JULY 2021 - TAMPA, FLORIDA:
Bay to Bay Stone Restoration, based out of Hollywood, Fla., has developed quite the reputation. They're the stadium guys - so much so that they're BASF's premium stadium installers, according to them. Led by CEO Jeff Poritz and Project Executive/Partner Jeremiah Mitchell, the company takes its jobs seriously.
One of the most recent projects for Bay to Bay was to recoat the concourse and concession stand floors for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' stadium. According to Poritz, the old traffic coating at Raymond James Stadium was patchy, and it needed to be replaced. The coatings company has crews located across the United States, but it was their local crew in Plant City, Fla, just outside of Tampa, that was in charge of this one. As hometown heroes, you'd think the Bucs would be Bay to Bay's most exciting project, but they don't seem to pick favorites. "We're fans of all professional teams," Poritz joked. That includes the Bucs, of course, as well as the Houston Astros, the Corpus Christi Hooks, and the Atlanta Falcons, to name a few.
Mitchell agreed: "We're fans of whatever stadium we're working in." With the work being completed for the stadium operators, Tampa Sports Authority, the coatings crew thought it was going to be a race to the finish line...but was it?
Culture Crew
Poritz and Mitchell met about six years ago working in the industry and combined forces shortly after. "We started teaming up on things, and we realized that we had a good working relationship and that we should work together," said Poritz. "And then once we started working together, everything just really kicked into overdrive."
For starters, according to the duo, they've built a reputation in the industry, which is what has helped them to become the go-to for stadiums. "We don't really chase stadiums, we get the calls," Poritz said. "And then the résumés and reputation speak for themselves — that's everything to us. Presentation, cleanliness, professionalism, attention to detail, all of that, client relationship — that's what makes us who we are."
The two's style of leading Bay to Bay includes a huge focus on the company's culture. And that starts from the top down. "When you're doing a stadium and a project that size, everything has to be in sync to get it done," Poritz explained. "If there's any missing chain along the whole system, the whole thing kind of breaks apart." He said that working on these types of large projects has helped the team be able to anticipate and mitigate potential problems along the way. "It's really what makes us who we are - pretty much from management down to the technicians, all the way through. It's not just good guys in the field, it's not just good guys in the office, it takes everybody to be able to do that," he continued.
It should be no surprise that these stadium guys follow a team-forward attitude, too. In fact, that's the key ingredient in Bay to Bay's success, according to Poritz and Mitchell. "We come from athletic backgrounds: Jeff was a boxer, I played ball in college," Mitchell said. "We go out there, we want to win." Poritz seconded the sentiment: "Everybody does their job and has one goal in mind, and that's to win."
The company, which is named for a street that connects Hillsborough Bay and Old Tampa Bay on the appropriately named Interbay Peninsula, has a total of 40 employees. And when it comes to finding crew members that will fit, Poritz lets the company culture speak for itself. "When the culture comes from the top to the bottom, we don't need to search it out, I don't need to interview about culture," Poritz explained.
"They're going to fall into the culture or they re not going to be a part of this team." Their experience has been that people want to be successful and work at a company with "good" culture, so they do what they need to do. "There's no micromanaging in our company from any level because everybody comes, and they show up, and we want to do our best. Everybody wants to do their best — that's the truth," Poritz continued. "Every bit of our success has to do with culture. The money, making money, and being successful is a byproduct of good culture. That's a fact."
On this project, that company-wide "go for gold" mentality showed itself in speed. Work on "Ray Jay" Stadium, home to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s Outback Bowl, was slated to take 16 weeks to complete. The crew finished in only 11. "We were going so fast, I had to schedule and work with other contractors, telling them where they needed to go next to get out of our way," Mitchell said. Bay to Bay met with those other subs on the jobsite on a weekly basis to coordinate and communicate. "After the first couple of weeks, they kind of just put me out in front and said, 'Jeremiah, tell us where you're going to be so everybody can get the hell out of your way,"" he said. Poritz believes that speed harkened back to their culture: "We're disciplined. The whole company's disciplined. We re competitive. It's an athletic way of running the company. There's no finger pointing. It's all about culture. Everybody does their job, everybody plays their position, and it enables us to move quickly."
Having the other contractors on board with Bay to Bay's style certainly helped keep them moving. "Everybody who worked with us was great; we had absolutely no arguments or problems with any other trades. We worked very well with them, and they did as well," Mitchell said. "They reciprocated the respect. They were great to work with." It also helped that the weather didn't throw a wrench in their plans. You might expect to have rain delays in Florida, but it played well with others on this project! "We always have to deal with weather. We got really lucky, especially for it being in Tampa," Mitchell said. "We only lost maybe two to four days due to rain. We got lucky on the weather." In fact, Poritz mentioned that any of the few challenges that they did experience — rain and other delays - happened at the start of the project. "All the challenges presented themselves right in the very first section, and then from there, we kind of knew how to game plan it from the rest of the way out," he said.
The crew held weekly safety meetings every Monday morning with the supervisor and used walkie-talkies to help them stay in constant communication on such a vast jobsite.
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