A Pile of News: September 2024
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A briefing on news and information from the pile driving contractors, associated manufacturers, construction suppliers
and affiliated engineers who comprise PDCA.
By Matt Bisbee, PDCA
Originally sent, Sept. 3
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Top of the Pile
BREAKING: PDCA slashes costs Thanks to August action from PDCA leadership, members may now add a company logo to their online listing at PDCA for free, the $50 charge was eliminated. (This price cut pertains only to online membership listings on the PDCA website.) Add your logo to display in The PDCA Connection, PDCA's new member search and management system.
- IMPORTANT: it is time to login and modify your account. Adjust your named company reps and update any new contact information. If you need help, call PDCA at (904) 215-4771. Changes are due ASAP and will reflect in your listing in the 2025 Membership Directory.
More FREE regional receptions this fall: PDCA continues its work to grow into markets with concentrations of driven pile activity, recently visiting Minneapolis (see Blog entry, below). Upcoming FREE regional events include a Chicago reception (Sept. 10), Salt Lake City (Oct. 24), and another visit to coastal Virginia (location TBD, Nov. 21). See Calendars section, below.
All the News that's Fit to Print...that's not us. If it was, we would have announced the 2024 Project of the Year winners in the August newsletter. But even though you've already read the special edition of PileDriver magazine, which revealed and detailed all winning projects, we want to give shout-outs, by name, to the member companies who won their categories:
- Land: $1M-$5M Foundation
- Land: More than $5M Cajun Industries, LLC
- Marine: Less than $5M Power Engineering Construction
- Marine: More than $5M Sealevel Construction
- Earth Retention: Less than $5M East Coast Marine Construction & Design
- Earth Retention: More than $5M Orion Marine Construction
- Associate/Engineering Affiliate GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc.
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From the Association & Chapters
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Mark your calendars:
- Sept. 10: Windy City Wine Down, Renaissance Chicago O'Hare, Chicago, IL, 5:307:30 PM Chicago piling professionals are invited to a FREE networking reception happening at the DICEP 2024 Opening Reception. Entry is free, registration is required. Non-members of PDCA are welcome.
- Sept. 1011: DICEP 2024, Renaissance Chicago O'Hare, Chicago, IL Conference theme: Driven Pile Mega Projects, exhibitors/sponsors welcome!
- Sept. 17: Northeast Chapter Sporting Clays, Coplay, PA, 83 PM Severe weather postponed this event, but here's another chance! Original registrants are secure on this new date. Enhance your participation by sponsoring a Shooting Station. See you at Lehigh Valley Sporting Clays.
- Sept. 24: Texas Chapter Golf Tournament, Mont Belvieu, TX Second annual event open to singles, twosomes and foursomes. Sponsorships available, but they're going fast!
- Oct. 710: DFI Annual Conference, Aurora, CO PDCA is a cooperating organization.
- Oct. 24: Mountain State Meet-Up, Salt Lake City, 5:307:30 PM held in conjunction with EDPI
- Oct. 2324: Engineers Driven Pile Institute (EDPI), Doubletree, Downtown Salt Lake City, UT: Designed for mid-level engineers, 15 PDH available, sponsorship opportunities for benefactors.
From the piledrivers.org Blog:
- Gulf Coast Chapter met for the third quarter on Aug. 29 at the Golden Nugget Casino in Biloxi, MS. David Tomley of Gulf Coast Prestrees Partners was slated to present at the gathering.
- The Twin Cities Social attracted representatives of the pile driving industry in Minneapolis-St. Paul and beyond to an Aug. 22 regional networking reception. The social event at Fulton Taproom was the latest in a series of events designed to grow PDCA in important driven pile markets around North America. See who was SPOTTED.
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Congratulations, GeoQuip, Inc, you are this month's winner! Send an email to marian@piledrivers.org before the end of the month to claim your prize!
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Giving back:
- Bowen estimators and operators in Evansville, IN, participated in a charitable golf event to help IN/KY families with children facing life-threatening conditions. Matt Gentry was a co-chair.
- Kokosing co-ops volunteered to add amenities to the Ackerman Preserve greenspace in Federicktown, OH. It's a hot spot for local birdwatching, and thanks to construction crews, it now has two new sidewalks, picnic table slabs and three bench pads.
- McCarthy Building Companies treated its craft professionals on a San Diego convention center build to a ballgame between the home-team Padres and legacy powerhouse Yankees.
- Richard E. Pierson Construction and its charitable arm are holding a golf outing to support Woodstown, NJ, Agricultural Sciences and the local FFA. The event is Sept. 20 at Town & Country Golf Links in Woodstown. Tax deductible donations help fund a new Ag Education Center. Pierson Charities also cut two $2,500 checks to two summer interns, two others received AirPods.
- The Walsh Group was among sponsors of Camp buildHER in Seattle, an initiative providing girls in grades 710 with hands-on learning about construction careers. Brenna Moore presented.
- Thomas & Hutton held a fundraiser to support families impacted by flooding in Coastal Georgia where Tropical Storm Debby stalled during its march up the east coast.
Government relations:
- Sealevel Construction joined Gov. Landry, the USACE and other leaders to break ground at the Houma Navigation Canal Lock Complex near Terrebonne, LA. The GC for the $320M project will install thousands of piles, including steel sheets, pipes, concrete and timber.
- Bull Moose Tube hosted U.S. Rep. Cloud in its newest, state-of-the-art steel mill in the south Texas community of Sinton. The lawmaker toured the facility and stood for photos with staff.
- Nucor had the unique opportunity to tour officials with the U.S. Dept. of Commerce and its International Trade Administration around some of its manufacturing facilities in North Carolina. In Nebraska, U.S. Rep. Flood visited the company's production operations in Norfolk.
Acquisitions & expansions:
Recognitions:
Anniversaries:
- PND Engineers, Inc. marked 45 years offering multidisciplinary services with the launch of a new website. Through this new resource, the firm highlights extensive work in waterfront, Arctic and coastal engineering, as well as its trademarked innovations like the OPEN CELL SHEET PILE systems and SWIM FIN pile. Check out the new digital digs at pndengineers.com.
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Transitions:
- Harold Baur rises to VP of pre-construction/project development at Boh Bros. Construction. He is a 25-year veteran at the legacy contractor in New Orleans, and a PDCA board member. Anthony Jacob fills Baur's former role leading the pile division.
- Erick X. Torres is the newest addition to the Greensboro, NC, team at Sargent. A PM, he also served in the U.S. Army for 6.5 years, which included a nine-month tour in Afghanistan. Also, Albert Edward onboards with the NC team as safety specialist.
- Lacy Kiser has been named CAO at UES; read more about the appointment from Zweig Group.
- Jeffrey Price, a 31-year industry veteran, is the new Duluth, MN, manager for American Engineering Testing.
- Hannah Dorough onboards as marketing/proposal specialist at CRW Engineering in Alaska.
- Bruce Burgess, John Neukam are named associates in their respective, NJ and Maryland offices of Geo-Technology Associates, Inc.
Recognitions:
- Lance Bradley, a PDCA Safety Committee member and PileDriver author from Cajun Industries, LLC, has earned new safety certification, thanks to company support of continuing education. Also, Alex Rabalais, Christian Campbell and Kaleb Booher were among the 50+ employees from Cajun to participate in a Louisiana fishing rodeo. The three brought home five trophies.
- Peter G. Vigue began a career at CIANBRO as laborer in Maine 54 years ago, and became president/CEO through a rise that involved grit, vision, bravery and loyalty. The company prospered in his time. Now, he's honored with a named pushboat in Washington, DC's tidal basin.
- Whelden Graziano, a project engineer at D.A. Collins Companies in upstate New York, threw the winning "closest to the pin" shot at an industry disc golf tournament in Vermont.
- Kena Yoke, VP of Island Piling in Naples, FL, was chosen to open a professional development program for high school seniors dual-enrolled at Florida Gulf Coast University. She presented on networking, relationship building, communicating and serving the community.
- Cole Burden, P.E., at Pacific Pile & Marine in Seattle, earned a P.E. from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying.
- Melanie Khouri, a project engineer at PRECO-MSE in Quebec, is on maternity leave, simultaneously with a colleague at a sister-company. The two are celebrated by management for exemplifying the delicate balance of motherhood and a construction career. It's possible!
- Noah Wills has won the votes of his colleagues at Aggregate Technologies, Inc.; he was named Employee of the Month in August.
- Amari Jones in Nucor corporate sustainability, participated in a United Nations discussion on decarbonizing the built environment, where she highlighted American-made steel.
- James Williams, P.E., of Eustis Engineering ascends to presidency at ASCE New Orleans.
- Domenic D'Argenzio is now a board-certified port engineer, the highest post-license in the field. He's a 35-year foundations professional at Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers in NYC.
- Pat DiCerbo a PDCA affiliated service member from Northwestern Mutual, finished another Ironman, the latest at Mont-Tremblant in Quebec. He respectably placed mid-pack.
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Blue Iron Foundation & Shoring was GC and installed company-owned steel sheet piling for the Ducks Unlimited fish screen replacement in Suisun City, CA. In New Orleans, a crew protects infrastructure through sheet pile placement along the 17th Street canal; it used a PVE Equipment USA 23 vibro.
Commerce Construction Corporation has tapped into the market reach of PDCA affiliated services member Heron Wolf to help fill a vacated business development manager role in New Jersey.
Geostructures teams were on campus at Virginia Commonwealth University to install piles for tower crane foundations. As not to disrupt classes, they mitigated noise through pile splicing, also selective hammer use.
Foundation released a case study summarizing multi-phased pile driving work at a commercial development in San Francisco called Mission Rock. It documents preparatory work where they considered factors such as hammer use and steel quantities. The end result was a project budget to be cut by more than 50%.
Kokosing crews work on a $225M park development in Toledo, OH, a public initiative to transform the historic Maumee River front land as a new cultural hub. ENR published an article and photos about it. We are told that between the new seawall, bridges and boardwalks, they are installing large numbers of HP and pipe piles from Nucor Skyline, also a significant quantity of JD Fields & Co. steel sheet pile.
Pile Drivers, Inc. shares a photo montage of several Charleston, SC residential developments its crews are founding, using a company-owned Junttan rig to install timber piling from Koppers. It's steady work in a region that local media reports as having a decade-long population boom.
Edgen Murray is a key contributor to the $9.5B project that aspires to transform infrastructure in SoCal. The supplier notes that its involvement has saved over $500K and met rigorous seismic standards for construction of the LA Metro Purple Line Extension. Adios to all the concrete on the LA Freeway.
JD Fields & Co. is on the construction roster revitalizing Old Florida A1A in historic St. Augustine. Partnering with the steel supplier is ASAP Group, which is installing 1,910 LF of Gerdau-manufactured, PZC-13 sheet piles that will contribute to shoreline and infrastructure protection.
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Weeks Marine and parent Kiewit tell us that they've received many messages from job seekers who were contacted about a job that they were required to pay to pursue. In this case, both companies say that they will never ask for money from potential hires and that communications would come from company URLs rather than apps.
Junttan reports from a wind farm development in northern Germany, where it is fielding a series of tests to determine the impacts its equipment has on the environment. It was collecting noise and vibration data during the installation of 126 piles driven with a Junttan PMx28 rig.
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Senator Gold-Bars An 89-foot gold pipe pile was installed for a seawall rehabilitation in Washington, DC, as recently reported on local TV news. Coincidentally, this was just days after a U.S. Senator under indictment for possessing several gold bars, alleged to be illegally acquired, resigned. These instances are not connected because the gold pile was identified as gold-painted steel. Relax, conspiracy theorists! CIANBRO drove the ceremonial pipe with a GeoQuip HPSI model 300XL as part of a National Park Service project groundbreaking.
Cocaine bear? At Yellowstone National Park, a team from Ralph L. Wadsworth Construction was working on a job site when someone spotted a brown bear roaming around the equipment. One would assume that any construction crew in the mountain west knows how to keep lunch pails secured from potential thieves.
Hydration won't be a problem when you travel with a cup like this. Southern Ontario's Atlas Tube Centre, a public recreation facility, had fans lining the street in August. No notable games were scheduled, but hockey enthusiasts hoped to meet a special guest 2024 NHL champion, Florida Panthers star and local hero Aaron Ekblad. Did we mention, he had the one and only Stanley Cup in tow? Atlas Tube helped coordinate the visit.
A death-defying, PDCA-adjacent angler During tourney action, Wes Logan's outboard motor came loose on his bass boat, throwing him within the vessel. He is one of two Morris-Shea Bridge Co.-sponsored fishermen on the Bassmaster circuit. The "leash" on the motor is credited with saving his life. Rather than quit, he kept fishing and qualified to advance on the tour. Read how he describes the experience.
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If you made it this far in the September A Pile of News, please go back and reread the top two sections, there's A LOT of urgent PDCA news for you to consider. Please take the time to visit your company's new member account and update it as you would like it to appear in the 2025 PDCA Membership Directory, a printed resource. Also, it is a very busy fall featuring plenty of PDCA educational and social activity. Make sure to register for those events you want to attend. We will keep you busy between football weekends! See you in October.
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