Cashing in

What happens in Vegas . . . can make you the Globe 100 Company of the Year.

Just ask Ron Tutor , the chief executive of Perini Corp. Riding a strong book of business swelled by more than $5 billion worth of Las Vegas casino and resort construction contracts, Perini roared into the number one spot on this year's Boston Globe ranking of the 100 best-performing public companies in Massachusetts.

Perini's ascendance culminates a decade long turnaround story that Tutor, 66, a Los Angeles construction mogul, began at the company in 1997. In many ways, larger-than-life Las Vegas -- where he typically spends two days a week overseeing Perini projects -- is a great fit for the larger-than-life personality of Tutor. His private jet is a Boeing 737. He's known for winning a $50 million game of contract-dispute chicken with an unnamed developer to whom he gave two weeks to pay up or he'd shut down the job. And to keep life fun, Tutor also has found his way into backing ventures such as an independent Hollywood film distribution company and a Sunset Strip bistro.

Tutor counts his tenure at Perini as one more great adventure. "What we've done is really a complete makeover of the entire company," Tutor says. "And I'm proud to say that everyone involved in running Perini today is a career Perini person. I did not bring in a single individual from outside. I just reached inside an organization that had so many bright, capable people, career managers and superintendents."

Going back to the 1970s, through his construction firm , which he continues to own and oversee, Tutor had joint-ventured with Perini on dozens of construction projects around California and elsewhere out West.

Over the 113 years since its founding by stonemason Bonfiglio Perini, the Framingham company has built a little of everything, including hundreds of road, bridge, sewer, and subway projects; a big stretch of the Alaska pipeline; two National Basketball Association arenas; and embassies and air bases overseas. Perini's son and successor, Louis Perini, starting in the 1950s, shrewdly bought up and developed 4,500 swampy acres that became much of Palm Beach County, Florida. (He's also not-so-fondly remembered in Boston as an interim owner of the Boston Braves who finally moved the faltering ball club to Milwaukee in 1953.)

But, by the mid-1990s, other Perini real estate ventures soured -- badly. Redevelopment of a San Francisco art-deco post office into the mixed-use Rincon Center and construction of a Squaw Valley ski resort saddled the company with more than $100 million in debt.

Tutor stepped up to lead an investor group that in 1997 put up $40 million to recapitalize Perini, wind down its real-estate failures, and refocus on carefully chosen, high-margin construction projects. Within three years, Tutor had become the day-to-day chief executive. "Everybody thinks I had some sort of well-laid-out plan," Tutor says. "It truly was just helping out a friend who had always been there for you. We had partnered for 25 years with Perini, and I felt an intense loyalty to the company."

In bringing up a new generation of Perini executives, Tutor's law is: "Construction companies must be run by construction people. Not lawyers. Not accountants. Not business people. You must have business savvy, but first and foremost, you must be a technically capable construction person who knows how to get problems solved." A prime example is Perini's top executive in Framingham, company president Robert A. Band , a 34-year veteran of the company who once oversaw a crew of 4,000 as it built an Israeli Air Force desert base. Band runs Perini's international operations, including war-reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A solid record of delivering projects in Las Vegas, like the Red Rock Casino-Resort-Spa, on time and on budget has helped Perini build a reputation -- and connections -- that have fueled a steadily increasing and lucrative Vegas business, including major contracts for the $7.4 billion MGM Mirage CityCenter , which will sport a 4,000-room casino-hotel, and the $1.6 billion Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino . Perini's work in America's gambling capital also has helped the company win contracts at Native American casinos nationwide, including a $700 million, 30-story MGM Grand hotel at Foxwoods in Connecticut.

"We have a lot of confidence in them, and they do a great job," says Yvonne Monet, spokeswoman for MGM Grand's parent company, MGM Mirage. Not just towering hotels but towering egos are involved, with big-name architects like Rafael Vinoly, Cesar Pelli, and Helmut Jahn having slices of the megaproject. Amid a crowded field of big national contractors, "Perini's the go-to contractor for those casino jobs," says Richard S. Paget, a Morgan Joseph & Co. stock analyst.

Perini is hardly wildly profitable. Last year, it squeaked out a net income of $41 million on revenue of $3 billion. But with Vegas casino business booming, and two 2005 acquisitions of construction firms in New Jersey and California delivering handsomely, the company's revenue rose 76 percent in 2006, and its profit margin soared.

Closing last year with an unprecedented $8.5 billion backlog of construction contracts in hand, Perini projects record revenue and earnings this year, and knows where its revenue will come from well into 2009.

"Las Vegas is just such a booming city," Tutor says. "No matter how much we build, they keep coming."

But, although he expects the Vegas bet to keep paying for years, Tutor isn't putting all his chips there. Roughly half of last year's growth was derived from another California building company Tutor had Perini buy, Rudolph and Sletten Inc., whose past projects include corporate headquarters for Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

After digesting Rudolph and a second acquisition, New Jersey road builder Cherry Hill Construction, Perini is back on the prowl for more acquisition candidates -- ideally profitable, privately owned regional construction companies whose family owners want to cash out and whose top managers want to stick with Perini.

Tutor's goal is to double the company's revenue in the next five to seven years, and he is eager to do so. "I think in business, you have to grow, or you have to die," Tutor says. "I've always got my eyes out."

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.