JEFF MORELAND SR.

Organization: Established in 2004, Raimore Construction is one of the most accomplished General Contractor companies in Oregon. Black-owned and operated, over 80% of their staff, from management to field operations, are people of color and/or women. Specializing in heavy civil construction, their portfolio of work is next level, and includes some of the biggest public and private projects in the State. In 2018, Raimore Construction won the 80-million-dollar bid for the TriMet Division Transit Project. At the time, it was the largest contract ever awarded to a certified minority firm in the State. Then they shattered their own record in 2020, landing the Prime contractor position as part of a joint venture with Hamilton/Sundt, for the now billion-dollar-plus I-5 Rose Quarter Project (I-5RQ).

Leadership: Jeff Moreland Sr., is the President and Managing Partner of Raimore Construction. If you have had even a brief conversation with Moreland, you quickly understand that he feels deeply responsible for the people he leads.

“I am a man of faith and it drives everything I do. I look at my company as a hospital, especially because 70% of our management and 50% of our field staff are people of color, specifically Black people. My whole focus is how do I now take what has been given to me and give that to others. I see employing people as a blessing and a ministry. It’s an opportunity to help them grow and become the best versions of themselves, to help them get free of their traumas, because it is amazing how much trauma our people have,” shared Moreland.

Staff: With a staff of nearly 100, Raimore Construction has employed more people of color to work on construction sites than any other firm in the state. For Moreland, that’s restorative justice. Where other firms struggle to find skilled Black labor, Raimore excels. Moreland says this is because he seeks talent above and beyond the parameters set within an industry historically owned and dominated by white men.

“If you have a willingness to work, then that’s all you need for me. I am able to see the diamonds in the rough, because I look for talent, and Black people are the most talented people on the planet. That’s why we shape the culture for the world,” stated Moreland.

He also doesn’t want the lack of a formal education and other barriers to be a reason for young people to succeed. “A lot of our people don’t come in as engineers because our kids aren’t being afforded those opportunities to go to engineering school. So I bring a kid in whether they have a degree or not and if they have the aptitude, we work with them, hold them accountable and help them strive for excellence, because we are excellent.”

Getting the Gold: With all of the success Raimore Construction has been able to amass, its foundation was built on the simple willingness to begin. “I started with a truck. One truck.”, laughed Moreland, who has traveled a long road on the rise to where he is today. He went to college because he was told he needed to “get one of them good jobs,” and then did the corporate dance for a while as an executive. However, he always had a side hustle, like buying and fixing up houses. He finally spun out of the corporate world to start his own consulting firm where, coincidentally, many of his clients were contractors.

“That’s when I realized construction was a gold mine of opportunity. People don’t realize that of the top 50 companies in Oregon, 26 of them are construction companies,” revealed Moreland.

So he launched his own construction firm and took the time to grow it. For 15 years, he laid bricks, poured concrete and tied rebar by day, then in the evening, he was in the office doing the paperwork. “You can’t manage or run anything if you don’t know how to do it yourself,” states Moreland.

Eventually, his company started to grow, at first hiring people from his network of peers and then later, from a network of youngsters who grew up watching him and his partners. Today, his team is fully resourced. “We win these jobs because we are competent and we don’t need you to tell us how to do our jobs. Give us the plans and we will go build it,” stated Moreland confidently.

Philanthropy: Building Black Better

Raimore’s footprint in the Black community is deep and so is the love he has for his people.

“We’ve been taught to have this ‘only one’ syndrome, but for me, if I win, everybody’s got to win, otherwise we don’t win.” One of the unique things that drew Moreland’s firm to bid for the I5 Rose Quarter project was its potential to change the entire landscape of his people and his community.

“It is a billion dollar contract that has the potential to infuse millions and millions into our community in terms of living wage jobs,” he shared proudly. “When those that come in as an apprentice go on to being a journeyman, they will be making $60,000-$70,000 a year, enough income to buy a house. Foremans make $70,000.00-$90,000.00 a year and superintendents make over $100,000.00. The opportunity to give these kinds of jobs to our people is very critical for me because that is how you change and build wealth in a community. We keep these dollars amongst ourselves like Black Wall Street and Greenwood because you have to have the dollars first in order to get it going.” His approach to supporting community based events and programs is similar. “We need to be the first dollars that go in instead of always looking for White benevolence, because our first dollars need to be ours. Especially to support the things that are upwardly mobile and that are going to change our conditions. We don’t just want to say we love each other, we need to show that we love each other by our actions,” Moreland concludes.