Good Morning.

My name is Keith Rose. I am the President and CEO of Rieth-Riley

Construction. Our company works throughout the state of Indiana

and employees nearly 1,500 employees. We perform dirt work,

pipe work, bridge construction and both asphalt and concrete

paving. This is our 100th year of business in Indiana which ranges

from the early years of building roads with horses and plows, to

constructing the very first section of the Indiana Toll Road, to

rebuilding portions of the Toll Road as part of the Toll Road Lease

and more recently to rebuilding sections of US-31 here on the

north side of Indianapolis. Personally, I am a Civil Engineer by

education and a Contractor by vocation. I’ve been in the business

for over 30 years and have worked in multiple states in various

capacities including field operations, engineering, design and

management and have even worked as a DOT inspector. The

bottom line is – I don’t need to rely on an academic study, a paid

for survey or some think tank to tell me about the construction

industry and how it functions in the real world. Our company has

been actively engaged in it for nearly a century and I’ve lived it for

decades.

Make no mistake about it, public contracts are low bid and low bid

only. There is no negotiation after the bid. No consideration for

prior performance. No consideration for quality of work. No

consideration for safety. No consideration for timeliness. There is

only the low bidder. When it comes to labor, CCW ensures that

there is a level playing field for all contractors.

As an engineer, I look at CCW as a specification for labor. Public

contracts include specifications in order to make sure that the

taxpayer receives a minimum standard of performance. There are

specifications for materials and equipment to make sure that the

material and equipment supplied by the contractor meet or exceed

the minimum design standards. This is to ensure that the finished

product meets or exceeds the contract requirements. CCW is part

and parcel to being a specification for labor in order to ensure that

the low bidder utilizes a sufficiently trained and skilled workforce in

order to deliver a finished project that is built to the design

standards in a safe, timely and efficient manner for the benefit of

all taxpayers.

Those who have pushed for this repeal say that repeal is necessary

to give local companies more opportunities to compete – repealing

CCW will actually give them less opportunity to compete by taking

the level playing field away.

Those who have pushed for this repeal have also said that it would

reduce the average cost of a project by 20%. That math isn’t just

fuzzy, it is down right wrong and purposefully misleading. In my

world, the average labor cost on a typical project ranges from 17%

to 23% - so roughly 20% on average. In order for their claims that

repealing CCW would reduce project costs by 20% to be true, we

would have to donate the entire labor cost. No company can

afford to do that. The bottom line - anyone who claims that repeal

of CCW will reduce project costs by 10 to 20% simply hasn’t done

their homework.

Repeal of CCW would however, lower quality of the work, lower

safety, lower wages, hurt Hoosier employers, hurt Hoosier

employees and therefore hurt the State of Indiana.

HB1019 is based on flawed arguments and simply put, is bad public

policy.

No one who has really taken the time to thoroughly and objectively

do their homework would in clear conscious support this bill.