COVER FEATURE
Municon Consultants
Vibration Monitoring, Construction Instrumentation, Photo Surveys
Vibration Monitoring: Ground, Water & Air.
Inclinometer, Piezometer & Tiltmeter Systems.
Remote Reading for Economical Long Term Monitoring
2200 Jerrold Ave, Suite K, San Francisco CA 94124
Phone: 415-641-2570 Fax: 415-282-4097
Staffing issues
The construction industry has – for quite some time – experienced
a shortage of qualified workers. Recruiting, training
and keeping staff is a challenge that, unfortunately, Keller
Canada’s Grieder can attest to.
“The training of qualified staff is a problem and there is
little support through the market,” he said. “In response, we
have designed a number of internal programs to train both
our craft and management staff.”
Formula Contractor’s Toma says his company doesn’t
necessarily deal with staffing or trade labour challenges,
although there are times (such as the present) when challenges
are fronted by clients, and projects that require a lot
more indirect involvement.
“We are finding that over the past five-plus years, we are
having to staff projects with more indirect manpower for
project controls, quality and safety,” said Toma. “Finding
the right person and keeping these people is very important.
Gone are the days when even what would appear to
be the most straightforward, cookie-cutter project now
requires most levels of what I have laid out as project indirect
involvement.”
Toma adds that because his company has a solid industry
reputation, this attracts the right people.
“The way Formula is managed and management’s positive
attitude is picked up by both staff and trades,” he said.
“This is appreciated and helps to maintain and attract
employees.”
Innovative Piling Solutions’ Cote has a similar take on
this and said, “Being a family-owned business with 20-plus
employees, we have performed some of the largest deep
foundation systems to date, but we didn’t get to this point
without entrepreneurial growing pains.
“For instance, we had a wealth of growth throughout the
first 12 quarters of business and, as such, had a steep curve
to get our feet under us with equipment and staff expansions,”
said Cote. “Once we found the right employees,
everything just kind of fell together. Being in a small town,
we usually ask our employees if they know anybody for a
position and have ended up with a really tight-knit group of
friends and family in the workplace. We have brothers that
work together, fathers and sons, and close friends coming
together to accomplish what people sometimes call impossible.”
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TIGHT ACCESS
While site and soil conditions are common problems for deep foundation
contractors, tight access on project sites can also present big
obstacles.
Bermingham Foundation Solutions solves this problem in a unique
way. As an experienced foundation contractor and leading manufacturer
of diesel pile driving hammers, reverse-circulation drills,
leads and a wide variety of custom foundation equipment, Andrew
Morrisey, project manager, said, “We have a design and manufacturing
team that can build any kind of tool we need to get the job done
if there is no way to do it with conventional tools or to meet tough
project deadlines.”
Bermingham recently completed a project at a chemical processing
facility near its office in Hamilton, Ont., where access to the jobsite
was extremely limited.
“We had to go down a corridor that was 12 feet wide and a few corners
that we had to go around to get into the back where the piles
were to be installed,” said Morrissey. “In order to get this job done
on a timely basis, we developed a tool that could fit on an excavator
so that we could walk the excavator in and be ready to go in there
and install relatively long piles given the amount of space we had.
We were able to put in 90-foot-long piles with 20-foot-long sections
as opposed to 10-foot-sections, which we would have been stuck
with generally.”
As result, the team was able to realize significant time and cost
savings on this project.
“We were able to get in there, drive the piles and get out in about a
week. Whereas, it would have been about two weeks of just driving
piles with a skid rig – plus mobilization and demobilization. So, it
would have been almost three weeks to complete the project.”
BERMINGHAM FOUNDATION SOLUTIONS
26 Q1 2017 www.pilingcanada.ca
/www.pilingcanada.ca
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