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Today is Terry Edgar’s last day of work in the construction industry.

The chief operating officer at Perlo McCormack Pacific and 2004 Columbia chapter president of the Associated General Contractors is retiring after a 30-year career as co-owner of one of Portland’s best-known commercial contracting companies.

Perlo McCormack Pacific specializes in building office buildings, manufacturing distribution facilities, office and industrial parks and auto dealerships. Many of the company’s projects are built using the tilt-up method of construction in which walls are precast in concrete on the ground and raised into place by large cranes.

“We’re sort of known as the king of the tilts,” Edgar said. “We do a lot of concrete tilts. That’s kind of our bread and butter.”

Edgar estimates that he’s overseen “four or five hundred” tilt projects throughout his career.

An aerial photograph of Northeast Portland’s industrial district along Airport Way, displayed in the boardroom at Perlo’s Tigard headquarters, reveals that the company has raised more than 20 buildings in that neighborhood alone.

“I think we have been an innovator” in tilt up construction, Edgar said. “When you do that many tilt-ups, you’ve got to be doing something better than the competition.”

This year, Edgar said, Perlo was one of the first Oregon contractors to begin raising the concrete walls “backwards,” without placing the crane on the floor slab. The method has been used in California for several years, he said.

Tilt-up construction methods have changed somewhat since Edgar began his career, he said. Contractors now use butterfly clips – steel rods poured into the concrete – instead of welding steel rebar to join two wall panels together.

“Butterfly clips allow the building to move a little bit through expansion” to prevent cracking, Edgar said.

His company also caulks the joints between the floor slab and the wall panels to bar rocks and other debris from filling the space and cracking the concrete when the heavy walls are lifted into place.

But for Edgar, these worrisome details soon will be a faint memory.

In retirement, he plans to relax and spend his days flying between his home in Palm Springs, his son’s home in Denver and his daughter’s home in Portland.

“My plan will be to play more golf, and I have a honey-do list that’s as long as my arm on the house,” Edgar said. “I’m sure I’ll keep busy.”