Turing Point Jobs

St. Paul, Minnesota-based E-Con-Placer had done bigger jobs than the Minneapolis Central Library since its 1974 founding. But none were quite so high-profile, and when the company performed beyond expectations and pleased some very influential people in the community and the industry, president Dick Tousignant realized the job had presented the company with an opportunity to take its business to the next level.

Many contractors can point to one particular job or project as the one that opened important doors and took their careers to the next level. That is not to say that such turning-point jobs are always smooth operations. They can sometimes present the contractor with challenges that force them to make changes – and those changes can lead to unexpected opportunities.

E-Con-Placer, a concrete placing firm, was established in 1974 by Tousignant’s father, Robert. His son Dick took over in 1999, and while the firm had a decent reputation for good work on placing boom projects, it wasn’t until 2003 that this reputation started becoming more advanced and widespread.

The key was the chance to place 25,000 cubic yards of concrete for a five-level parking structure for the Minneapolis Central Library.

“We had foundation walls that were probably 40 feet or more,” Tousignant said. “When we got done with the foundation walls, we put our separate placing booms and towers in four different elevator shafts. We put some specialized equipment, which was designed to be separated from the concrete pump truck, down into the bottom of the foundation, and it was from there that this equipment worked its way up to the roof of the building.”

E-Con-Placer placed 90 percent of the concrete on the project for the six-story building – a project with an unusually high volume of poured concrete and poured columns.

Working as a sub for three different contractors on the job, E-Con-Placer exceeded expectations with its performance – and with the project having such a high profile in the Twin Cities area, lots of people noticed.

“It was probably just the fact that it was a high-profile job that was so prominent in downtown Minneapolis,” Tousignant said. “It led to more jobs of that same nature. We’re starting one here this spring that is going to be similar in scope.”

Some of the techniques E-Con-Placer used on the job opened eyes about new ways of doing things, Tousignant believes, and helped position the company as an innovator.

“I think some contractors saw that there were some ways to do things that they wouldn’t have looked at 10 years ago,” he said. “The tower that the separate placing booms are mounted to has changed over the years, where it’s a lot more efficient to put these separate placing booms on the buildings now than it was 10 years ago.”

Tousignant advises up-and-coming contractors to position themselves for success on big opportunities by emphasizing planning and communication.

“The difference between succeeding and not was the planning, preplanning and good communication with the contractors,” he said. “Since we’re a subcontractor, I’m either a sub or a supplier, so I would say for us it was the preplanning and planning with the contractor that we were working with.”

Today, Tousignant believes that E-Con-Placer – with five locations in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota – can rightly claim the position of one of its regions top contractors for concrete placing projects.

For Steve Maranowski, president of Sterling Heights, Michigan-based Spartan Specialties Ltd., the turning point job also came in a Midwest city. A soil improvement contractor specializing in complicated foundation and soil issues, Spartan was engaged in 2006 when problems arose with the introduction of a major display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

When the museum endeavored to place a World War II vintage U505 submarine in its basement, it was necessary to underpin the building 45 feet deep. But the building was surrounded by a layer of 25-feet-deep soot clay, which presented a major problem considering its location only 500 feet from Lake Michigan. Project managers had to find a way to cut off the water to accommodate such a deep excavation.

Spartan successfully implemented the water cutoff by development of a treatment for the soil that would shut down the groundwater on the site. With engineering and geotechnical firms nationwide watching the project, Spartan’s reputation enjoyed an instant and widespread boost. “They were amazed that the water could be cut off using this type of system,” Maranowski said. “And it was an economical approach to the job. There was a cost saving.”

While Spartan Specialties has been in business 16 years, the Chicago job resulted in a dramatic uptick in its fortunes. Since it was completed, Maranowski said Spartan has received a substantial increase in similar opportunities.

Not every turning point job is smooth sailing for the contractor at the time it is happening. Ask Ted Sofis, owner of the Clinton, Pennsylvania-based Sofis Company, which specializes in bridge and tunnel work. Founded in 1959, the company specialized throughout most of the 1980s in large, high-profile jobs worth $1 million or more. With 30 full-time employees, Sofis took on one of its all-time biggest projects in 1987 when it was hired to do overhead repairs and tunnel invert work on the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel – working as a subcontractor for the Pittsburgh-based Dick Corporation.

Although Sofis Company had no trouble keeping to the schedule on the job, Sofis said quantities on the project “exploded” – prompting him to approach Dick about renegotiating pricing.

The resulting agreement brought savings to all parties, but Sofis later discovered that Dick had not passed the savings onto the client, which was the State of Maryland. Although the project itself was successfully completed – under budget, no less – legal action by the state delayed Sofis Corporation from being paid for eight years.

During that time, the company had to engage in constant borrowing against its receivables to continue operating. Sofis rejected an offer by the State of Maryland to settle the case for nickels on the dollar, reasoning that the company could not accept such a hit on a job it had worked on for more than two years.

“We couldn’t accept their settlement because we would be out of business, and we were too far into it to do anything else,” Sofis said.

Starved for cash, the company had no choice but to look to a direction that ultimately proved to be a major silver lining. Large projects like the Baltimore Tunnel job were not financially feasible, so Sofis Corporation shifted its focus to smaller bridge rigging, inspection and snooper work on projects ranging from $30,000 to $400,000.

“We completely changed as a company,” Sofis said. Now, Sofis Corporation touts its experience in all aspects of bridge repair, concrete and steel – and sees a good margin on an assortment of smaller jobs as a far preferable business strategy to the handling of one big job.

Sofis stressed the importance of being able to take a challenging situation and make adjustments to not only survive, but possibly emerge from a situation as a more capable and successful company.

Turning point jobs come in all shapes in sizes. All three of those detailed here were very high-profile jobs, but they did not all affect the involved companies in the same way. The common thread, of course, is that each company reacted to the circumstance – positive or negative – and positioned itself more advantageously as a result.

You might only get one opportunity to change everything. If you’re ready, and you know how to recognize it, things might never be the same.