Mechanical Freeport Hosts MCAA Fabrication Conference

PEOPLE BUILDING VALULE - Helm Group Newsletter | Spring 2015
Mechanical Freeport Hosts
MCAA Fabrication Conference
150 contractors visited Mechanical’s Freeport pipe
fabrication shop at the end of April as part of the MCAA
Fabrication Conference. MCAA is the Mechanical
Contractors Association of America and members came
from as far away as Australia, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico to
see Mechanical Inc.’s operations.
In addition to the shop tours, there were sessions where
company executives outlined their company’s experience with
fabrication and also a session where attendees discussed best
practices from their own shops.
The conference has been around for the past 15 years
and attendees are a mix of shop foremen and company
executives. Always a sellout, the conference this year set
a record by selling out within five hours of registration
opening. After visiting Mechanical’s shop on the first
day, attendees went to Hill Mechanical’s shop in Franklin
Park on the second day.
The conference was an opportunity for attendees to see how
others are using pipe fabrication to save man-hours on a
project and also allows presenters to showcase new techniques
and equipment. Mechanical set up 15 different stations that
attendees rotated through. Mechanical was able to showcase
a few offerings that are unique in the industry, including
their pipe bending machine, their structural steel fabrication
capabilities, and their blast/paint booths. The participants
were all impressed with Mechanical’s capabilities and the
company was able to improve some of its processes based on
suggestions from the attendees.
Inside This Issue
Message from the CEO........................................ 2
2014 People Building Value Awards................... 3
I-90 Kishwaukee Bridge....................................... 4
Good Shepherd Hospital......................................5
John Deere Road........................................................ 6
Update on Commercial Paving...................................7
Kalahari Water Park- PA..............................................7
Industry Involvement...................................................8
Strengths and Weaknesses
Each March, salaried employees are given their annual
performance review. As part of the process, we ask them to
list three strengths and three opportunities for improvement in
the company. There is a lot of good information in the answers
and it helps us capitalize on the strengths and shore up our
weaknesses. It is probably only fair that I answer the same
questions, so here it goes:
First, a word on strengths. I look at our strengths as attributes
that are unique to us. Our tools, equipment, and even financial
capabilities are strengths, but these could be replicated by
many of our competitors. Our strengths can’t be purchased and
to really be differentiators, they are probably developed over a
long period of time.
Our first strength is our corporate culture that I define as
Small Town, Big Company. We originated from a small town
in Northwest Illinois. We developed a small-town attitude
where we have great employees that work hard and are fair
to do business with. Our employees follow this same mindset
to remote jobsites and multiple office locations and even our
largest projects in big cities are managed this same way. Our
competitors can’t say this.
The company’s second strength is that we are diversified. We
rely on private money in part of our business and public money
in another part. The availability of both public money and
private money goes through cycles and many times they are
counter-cyclical meaning that when one is up the other is down.
If you were to focus on any one segment, the results would
be inconsistent and many times this variability is due to low
demand for our services in a certain market. When you put all
of our markets together and primarily look at public and private
money, our results are much more consistent and impressive.
Third, we take appropriate risks. We know contractors that
are doing the same revenue with the same people that they
did 30 years ago. We also know of contractors that took on
projects that involved too much risk and ruined the company.
I believe we have taken on the appropriate amount of risk and
that has been one of the company’s strengths. As I said in our
first strength above, we started small. As we grew, we had to
get outside of our comfort zone and take on some risk. There
were times when the level of risk seemed like it was too much.
There were other times when we didn’t have much work and
we wished we had taken on more risk and entered new markets.
Overall, the risk level has been appropriate and we expect this
risk tolerance to continue to be a strength going forward.
2
As far as our opportunities
for improvement, the first is
that we are not as diversified
from an individual employee
standpoint as I would like to
be. Most people are very
specialized in 1-2 areas, but
are not so deep that they can
manage multiple disciplines.
In the past, this problem was
not as severe, but I think the
technical demands of our
projects have necessitated
this specialization.
The
Brian Helm,
concern is that as projects
Helm Group CEO
become more specialized,
each of us needs to develop multiple specialties so that we have
more options available for each new project.
Second, we are not sharing our technical knowledge as well
as we could be. We have a lot of technical knowledge among
employees, but the two main ways we have to learn these skills
are to be on a project with an expert or to learn the skills from
scratch. We need to have a systemized process to share this
technical knowledge and we have only had limited success with
the knowledge-sharing methods we have tried in the past.
Third, we don’t consistently get earned budget data to the field.
On our best jobs we get cost information to the field, but costs
are just that – a record of what we have spent. Very rarely
do we know how much quantity we have earned on a regular
basis so that we can understand our unit cost for each activity.
Whether we are doing lump sum work or unit price work, we
should be using quantities, or at least percentages of the work,
to track our progress. Without tracking earned budget, we
develop the mentality of, “We’re just doing the best we can do,”
and unfortunately, the best a person can do may not be good
enough.
I don’t think any of these opportunities for improvement are
unique to only our company, but we should be disciplined
enough to make these improvements. One of the reasons
we list strengths and weaknesses in our performance reviews
is that over time, we want to make sure we are working on
improving the weaknesses. Without this self-awareness of our
weaknesses, both individually and as a company, we will have
the same list in the future that we have today. By continuing the
discussion of our strengths and weaknesses, we can capitalize
on the strengths and improve on the weaknesses.
2014 People Building Value Awards Announced
“Todd works daily to improve work conditions
and speed up production time safely. He is
reliable and hardworking; a real role model
for his fellow workers”, says Joe Giambeluca.
Every year, nominations are accepted across
the company to honor those employees who
have done exceptional work. Those that are
nominated are recognized by their peers and
coworkers to have gone to great lengths to
produce excellence and build value. This year,
a total of 34 nominations were received for 24
individuals. Nominees attended the People
Building Value luncheon and were considered
for the prestigious People Building Value
Award.
The winner of 2014’s People Building Value
Award goes to Rockford Fab Shop Foreman,
Todd Whitlock. Todd exemplifies the values
and vision shared by Helm Group employees
and is a role model for new employees.
According to Matt Personett, Todd is “always
open to new ideas and willing to implement
them if they make work faster and easier”.
Todd Whitlock
Many people at the Rockford shop felt
the same: “I enjoy working for Todd as my
foreman. He is very organized and efficient
and comes up with very good ideas to save
time and money. He also controls the quality
of the product that we are making to satisfy
the customer. He is also very fair to all the
employees; very patient to show apprentices
how to do something they are not familiar
with. Todd is a very good employee to be
running the shop for Mechanical.”
Todd became a Mechanical employee after the Rockford Fab Shop Foreman
Norstar acquisition in 2009. At Mechanical,
he traveled into Chicago and the suburbs as
As the winner of this year’s People Building
the foreman on the Central DuPage Hospital
Value
Award,
Todd
has received a travel voucher to be used for
Bed Tower, the Little Company of Mary project, and the
a
vacation.
With
this,
Todd plans to take his two kids to Disney
Northwestern Memorial GIBE project. When a new sheet
World
in
the
upcoming
year.
metal fabrication shop was started in 2014, Todd was chosen
as the shop foreman. Todd is responsible for 30 employees and
schedules the fabrication, spooling, and delivery of duct and Todd would like to thank all the employees in the Rockford Fab
shop for their continued hard work and dedication.
hangers for all of the company’s sheet metal projects.
In addition to the People Building Value Award,
three other awards were given out.
The I-88 Tollway Bridges at Highway 26
and Harmon Road won the President’s
Award for the best small to mid-size
project. The Project Manager on the
project was Curt Ihrig.
Spring 2015
The Civil Roads Division won the Safety
Award for working 130,000 man-hours
without any accidents.
The Chairman’s Award went to the
Mechanical Service Division for overall
outstanding results in 2014. Jeff McCoy
accepted the award for the
Service Division.
Congratulations to all the nominees on a great year.
3
Kishwaukee Bridge Crews Manage Tight Schedule
As part of the Illinois Tollway’s $2.5 Billion reconstruction
and widening of the Jane Adams Memorial Tollway, Civil
Constructors was the bridge contractor on the I-90 bridge over
the Kishwaukee River. The project included demolition of the
existing 7-span concrete beam bridge and erection of a new
4-span steel plate girder bridge. The new 60-inch deep plate
girders weighed 1.4 million pounds in total. Substructure and
superstructure concrete totaled 3,600 cubic yards with 580,000
pounds of rebar. There were 6,900 feet of driven piling in a
combination of shell and H piles.
The Tollway Authority scheduled the work so that the Eastbound
and Westbound bridges were awarded separately and one
year apart. The bridge is one complete structure, but Civil’s
Westbound portion was built second and made the cofferdams
tougher to build because the Eastbound portion of the piers
were not prepped for Westbound as they would have been if
one contractor had built the entire bridge.
The contract start date was April 7, 2014 with an October 31
completion, but work was not allowed in the river until after
the spawning date of the gravel chub fish. The gravel chub
spawn until July 1 and made the schedule very aggressive. In
addition to the tight schedule, access was always an issue. The
project was located among multiple other contracts on I-90. To
schedule each delivery, the team had to coordinate with other
contractors building adjacent sections of the roadway. There
were many times when the other contractors would change
their plans at the last minute and complicate Civil’s material
access.
Coordination with other contractors and an accelerated
schedule made the project very challenging, but the Civil team
scheduled their work down to the hour. Project Manager John
McClelland worked closely with foremen Dour Dawson, Doug
Diddens, and Brian Schiess to open the bridge to traffic before
the October 31 deadline.
4
Latest Advocate Project: Good Shepherd Hospital
Advocate Healthcare, the largest healthcare provider in the
Chicagoland area, has been a valued client for Mechanical for
years. With current and past work at 7 separate Advocate
hospitals, the Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington is one of
the largest and the most innovative.
The scope of work includes a new 5 story 200,000 square-foot
bed tower and a 150,000 square-foot renovation portion spread
over 23 phases. There are 7 new custom Air Handling Units and
an additional 3 units that are to be re-built. New and existing
equipment is located in each of 5 mechanical rooms.
BIM work was completed on site and was led by Anthony
Commisso and Randy Warkentien. Having CAD stations set
up on site allowed the trades to coordinate work in real time
rather than in weekly meetings and video conferencing. Project
Manager Kyle Dewall spearheaded the project and worked
closely with foremen Steve Kloppenburg and Brian Albrecht.
Bob Johnson, Kyle Warner, and Justin Frautschy estimated the
project and, similar to other design-assist projects, the estimate
consisted of multiple pricing efforts as the design became more
complete.
The biggest difference in the project is the cost collaboration
with the owner and other trades. Cost savings among the
trades are split between the parties, which leads to each trade
partner helping the others get their work completed quickly and
efficiently. The owner is actively involved in helping everyone
control their costs by implementing a pull planning system
where work activities are scheduled by all of the trade foremen
and interferences are dealt with immediately.
In addition to the cost sharing procurement method, one of the
most innovative aspects to the project was the modularized
racks Mechanical built and installed. A structural rack frame was
constructed in the Freeport Fab Shop and the corridor utilities
were all installed in the rack. Duct, heating water, chilled water,
variable air velocity boxes, and insulation were all installed in
the rack. The racks were then loaded on trucks, and delivered
to the jobsite where they were hoisted into place. Connections
were made between each rack in the field. This modularization
led to big schedule savings because of all of the hours spent in
the shop rather than the field.
The design-assist process began in February 2013 with
construction not starting until a year later. Work will run through
March 2017. Overall, this project is off to a great start thanks to
collaboration, planning, and execution.
Spring 2015
5
John Deere Road Overpass Helps Relieve Local Traffic
50,000 vehicles per day drive on John Deere Road on the
section east of I-74 in East Moline, Illinois. In order to relieve
congestion between these major routes and the local roads,
a new alignment bridge was designed on Route 38 over John
Deer Road. There were two spans on the bridge with 200-foot
long plate girders carrying the load. To allow for only two spans
on an overpass bridge, mechanically stabilized earth (MSE)
walls allow each end of the bridge to be raised to the required
elevation. The 31,000 square-feet of MSE walls were built with
3 sides on each end of the bridge and the concrete panels are
placed as the earth is compacted in horizontal lifts.
There were multiple challenges on the project, some planned
and some unplanned. Among the unplanned challenges was
that the project was delayed for four months while telephone
lines to John Deere’s headquarters were relocated. Other
challenges included providing the crawler crane access to
construct the median pier in a 30 feet wide work zone. Because
of the traffic count, bridge beams had to be set at night, but
decking was done during the day over the heavy traffic on the
highway below. In the end, the project team overcame all of
these hurdles and completed a successful project.
On the project, Civil was a subcontractor to McCarthy
Improvement. McCarthy handled all of the roadwork and
earthwork. Civil’s scope included the MSE walls and the
structure work. In addition, there is an 850 feet long soldier
pile wall and some other miscellaneous work. Chris Snyder was
the Project Manager on the project. Foremen/superintendents
included Nick Roe, Frank Emry, Kevin Hoppe, John Eversoll, and
Tony Martinez. John McCarroll was the main operator for the
work.
6
Pocono Water Park is Moving Fast
The Pocono Mountains in Northeast Pennsylvania are the site
of the newest Kalahari Resort. Mechanical is constructing the
water park portion of the resort, which also includes a 450room hotel on 150 acres. Project Manager Brian Statdfield
along with Foremen Ron Stuckwisch and Glenn Robison lead
a crew of eight local pipefitters that performing the work on
the project. Among the 14 pools are a lazy river, water roller
coaster, spas, and indoor-outdoor pools. Most of the pools are
under-roof in the 200,000 square-foot building.
Temperature for each pool is controlled separately from 14
heat exchangers. Piping ranges from 1 inch to 16 inches.
Mechanical also installed a Pro Slide and Flow Rider, which are
water features that allow users to surf on a continuous wave.
Equipment consists of 63 pumps, and 14 complete UV, filter,
and chemical systems spread between two mechanical rooms.
Construction on the project began in June 2014 and startup
is scheduled for June 2015. Kalahari Resort will join other
existing water parks in the area in the hope of being the latest
and greatest attraction in the Pocono Mountain area. When
phase 1 is complete, phase 2 is scheduled to be started, which
will double the size of the newly-completed facility.
Busy Year for Commercial Paving
Rentech in Dubuque, Iowa; and Snak King in Freeport. The
Milledgeville School District parking lot and Jane Adams Trail
Bike Path were also completed by this crew. The key to success
for the Commercial Paving team is being able to plan quickly
and move between multiple projects each day. The team is
looking forward to another great year in 2015.
Civil’s Residential and Commercial paving crew had a very busy
2014 and is working on developing even more work in 2015.
Bill Schmelzle and Duane Schurch handle the estimating and
sales for the group and price multiple projects each day. Curt
Nelson is the superintendent and Dan Hoffman is the foreman
on the crew.
Together they ran 225 projects and laid 17,000 tons of asphalt
in 2014. Among the large commercial paving projects last year
were RR Donnelley in Monroe, Wisconsin;
Spring 2015
7
P.O. Box 750
2283 US 20 BR E
Freeport, IL 61032
Industry Involvement Benefits Helm Group
Many Helm Group managers are involved in industry groups
that not only improve the industry, but also raise the profile
of the company. The time that managers give to these
boards and committees benefits the company by creating
networking and best practice sharing opportunities. These
opportunities also allow the company to have a voice in
shaping the direction of the industry.
Ken Schrock, IDOT/Industry Joint Coop Bridge Committee
Member;
Greg Peet, Association of Equipment Management Professionals
Board Member;
Steve Asche, Illinois Asphalt Paving Association QC Managers
Committee;
Among the managers involved in
boards and committees are:
Brian Helm, Mechanical Contractors
Association of America Board Member;
Art Snyder, AGC of Illinois Board
Member;
Gary Statdfield and Brian Helm, Piping
Industry Council of the Rockford Area
Board Members;
Shawn Meier AGC of Illinois Safety
Committee Chairman;
Eric Helm, Illinois Association of
Aggregate Producers Board Member;
Mark Helm, National Asphalt
Pavement Association Engineering
Advisory Council and Legislative
Committee;
Gary Statdfield, Pipe Fabrication Institute
Board Member; and
Brian
Helm,
Chicago
Mechanical
Contractors Association Board Member.
Greg Peet speaks at ConExpo in
Las Vegas