New Mexico businesses are navigating slow construction, tightening energy capacity, and persistent workforce shortages. David Simmons, founder of EverGuard Roofing, says state policies and broken energy programs now shape the future of construction as much as materials or weather.
Simmons grew up in Kentucky before moving to New Mexico. He started in lumber, working for sawmills, selling wood, and building “$200 million biomass power plants and three sawmills.” Environmental rules wiped out part of that industry. “The spotted owl got two of the sawmills and one of the biomass power plants,” he says.
He launched EverGuard Roofing in 2001 and grew it to 90 employees. Today he has 70 and calls this “the worst business we’ve had in 25 years.” He dismisses public debates about minimum wage as disconnected from reality. “You can’t hire anybody at those prices,” he says. His shop starts workers at $20 an hour, with an average around $23. Training is constant, especially now. “Those employees are valuable and we can’t let them go,” he says, so the company runs six to eight hours of weekly training during slow periods.
New construction has nearly disappeared. “For the last 20 years, we’ve probably been 60 to 70% new construction, and now we’re only 5 to 10%,” Simmons says. This year the company quoted 220 jobs totaling $64 million, yet “only 19% of those jobs have ever been awarded.” The Carlsbad schools illustrate the pattern. “Nothing has been bought,” he says, despite more than $100 million in bids submitted statewide.
Simmons started a solar division in 2006 expecting crossover with roofing, which never materialized. “When we sell a roof, we will talk about solar, but it never goes together,” he says. The solar sector turned volatile. “In 2023, 11 companies went bankrupt,” he says. His bank called to thank his firm for helping unwind failed jobs and for staying solvent. “Why are we awesome in solar? Because we just told the truth.” He contrasts that with competitors who exaggerated system performance. “That’s why they went bankrupt. They were all crooks.”
He is critical of the state’s solar incentives. Lawmakers approved $150 million in grants last session, but he says only $70 million appeared when the program launched. “Eighty million dollars disappeared,” he says. Leases also harmed homeowners. “Everybody that got a solar system on a lease just cussed the day they did it,” he says. He also points to public systems that never worked. “At the VA, they have thousands of panels and none of them are on,” he says. Airport systems also sat idle. By contrast, he says most of his early systems “are still producing more than we said they would produce in the first year.”
Energy policy decisions trouble him as much as the incentives themselves, he says. “A state that depends on oil and gas revenues is suing to stop the whole oil and gas industry in New Mexico.” He recalls suing the utility PNM in 2006 when it “hated solar.” Now, despite heavy renewable mandates, New Mexico still lacks power. “Perhaps that’s why they’re for sale,” he says, noting the “large financial thing to bring the state up to where it needs to be.”
Supply chain problems and workforce shortages add more strain. Truck transmissions fail regularly and cost around $9,000. Equipment repairs drag on because “everything is on backorder.” He also warns of a shrinking labor pool. “Forty percent of young men from 18 to 25 are not in the workforce,” he says. “If I had to add five employees right now, I can’t imagine how I would do it.”
He says government procurement is his deepest frustration. Agencies routinely “exclude many businesses,” even his own, from major public work. “We’re the biggest roofing company in New Mexico,” he says, yet they are still “not allowed to bid” on numerous projects. He argues that New Mexico cannot grow without companies like his, which are ready to work but sidelined by decisions made far from the job sites that keep the state running.
