Business View Caribbean - April 2016 29
New York and Florida. Initially, our reaction was, ‘No
way; we could never do that. All our competitive advan-
tages are here. We don’t see how that could even be
possible.’ That was five years ago. But more recently,
we decided that we’re going to expand and establish
construction management operations in Florida and
New York. Therefore, we currently find ourselves in the
process of obtaining licenses to perform as a general
contractor in these states. We have some help from
existing clients, but mostly, we need to introduce our-
selves; we need to let the local industries know who
we are in Puerto Rico and what we can do for them in
Florida and New York.”
While the recent recession in Puerto Rico has severely
hampered the construction sector throughout the is-
land, Venegas says that his company has managed
to hold its own during that time span. “If you graph
the growth or extinction of the construction economy
during the past five years against our performance,”
he says, “it’s remarkable. We’ve been able to sustain
good performance in an extremely onerous market.
And it is a real challenge to maintain that. If we can
maintain our current performance in our current in-
dustry in Puerto Rico during the next five years, we’ll
be very satisfied. And I would like to see a meaningful
growth of successful operations in the United States,
as well.”
As Venegas Construction begins its next period of de-
velopment and expansion, Venegas reflects on what
has made the company so successful in the past
and how this new generation of leadership plans to
continue that same trajectory. “We did not become a
specialty contractor to do our projects,” he says. “We
just learned, educated ourselves, got the necessary
