NorCal Murray Company Division Emphasizes Life Science Design-Build
Since 1913, Murray Company Mechanical Contractors has built a solid reputation as a leading full-service mechanical contractor throughout the Southwest. Founded by H.E. Murray, the company originally focused on engineering, which remains a significant part of the company’s success today.
With four branch locations and a team of more than 1,000 employees, Murray Company specializes in a variety of industries and sectors, including: biopharmaceutical, semiconductor, industrial, healthcare, commercial/mixed use and general engineering. Murray Company selfperforms HVAC, plumbing and process piping, including in-house engineering across all scopes for design-build projects. They pride themselves on offering the resources of a large company, with a small company attitude that ensures a personal touch.
Ten years ago, Terry James was approached by then-CEO Kevin Steffey to start a new division in the Bay Area. Since then, his Northern California division has grown to nearly 180 employees, with a particular focus on research and development labs in the life science industry.
“In the last 2-3 years, the life science industry has been on fire. There’s been a lot of construction,” James said. “What sets us apart from the rest of the contractors vying for life science work, is that this is what we’ve always done. Our team of experts here at Murray all have long careers and an abundance of technical expertise that goes hand-in-hand with the life science sector. Although we started in the Bay Area as a process piping and plumbing contractor, we’ve always known that to properly serve our clients’ needs we needed to grow the HVAC segment of our company. Now we have developed in-house HVAC design, detailing and construction capabilities to properly support the wide range of clients we work with.”
Even during the height of the pandemic, James’ team kept busy — and even experienced 15% growth.
Rooftop equipment and duct for high-tech client “Just like healthcare, life science fell into an essential category. There was work that needed to be done, and it needed to get done with our expertise,” James said. Recently, Murray Company worked with Bionova Scientific, a Bay Area pharmaceutical contract manufacturer, to design and build their facility in the East Bay for commercial-scale production of monoclonal antibodies to its more than 200 clients. The project took Murray Company the better part of a year to complete the state-of-the-art, 36,000-square-foot headquarters — an expansion that also helped generate new jobs within the community.
“The project involved single use technology that is the trend for future pharma manufacturing, and we are the Bay Area leaders in this construction,” James said. “You have to have a lot of technical background to do projects for pharmaceutical companies that will ultimately be licensed by the FDA to make products that are injectable or ingestible into the human body.”
The NorCal Murray Company division is also working on the Sunnyvale Civic Center modernization, a multi-phased project currently in Phase 1 with a projected completion date of spring 2023. The plan is to ultimately build new facilities for the City Hall, library and an addition to the Public Safety Emergency Operations Center.
Murray Company, a Bay Area SMACNA member for the past four years, is nationally recognized by Engineering News Record — most recently ranking #17 on the publication’s Top 50 Mechanical Contractors list, #18 on the Top 20 Sheet Metal Contractors list and #75 on the Top 600 Specialty Contractors list.