Orange County Contracting Firm Fetes 40th Anniversary

Saffell & McAdam Inc., one of the oldest general contracting firms in Orange County, has celebrated its 40th anniversary.

The firm was founded in 1946 in Los Angeles when two young neighbors, Hudson Saffell and Richard McAdam, opened a residential construction partnership to perform carpentry work for contractors on an hourly fee. They obtained their own contracting license in 1948.

Aside from their bread-and-butter jobs as builders of two- and three-bedroom homes, the partners also built homes on speculation. Eventually, they went into small commercial projects and erected the first concrete lift-slab building in the San Gabriel Valley, a milestone, which moved the firm into concrete slab construction.

Today, Saffell & McAdam Inc. remains a pace setter in the utilization of its computerized scheduling program.

The firm, headed by Lloyd E. Ross as president since 1976, is headquartered in Irvine and has more than 100 full-time employees. A partial listing of recent projects includes the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre, Los Angeles; High Park Business Center, Mission Viejo; Jurupa Industrial Center, Ontario; Alton Technology Building 2, Irvine; Lake Center, Santa Ana, and Pacificare Health Systems’ corporate headquarters, Cypress.