Business View Caribbean | August 2019

53 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN AUGUST 2019 and then lay them out into mats. Daniel explains, “My great uncle was around before that transition. He was a pioneer of the industry in the Virgin Islands; the first one to bring a permanent asphalt plant down here. He was there for the building of the highway on St. Croix. Back then, asphalt was new, just coming up, and over the years, it’s what we honed our company into. My great uncle and my grandfather, originally, came down as brothers to construct buildings. They did a lot of the housing facilities, such as the Williams Delight villas in St. Croix, but afterwards, they started working on road construction and that became our niche and we went forward in that direction. Now, it’s job after job, doing our work and getting bigger.” On November 8, 2017, just over a month after the September hurricanes ripped through the Virgin Islands, VI Paving announced to the Consortium that the company was up and running and had been ready to get on with paving roads on St. Croix for at least two weeks. The comments followed Governor Kenneth Mapp’s statement during a hurricane recovery press briefing at the West Indian Company (W.I.C.O.) in St. Thomas, where he responded to a question about the condition of the roads by saying all the paving companies in the USVI (one in St. Thomas and two on St. Croix) were damaged by the storms and could not perform work on the worsening thoroughfares. At the time, Robert Schierloh, said “Virgin Islands Paving is prepared to work. I think the best way to put it is, ‘Bring it on. Bring on the work; we’re ready.’” Residents were complaining about the poor state of many of the roads before Hurricanes Irma and Maria, but the situation worsened following the storms and the incessant rain, which caused severe erosion in some areas. In the months that ensued, VI Paving worked steadily to help bring roads in the territory back to a safe and passable condition. Speaking to road paving in general, Robert also admitted at the time that work had substantially decreased. “In the previous three years, we’ve done about a third of what we normally do in road construction,” he said. “We’ve had to diversify. Now we’re doing water lines, we’re doing sewer work, we’re doing subdivision development, earth V I RGIN I SLANDS PAV ING, INC .