The Press Enterprise Story

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When Hank Perera got his first
construction job for $350 in Alas-
ka, he had no experience in the
trade – he was a former juvenile
probation officer and also
worked for the Anchorage De-
partment of Social Services.
Recently, Perera walked
through the freshly renovated
Nixon Presidential Library & Mu-
seum in Yorba Linda, where his
Perera Construction & Design of
Ontario was the general contrac-
tor for the precision work in the
$15 million project.
That included the framing for
a reproduction of President Ri-
chard Nixon’s Oval Office – alrea-
dy a visitor favorite, where peo-
ple can sit behind a replica of the
37th president’s Wilson Desk – as
well as galleries of informative,
eye-filling graphics and statues
to tell the story of the Nixon pre-
sidency.
There’s the Apollo 11 moon
landing – look up in that exhibit,
as millions of Americans did July
20, 1969. There are lifesize sta-
tues of Nixon and Chou En-Lai
about to shake hands and end 22
years of a frozen relationship be-
tween the United States and Chi-
na.
And Vietnam; the Western
White House in San Clemente;
the Cabinet Room; Watergate;
and for visitors to start their tour,
atheaterwitha30-footscreenfor
a fast-paced, multimedia presen-
tation on Nixon’s life and career.
Thinkwell Group was the exhi-
bit designer, and Maltbie, which
specializes in museum projects,
did the exhibit fabrication, all fit-
ting with Perera’s work.
“This is universal in the con-
struction industry,” Perera said
during an interview at the li-
brary. “You could have the labor-
er, you could have the salesper-
son, you can have the carpenter –
they’ll take their kids to a place ...
and they’ll say, ‘You see that? I
built that.’
“That’s something that’s un-
PHOTOS: SAM GANGWER, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A team from Perera Construction & Design in Ontario stands in the renovated Nixon library in Yorba Linda. From left, graphic designer Frank
Salas, business development specialist Bryan Glass, CEO and President Hank Perera and project superintendent Tony Virga.
INLAND CONTRACTOR
BUILDSNICHEFROMGROUNDUPPereraConstruction’s
latest institutional
project is the Nixon
library’s renovation.
By RICHARD K. De ATLEY
STAFF WRITER
Perera started the business 27 years ago, vowing not to make the
same decisions that had hurt his previous firm in Alaska.
‘‘We really want
to be at what
we call the
‘high end’ of
construction.”
HA N K P E R E R A
CO M P A N Y F O U N D E R
SEE PERERA l PAGE 4
Many people complain,
“My boss doesn’t have any
time to spend with me.”
Most people have worked
for someone who has said
to them at some point: “As
long as you’re on the right
track, I won’t bother you.
The only time I’ll talk to
you is when you screw up.”
The only kind of feed-
back they’re getting from
such a supervisor is nega-
tive. And what this person
is doing, inadvertently, is
training his or her em-
ployees to avoid him or her.
But getting on the same
page as your boss is not as
difficult as people might
think it is. It involves struc-
ture and communication,
as is necessary in any rela-
tionship.
Here’s how to fix these
problems with your boss:
Schedule an eight-mi-
nute meeting with your su-
pervisor once a day. It’s ve-
ry important to schedule
this meeting. You don’t
want to just walk by your
boss and say, “Hey, before
you leave today, I need to
talk to you about some-
thing.” Because that’s not
scheduling a meeting –
that’s a drive-by. You’re go-
ing to make your boss
think, “Oh, what does he or
she want from me? Is there
something bad going on
that I need to know
about?” And you’re going
to lose your boss’ attention
for the rest of the day be-
cause they’re going to be
very concerned. Instead,
you should say: “We need
to talk about a few things.
It’s nothing threatening,
but I do want to find out
what it is you’re looking for
me to do for the rest of the
day.”
During the meeting, you
should give your supervi-
sor any hot potatoes that
might be out there. You
don’t want your boss sit-
ting in a meeting with his
or her boss two weeks later
and discover something
you knew was going on,
but you just didn’t have the
guts to sit down and tell
him or her.
There may be some
things your boss is having
trouble articulating to you
or has never thought
about, or maybe it’s diffi-
How
to get on
same page
as boss
Schedule
meetings with
your supervisor,
and be open
and honest.
By FRED KNIGGENDORF
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT DAILY
SEE BOSS l PAGE 4
The push by MasterCard, Visa
and other systems to get retailers
and consumers to use computer
chip cards instead of the old,
magnetic stripe cards has had a
classic unintended side effect:
It has forced more holiday sea-
son thieves to abandon credit
card and debit card fraud in favor
of online shopping fraud.
Radial, a Philadelphia-area
company whose 20,000-plus sea-
sonal workers help manage on-
line and smartphone sales for re-
tailers like Toys R Us and Dick’s
Sporting Goods that don’t want
to concede profits to Amazon-
.com, has given its store clients a
Holiday Fraud Index report
warning of peak fraud times,
dates, countries and sectors.
Among Radial’s findings: On-
line fraud attempts using card
numbers over phones or internet
devices are up 30 percent in the
past year.
In a separate report, Tom
Byrnes, a senior executive at Ore-
gon-based Vesta Corp., an online
retail adviser that counts eBay
and AT&T as clients, said digital
fraud is up even more – 44 per-
cent from last year – for mer-
A new target for fraudsters: Online shopping
With chips on credit cards proving
effective, thieves have moved on.
By JOSEPH N. DiSTEFANO
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
The use of chip cards instead of the magnetic stripe credit cards
has caused more holiday-season thieves to move to online fraud.SEE FRAUD l PAGE 4
Over 1 percent of
attempted online
and mobile jewelry
sales are to buyers
using stolen or
phony numbers.

Business 4 Sunday, Dec. 11, 2016 The Press-Enterprise
1
FROM THE BUSINESS COVER
cult for him or her to confront
you about the things that you’re
not doing enough of. That’s why,
during this brief meeting, you
should ask your supervisor,
“What would you like to see more
of from me?” Also ask, “What do
you want me to do more of?”
“What am I doing now that you
would like me to do less of?”
“What am I doing right now that
I’m doing just right and you’d
like me to continue doing?”
That’s all it takes to get on the
same page as your boss. It does
take a little bit of communica-
tion, and you’ve got to structure
the communication. This will get
you and your boss on the same
page.
GETTY IMAGES
BOSS
FROM PAGE 1
ique within our industry; it’s not
a company thing, I think with
construction folks, that’s just
how we feel. We’re leaving nice
pieces of jewelry around,” he
said.
Perera’s first work in Alaska, a
fence repair job in August 1980 –
“I had no experience in construc-
tion” – led to a “pretty nice resi-
dential development company ...
until the price of oil went down,
and it just went all kaputs.”
In 1986, he came down to
Southern California, where he
had family, looked around and
decided to go back to Alaska. But
by 1987, he returned.
“I had exhausted myself to the
point where I was very poor, and
came down to California and
started all over again,” he said.
The experience in Alaska
taught him a valuable lesson for
his next startup, one that would
pay off about 20 years later.
“I did not want to be in the resi-
dential area anymore. I wanted
to be in things that were more re-
cession-resistant,” he said.
He decided on health care,
energy, communications, “and
then I thought, ‘When things go
south, people go back to school’ –
so, I thought, ‘college work.’
“How the rest of it came to-
gether – I guess I’m going to call
myself a pretty good salesman,”
he said with a laugh. Most of the
work on hospitals and colleges is
at private facilities.
Perera also added what it calls
“community work,” including
museums such as the Nixon li-
brary and a renovation at the Au-
try Museum of the American
West.
In the Inland area, the compa-
ny has worked on such projects
as the San Bernardino County
Crisis Residential Treatment
Center, the Casa Blanca Resource
Center in Riverside, a fire station
in Norco, and a fire station and
community park in Lake Elsi-
nore.
It also did the architecturally
matching addition to the Arling-
ton Branch Library in Riverside,
as well as restoration and up-
grades for the 1909 building,
which is on the National Register
of Historic Places.
Perera also said his company is
one of the “preferred contrac-
tors” for the Walt Disney Co., al-
though he declined to discuss
possible projects, and just com-
pleted what Perera called a mas-
ter agreement with Apple.
Revenue for Perera Construc-
tion in 2016 is $43 million, Perera
said.
“We really want to be at what
we call the high end of construc-
tion,” he said. “It matches with
unique projects like this,” he said,
referring to the Nixon library. “It
matches with the complexity of
projects and the clients that we
work with.”
The model for the company is
to build strong relationships
with profitable clients and get re-
peat work, Perera said. The com-
pany did its first job at Cedars-Si-
nai Medical Center in Los An-
geles in 1993 and now “we have a
permanent crew there; they
don’t leave,” Perera said.
The company’s website cur-
rently lists seven projects for Ce-
dars-Sinai.
The Nixon project was Perera
Construction’s second at the fa-
cility. In 2006, the company was
the contractor for the archive
center that holds Nixon’s presi-
dential papers and artifacts.
“There’s many companies in
2008 that really began to strug-
gle, and we lost some pretty big
names in our industry during
that period of time, but we con-
sistently stayed steady with work
and went right through that re-
cession with no problem at all,”
Perera said.
The tightrope of working on a
high-visibility project, with a
hard deadline of one year from
start to completion and October
opening, meant working with ar-
chitects, designers and, for work
such as the Oval Office project,
oversight from the National Ar-
chives and Records Administra-
tion.
“It’s constant communication
with the designers, architects,
through regular weekly meet-
ings. ... There was always a team
effort to make sure everything
was running, and as accurate as
possible,” said Tony Virga, the
project superintendent for Pere-
ra.
Among the challenges: Re-
moving by crane an armored pre-
sidential limousine and a woody
station wagon. The vehicles were
rolled into the museum before
the annex was built, but had to be
lifted out for the renovation pro-
ject.
Virga said the crews put up
temporary walls and barriers
while doing the work. “We had to
maintain the look that we we-
ren’t in there, even though we
were.”
“It’sauniqueworldforus,”Per-
era said. “If you can picture work-
ing next to an operating room, or
a nurse station with patients. ...
Those disciplines have really
helped us to develop the kinds of
skill sets we need do these kinds
of things – dust control, moisture
control ... all of these things are
what we do as a normal day of
work.”
“A lot of our clients want us to
be invisible,” said Bryan Glass,
who handles business develop-
ment for Perera.
The current renovation was
overseen by the Richard Nixon
Foundation and the National Ar-
chives and Records Administra-
tion. The project was funded en-
tirely through private donations
raised by the foundation.
Officials at the library say the
new exhibits and the refreshed
looks at older ones have spurred
attendance.
“The Oval Office is a visitor fa-
vorite; you see pictures all over
social media,” said Nixon Foun-
dation spokesman Joe Lopez.
“This is the biggest thing to hap-
pen here in 20 years. ... It has just
completely revitalized this place.
... This is history you just don’t
get in the classroom.”
Lopez said the foundation
hopes to increase visitors to
150,000 to 200,000 for the first
year after the renovation. “We’re
well on our way,” he said.
PERERA: Nixon library calls on Inland construction company
FROM PAGE 1
PHOTOS: SAM GANGWER, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Perera Construction, which carried out a recent renovation of the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda, specializes in institu-
tional projects like schools, hospitals and public buildings, says CEO Hank Perera, center. With him are Bryan Glass, left, and Tony Virga.
Perera Construction & Design
Based in Ontario, 27 years old
Other recent projects:
Technology
l Solar panel installations for Ontario Convention Center, Ontario
Police Department, Sweetwater Unified School District (in San Diego
County), Southern California Edison
l Substations and offices for Southern California Edison, San Diego
Gas & Electric; other projects for Verizon
Higher education
l Numerous projects at Harvey Mudd College and Claremont
McKenna College. Ion Probe Lab at California Institute of Tech-
nology. Also the Wellness Center at California Baptist University and
the Cal State San Bernardino Student Recreation Center.
Health
l Several projects at City of Hope and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
l Inland Behavioral Health Services Outpatient Medical Clinic in San
Bernardino.
Community
l San Bernardino Crisis Center for the San Bernardino County De-
partment of Behavioral Health. Norco Fire Department. Rialto Senior
Center. Riverside Casa Blanca Resource Center. Riverside Arlington
Library project. Rancho Cucamonga Public Safety Building.
CONTACT THE WRITER:
rdeatley@scng.com
or 951-368-9573
Twitter: @RKDeAtley
Virga, a project superintendent, and Perera look over their work in
the library’s China Room.
chants whose products are
wholly digital, such as soft-
ware and movie vendors.
“It’s crazy,” said Michael
Graff, risk analytics manag-
er at Radial. The new com-
puter chip and personal
identification number pay-
ment standard “has been
forcing fraud to migrate
from credit card sales to on-
line.”
Over 1 percent of attempt-
ed online and mobile jewel-
ry sales are to buyers using
stolen or phony numbers,
making it the most fraud-
prone sector for retailers.
Electronics is almost as bad.
Sporting goods and home
goods attract the least fraud.
One in six cross-border e-
commerce sales to Venezue-
la is “attacked” by online
fraudsters, causing stores to
reject the sale. That’s the
highest rate in the world.
Ghana and Nigeria, in En-
glish-speaking West Africa,
also show high attack rates.
So does Russia. Turkey and
the United Arab Emirates
are among countries with
the lowest rates.
Within the U.S., Delaware
and Oregon are particular
fraud centers. Both are no-
sales-tax states, with plenty
of warehousing, close to
ports, making them popular
among thieves who buy
goods with phony cards,
pick them up at convenient
delivery points and vanish.
Manipulating digital gift
card accounts to get online
sale approval when the
cards no longer are attached
to actual cash goes up “10
times” the usual level during
the holiday shopping season
and is 25 times more likely
than usual in the week be-
fore Christmas. By contrast,
almost 98 percent of cards
presented Christmas Day
are legit, the lowest gift-
card-fraud day of the year.
Less than 2 percent of in-
ternational e-commerce
sales on Cyber Monday turn
out to be from fraudulent
buyers, a lower rate than
during the rest of the holiday
season. “Maybe (thieves) are
worried their orders won’t
fill as quickly” the Monday
after Thanksgiving, a day
well-known for high sales
volumes, Graff said.
Not all systems have
adopted basic techniques
like matching buyers’ and
user accounts’ domain ad-
dresses, or online searches
to confirm a user’s digital
presence, he said.
FRAUD
FROM PAGE 1

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