Michael Bierman, the head of the island’s oldest construction supply company, proved as tough as his life’s trade.

Yet he is remembered for his grit, raw humour and a generosity that included welcoming school tours on to a busy industrial site with an eye towards attracting future Bermudian expertise.

Mr Bierman cut an unmistakably hard-nosed figure in Bermuda, with a personality to match: fiery red hair, often accompanied by a Tilley hat.

He favoured khaki trousers and shirts stained with concrete dust, and was never away from his radio and mobile phone.

Mr Bierman’s family business, Bierman Concrete Products, founded in 1946, was a top supplier of construction materials, quarrying its own aggregate even as the island’s natural reserves of the stone started to run low in recent years.

A building essential often overlooked from outside the construction business, aggregate ranges from crushed stone to sand, and is a vital component of concrete.

The Bierman brand launched as construction on the island boomed after the Second World War.

As a major supplier of concrete block, the company helped to build modern Bermuda, from residential to commercial developments, office blocks and hotels.

The company, founded by Mr Bierman’s parents, Herbert and Stella, operates out of Lolly’s Well Road in Smith’s, with a major site at Ferry Reach in St George’s.

The family also acquired the former Ferry Reach property of Vincent Astor, now known as the Bierman’s Estates.

Mr Bierman, the chief executive of the business, was characteristically blunt in a 2023 interview with The Royal Gazette as dwindling supplies of aggregate caused jitters in the construction business.

He said his operation in Smith’s was sitting on a mother lode of limestone ideal for the job.

Mr Bierman added: “If Government allows me, I can get my hands, within hours, on one million cubic yards of good-quality limestone aggregate. But that is only if they allow me to take the quarry down to the level I want to, which planning has so far resisted.”

Mr Bierman said Ferry Reach could be quarried as well, with the site ultimately converted into “the biggest cedar forest in Bermuda”.

Never one to shy from confrontation, Mr Bierman had a history of butting heads with the planning department.

After the Government tried in the mid-1980s to restrict activity at a Smith’s site, known as Rocky Heights, planning officials challenged the business in 1988 to prove that it had established rights to continue full operations there. The industrial site and its traffic were unpopular with neighbours downhill.

The matter went through the courts, where Mr Bierman fought the case to a successful conclusion in 1994.

His daughter, Alexis Biermann, said: “He could be a lot of things to a lot of people — he could be your best friend, or your worst enemy. My sister, Emily, and I have the additional perspective of him as our father.

“He was a titan in this industry and on this island. You can look out there and see a healthy chunk of our block everywhere.”

She described him as “pugnacious, litigious and very unafraid of duking it out in a courtroom”.

She added: “Our existence is battle-tested and hard-won, all because of dad’s indomitable spirit and his inability to back down.”

Bierman’s was begun by Herbert Biermann as a small operation with a couple of trucks, which led to confusion when the company founder got its name formally painted on a truck door and discovered there was space enough for only one N.

Since it turned out to be cheaper for him to change his surname than have the door repainted, he switched to Bierman.

Compounding the confusion was that Mike Bierman’s wife, Gale, preferred to take the correct surname.

Alexis Biermann, who with her sister preferred the first version, explained: “Mom wanted the original German name. Dad wanted the truck door.”

Mike Bierman started in the business as a youngster, stacking cement block by hand.

He graduated to drilling rock and laying dynamite to blast out aggregate material. Inevitably, there were close calls with explosives.

Alexis said: “He was fearless.”

Mr Bierman attended high school at the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California. His love of California would come to include avid surfing, and testing the speed of his Mach 1 Mustang.

Back home, his grandmother, Stella, took over the business upon his grandfather’s death. Mr Bierman soon returned to the island to take over in turn, fresh from graduating from high school.

With his school friend Kevin Chambers, Mr Bierman salvaged the family business, with some 1970s confrontations with union picket lines in the process.

Veteran construction head and contemporary Doug Redmond, of MR Construction, said: “Mike was a character for sure, a real chip off the old block.

“There were people in the area in Smith’s who wanted the company to move out — but that family was there a lot longer before a lot of them were.”

Gale Biermann, from the US, had been married before, but was widowed at age 20 when her first husband lost his life to a drunk driver.

Her family ran a bus company in Massachusetts that also organised tours to Bermuda. She was invited along to the island by her uncle for spring break in 1972, where she happened upon her future husband in a bar.

Despite initial reservations, she accepted the offer of a moped tour of the island. It led to romance, then marriage in 1976.

The couple’s second daughter, Emily, now head of the company, said: “It seems like Bierman’s keeps passing to the next generation in its moments of crisis.” Alexis is a director.

The two described a father with an insatiable curiosity, picking up degrees in accounting and engineering along with his concrete technologist certificate.

As well as pioneering precast housing, Mr Bierman brought the first cement tanker to Bermuda and happily took on another confrontation.

Emily said: “The Government fought him on that one too. Now they’re ubiquitous.”

Mr Bierman took a deep interest in technology. The family had an MP3 player before others on the island had heard of them. A road trip across the US came with another first: GPS.

Alexis said: “Something I admired about him was that, along with his passion for building, he was a futurist.

“Everything he did, he thought about in terms of what this island was going to be like 20, 30 years in the future.

“He thought about technology changing, and whether projects had second and third lives to them — it was fascinating to watch this man work.”

She added: “When I say he truly embraced everything, he embraced everything as a Gemini. He had a face to the future and a face to the past.

“He had the biggest laugh and the loudest yell.

“His word was law. That’s just how that went.”

Herbert Michael Paul Bierman, a leading supplier for the island’s construction industry, was born on May 22, 1954. He died on December 3, 2025, aged 71