Michael Farrell, Regional Vice President, Structure Tone

In an interview with Invest:, Michael Farrell, regional vice president of full-service construction company Structure Tone, discussed the need for diversity in terms of the company’s offerings and the team members’ backgrounds and perspectives. “We have to be diversified to grow and provide opportunities for our employees and add value for our clients,” Farrell said.

Could you share a general overview of Structure Tone’s businesses?

Structure Tone was founded in 1971 in New York City as a corporate interiors contractor. We’ve grown to a family of 14 brands under one umbrella, STO Building Group, that creates about $12 billion of annual revenue globally. We’re a diversified business in New Jersey, with core sectors in commercial interiors, mission-critical, healthcare, industrial, life sciences, aviation, and education sectors. We are also active in the sports, entertainment, and retail sectors. 

How would you describe the broader state of the construction and real estate development landscape in New Jersey?

It is diversified compared to some of our other markets. We have to be diversified to grow and provide opportunities for our employees and add value for our clients. Right now, data center work is a large portion of our projects in New Jersey, originating from the financial services sector. It has evolved to cater to many developers and a lot of the hyperscale tech companies. 

Healthcare is another sector that has grown for us in New Jersey. We work with the largest healthcare systems in the state, including Hackensack Meridian Health, Atlantic Health System, and RWJBarnabas. On the industrial side, we’ve done several buildings in the last few years, where we collaborated with our sister company, RC Andersen, and added value for our clients by leveraging their expertise. Aviation is also a sector we have been involved in over the years; for example, at the Newark Liberty International Airport. 

Business and opportunities are growing steadily, even outside of New Jersey. We’re constantly collaborating with our other business units across the country, and that’s where we’ve experienced a lot of organic growth, particularly in the past several years. The corporate office space has certainly bounced back quite a bit since COVID. We’re back to normal levels of business in that sector. As it is a component of our core business, we have the strength and expertise for large and small corporate interior projects. We have a new line of business called Facilities Construction Services, or FCS, launched in 2025, to let our clients know that we like the small stuff, too. The company started with a lot of small projects, which provided opportunities to add value and develop our relationship with our clients. 

What challenges do developers and contractors face, particularly given the current financial conditions? 

Depending on the municipality we’re working in, we can have more challenging permit environments. We bring a lot of expertise to many townships where we know the building departments. That doesn’t always make things happen faster, but based on our experience, we are confident that we can meet our clients’ expectations better than our competition. We offer ourselves as a resource when clients are planning projects. We’ll help them with budgeting, constructability, and the decision-making process to move forward. In this competitive marketplace, it can be a challenge to compete for the small work. We have a deliberate focus on it, so we work with different subcontractors and make sure we have the right teams to be the most competitive on these projects. The clients can see the value of our team members and the partnership we bring to the table.

How does Structure Tone approach the adaptive reuse trend in New Jersey?

Building repositioning is something we focus on. As part of our value-adding effort, we have a building repositioning subject matter expert on our team and available to our clients in New Jersey. We have met with a few clients with office buildings that aren’t leasing right now, and they are looking to reposition to a life science or residential building. There are challenges, but there are also opportunities. We have real examples in New York where we’ve done that successfully. The larger warehouses and data centers are also pushing the market pretty hard. Developers are taking a look at challenges such as power availability. That is the No. 1 limiting factor for those projects, and developers in the state are focusing on how to get power to supply these large data centers, particularly for AI applications. 

What are the challenges facing New Jersey’s construction landscape?

It still takes a certain amount of time to build projects, but the information comes a lot faster. We’re expected to process it faster and respond to it faster. That adds more pressure and stress on our teams, but we are equipped for that. There has to be the right balance between making sure the projects are built with the highest quality and in the safest manner. Some municipalities lag in terms of tech adoption compared to the private sector. Many municipalities have new online systems that increase efficiency during permit applications. Our teams have the utmost respect and great relationships with the municipalities, so we get them involved as early as possible. 

There was a lot of foresight regarding the shortage of construction professionals when I started working in the industry. Now, we are focused on attracting talent from many different sources. We have great women in our construction group, with a solid infrastructure of support within the company, because we need more women in our industry. This is a place that will support them to grow their career and experience. We have a robust internship program with universities in New Jersey and the surrounding states. In New Jersey alone, we’ll have 10 to 12 summer interns at any given time, and we often offer full-time employment to some interns. The program now has a defined curriculum where we’re getting these college graduates to experience all of our departments for approximately three and a half years. We build our culture from those college graduates understanding their role, because it helps with teamwork down the road. We have a great family culture that respects and looks for diversity, not only in background, but also in thought. The incredible thought leadership in this organization results in a lot of excellent leadership training provided for executives and all of our staff. 

We have more work to do at the high school level, which is something that has our attention. They are not exposed to the commercial side of things and the larger environment. When construction was declared an essential business during COVID, it gave me a different perspective, in a positive way, of what we do each day and how it impacts the environment and the economy in New Jersey. 

What are Structure Tone’s key priorities for the next few years? 

The No. 1 priority is providing value for our clients. Eighty percent of our work is repeat business, so we work hard to stay in touch with our repeat clients. We want to understand their needs and keep tailoring our delivery methods to what they need. Engineering News-Record ranked us the No. 1 contractor in New Jersey, and to remain at No. 1, our strategic priority is to keep growing our core sectors, from commercial interiors, data center work, healthcare businesses, and the life sciences sector.

A big part of our strategic growth is retaining and attracting talent. We have several key tenured employees here, and we need to attract more to take on future market demands, especially for the mission-critical work. We’re shifting to hiring well ahead of needs rather than reacting to them, because we do have a strong line of sight as to what the opportunities are in the marketplace.