"The state of the workforce in our industry is better for us than it was before the war. Wages have risen, but at a rough estimate output is 30% higher. A workday with Palestinian workers used to begin at 6:30 am with workers who had to get up at 4 am in order to reach the construction site. They began shutting down the equipment at 4 pm at the latest.
"They celebrated the Muslim holidays and also took time off on the Jewish holidays. This is no longer the case. Work now begins at the site at 6:30 am - 6:45 at the latest - and continues until 7 pm. The laborers also work on Fridays, not to mention work safety and quality, which have improved immeasurably. As far as we're concerned, the current situation is much better than it used to be."
So says Zeev Salant, co-CEO of Omer Construction and Engineering (TASE: OMCN), a veteran construction company which held its IPO in late 2025 and is now also spreading its wings as a developer. The heads of the company, which has been operating in the building sector for four decades, have a wealth of experience in the substantial changes and major crises that the industry has undergone.
The company is currently led by its three founders: Salant, chairperson Israel Rosenblatt, and co-CEO Baruch Hadad. Salant and Rosenblatt, who studied engineering together at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, established a construction planning firm, and went on to found Omer Construction. Hadad joined the company shortly afterwards. Commenting on the personnel crisis, Hadad adds, "I welcome the change taking place in the workforce and the switch to foreign laborers. They have many advantages: quality, the number of managerial staff that must be kept on the site to obtain the required quality, and construction time. In my opinion, these factors are making projects more economically worthwhile than in the past. We still have a shortage of workers, but if this trend continues, the construction industry will experience a significant upgrade."
Since the war, we have heard many people in the industry talk about the inefficiency of Palestinian workers. Why did we never hear about this before?
Salant: "There was no alternative. For years, the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel (ACBI) and other organizations of contractors tried to increase their foreign workforce, but the state refused to allow it. Despite sincere efforts and many attempts, Israeli workers did not come into the industry. We were stuck with the Palestinian workers. The government did not allow us to bring high-quality foreign personnel until the war began and the entry of Palestinian workers was halted. That was the situation."
"The state is overlooking the objective difficulties"
The real estate sector has undergone severe, possibly unprecedented, crises following the October 7, 2023 attack and the events that followed it. The personnel crisis was one of the worst - the entry of tens of thousands of Palestinian workers was banned overnight. There was also the problem of materials, which became both more expensive (a global trend), and less available because of Turkey's ban on exports to Israel.
"The war and the ensuing crises were certainly real problems," Hadad says. "It was very difficult to meet the original timetable, and the state is overlooking the objective difficulties and refusing to recognize them. The state shuts down the industry for months and no one wants to take this into account. The industry simply ground to a halt. The teams and staff, the entire activity of construction companies - things that cost a great deal of money - stopped working at the time. These things eventually caught up with us, as reflected in our profitability levels and the problems we had to overcome, but we got through it, and we’re still getting through it."
Salant adds, "Our advantage is our good name. Even when there was a severe labor shortage at the beginning of the war, the workers who were available came to us. Two things are important to sub-contractors: getting paid, and getting paid on time. If you do that, a contractor will be loyal to you, and that's what happened. That's how we were able to narrow the gaps and the timetable delays were confined to a few projects for a few months."
"State tenders? You get bogged down in battles"
In its four decades in the industry, Omer Construction has engaged primarily in private sector projects. The company was recently selected to carry out the NIS 480 million Gate project at the entrance to Jerusalem and a NIS 1.2 billion residential project in Akko (Acre). The company stresses that it works solely on mega projects, not on small ones: "If we are offered a project for NIS 50-60 million, we won't take it," Salant declares. "It's too small for us."
Like many other construction companies, Omer Construction prefers to avoid public sector tenders as much as possible. "In public tenders, whether by local authorities or the state, the decisive element in the tender is usually the price," Salant says. "Companies seeking to win the tender make very low bids and try to make their living through changes and additions, which results in continual conflict with the party commissioning the work. That's not for us. We work in the private market with very intelligent and wise developers who know that it's better for them if their project is completed on schedule, with suitable quality, within the budget, and with the proper safety level. There are plenty of developers that wish to avoid constant friction with the contractor."
"We're working very hard on expansion"
Omer Construction completed its IPO in December 2025. Today, over six months later, the company's market cap is over NIS 2 billion and the return for the people who bought its shares is currently 68%.
Since Omer Construction was founded, it has executed projects all over Israel. The company currently works in three main spheres: construction, development (residential housing and urban renewal), and income-producing real estate. It also has a subsidiary, Gilmor Construction, which carries out small projects and specializes in finishing work. According to its report for 2025, the bulk of Omer Construction's revenue currently comes from contracting - NIS 583 million, compared with NIS 73 million from residential real estate development and NIS 8 million from income-producing real estate.
One of the company's objectives in its IPO was to reinforce and expand its activity in residential housing development, including urban renewal. "We began working in development long before the IPO," says Omer Construction CFO Gideon Kahlon, who together with Rosenblatt is responsible for the company's development activity. "In recent years, we have built a very substantial portfolio, but it is well known that development is something that takes years, especially urban renewal.
"We now have 13-14 urban renewal projects as well as development projects. When we reached the stage at which the projects required equity and investment on a fairly large scale, it became one of our considerations in holding the IPO - to raise money so that we could undertake the necessary financial investments without pressure, in the knowledge that our cash reserves could service the development projects, improve our negotiating position with the banks, and facilitate access to financial institutions."
Do you see your development business outstripping your contracting business?
Kahlon: "It's true that most of our current activity is in construction, but we're looking ahead to the expansion of our development activity, which will also be reflected in our reports and results and will bring us substantial rewards - not in six months, but five, six, or seven years from now. We will have a great deal of development activity coming on top of our construction activity, which will increase the volume of our business."
Was inter-generational transition a consideration?
Salant: "There is no doubt that becoming listed on the stock exchange makes an inter-generational transition easier than in a private company, but we have never been a family firm. We have always believed that if a family firm does not fall apart in the second generation, it will certainly happen in the third generation. That is why my children and those of Israel Rosenblatt have never worked in the company.
"There has recently been an exception to this rule - Baruch Hadad's son, a construction engineer, is starting to work at the company - but Omer Construction is not a family firm and there has never been any intention of making it one. It is a stable, veteran company. People work here for decades, are loyal to the company, are happy in the company, and look forward to going to work each day. That has always been our concept."
Where will the company be in another ten years?
"Operations in the construction sector will continue and remain as significant as they are today. The development business will grow and provide the company with a springboard."
"We use technology to track safety"
Another important matter at the heart of the construction industry is work safety on building sites. Despite the growing attention being paid to it, the number of accidents is still high. 47 workers were killed on construction sites in 2025, compared with 37 in 2024 and 44 in 2023, even though the construction industry was completely shut down during part of each of these years because of the security situation.
"We emphasize safety very strongly in our company," says Salant. "One of the things we do that happens at no other company is a safety test twice a year for all the company's employees: once before Rosh Hashanah and once before Passover.
"This test is open to everyone. Those answering it correctly win cash prizes amounting to thousands of shekels. By now this is a tradition, accompanied by a big buzz. Everyone studies the safety regulations and reviews the material in preparation for the test. This is our approach. We are very strict in this area and regard it as the most important part of everything we have spoken of - that everyone coming to the construction site in the morning should return home healthy at the end of the day.
"We work in a difficult and dangerous industry. It's not the same as sitting in a bank office. There are many risks. It's a constant battle from beginning to end. But with everything happening around us, safety is steadily improving. Once upon a time, we had to insist that workers should wear safety shoes and protective helmets, but this is no longer necessary. We use technological means to keep track. We have safety supervisors and administrators. Every safety event is reported directly to the three of us - the company heads. Safety is routinely and closely monitored. We treat the small details as seriously as the big issues."
Has the entry of foreign workers had an impact in this respect?
"Yes. As soon as we switched to foreign manpower, safety improved immeasurably, because they are more disciplined. With foreign workers, it’s easier to keep safety under control."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 10, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.