"I like watching sites get turned into buildings, then going back to them years later," he says. "There's nothing like seeing a good project and saying, 'We built that.'" For Murphy, good projects have helped him grow Coastal into one of Florida's busiest contractors, placing first in the state on ENR Southeast's most recent Top Contractors ranking.

There are few phases of Murphy's life where he wasn't involved with building something. As soon as he was deemed old enough, Murphy joined his contractor father chasing post-World War II government building projects across the South. By age 19, he received his general contractor's license and took on his first project—renovating his fraternity house at the University of Miami.

While it would prove to be one of the highlights of Murphy's early career, he soon decided to begin working full-time, dropping out of college and shortly thereafter starting Seaboard Construction. It proved a wise move when Seaboard eventually grew to become one of Florida's largest general contracting firms at the time, helping to reshape the built profile of South Florida in the process.

However, Murphy couldn't pass up the opportunity to sell Seaboard to Turner Construction in 1988, nor could he stay on the sidelines for long. Within a year of selling his company, Murphy was back roaming his beloved construction sites as head of his newly formed Coastal Construction Group, ready to start the process of building up a company all over again.

但是，虽然墨菲的名片的名字发生了变化，但他仍然在与父亲的少女夏天相同的哲学中运作：“这不仅仅是生意......这是个人的，”这是今天沿海的座右铭。

“对我来说，声誉与别的一样重要，”墨菲解释说。“我们都在这里的家人，我们应该真正互相对待。”

Two numbers are of particular importance to Murphy: 75, the percentage of Coastal's work that comes from repeat clients, and zero, the number of times he's taken a client to court. Significantly, Coastal's clients include some of the biggest players in South Florida, and beyond, including Rilea Group, Related Group and Gil Dezer, developer of the Porsche Design Tower project. Also, the company has built homes for such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Dan Marino and Bob Vila of "This Old House" fame.

"We've always taken the long view of the business, not the quick buck," Murphy says, adding that Coastal's high standards for quality work also apply to the company's clients.

“我们没有出去为每个人工作，”他说。“我们的哲学应该对他们同样的意思。”墨菲还确保他的“旧学校”哲学仍然充满活力进入21世纪。

"Regardless of how large we've become, we're still a family operation," says Dan Whiteman, Coastal Construction president and a former contractor and University of Florida professor who joined the company full-time in 1997.

Witheman毫无疑问，沿海施工管理模式将在任何地方成功。他回顾了顾问对墨菲的同行评审，这些审查声称他可以在一个月内在月球上运营的成功公司。

"The report added, however, that Tom would soon be ready to leave for Mars and start another operation," Whiteman says. He notes that while that conclusion might have been made in jest, "It's about as true as anything else you can say about Tom."

新利18备用ENR Southeast于11月11日在其年度奖励活动中颁发墨菲颁发了遗产奖。“遗憾的是遗产奖，”墨菲表示回应。