dad full-time, mostly as an estimator. Af-
ter my dad retired from the electric business in ’91, I got my master’s license.” With his master’s license and his bachelor’s degree in business administration from UTSA, Villarreal took over his father’s business Jan. 1, 1992. In 2002, he decided the company would no longer do air conditioning and focus strictly on electrical, and then he changed the name to JV Electric. “When my dad split from Chandler, he didn’t miss a beat,” he says. “The business kept growing, and I’m just carrying on what he started. I don’t claim to be near the businessman that he was. He had a lot of other business interests. When he retired in ’91, he had plenty of continued on Page 24
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nsure whether he was consulting or selling as a manufacturers rep, Robert Ober found himself struggling for years with what he believed to be a conflict of interests. He realized his goal of resolving that predicament when he formed Robert Ober & Associates in 2006. “I said to myself: someday, I’ll have the opportunity to have a firm that doesn’t represent any manufacturers but yet we know just as much as anybody about what these manufacturers manufacture,” recalls Ober. “We’ll continue to stay on top of what it is they do, and we’ll consult our clients and become real design build, or engineer procure construct [EPC] contractors for our niche markets.
We’ll be able to get on the same side of the table as these clients when it comes to selecting machinery and equipment.” To fill the niche as a full-service industrial contractor, Ober established his EPC provider company with two divisions, Plant Architects to do the design side and Plant Outfitters to do the build side. His team includes industrial and commercial architects and industrial, mechanical, civil and structural engineers working for the build purpose, typically an industrial facility. They also do terminals for intermediate storage of silica sand, cement and ceramic proppant. continued on Page 24
Delivering a clean slate
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s the Windcrest area revitalization draws new businesses to the neighborhood, Rhino Design Build did a building renovation for the new UPS Store that moved into 5003 Walzem Road across the street from Rackspace. E. Daniel Garcia, owner of Rhino Design Build and the project manager/ superintendent on the job, began work on the project in April and finished in September. The UPS Store shares space with a Boost Mobile in a small, free-standing building that is a total of roughly 3,500sf. The project scope included renovating the entire exterior of the building and the interior on the UPS side of the building. Previously, the location was an Al’s Formal Wear tuxedo rental shop, which meant that the layout had to be reconfigured for UPS. Rhino gutted the space and
made it “a white box” for UPS to come in after completion to do its own tenant finish out. “We started with the demolition of the interior space,” recalls Garcia. “We took out all the interior walls, ceiling grid, the two-by-fours on the walls, sheetrock and flooring. All the plumbing and electrical was demoed. “We sprayed foam insulation on the roof decking to give it better energy efficiency, and then we basically rebuilt the inside. We came back with metal studs, batt insulation on the exterior walls, new electrical, new HVAC and new plumbing. “On the exterior, there was an existing canopy that just didn’t work. So, we demoed the entire front of the canopy and rebuilt everything. We came in with steel, new parapet wall, and painted the exterior of the entire building.” Garcia adds that they increased the Rhino Design Build updated the exterior and completely renovated the interior of this space for the new UPS Store (left) in Windcrest.
continued on Page 24