Sealevel Construction, Inc.

Sealevel Construction, Inc. is a heavy civil contractor that was founded in 1997 by its president, Richard Roth, in the small town of Thibodaux, La. Starting with one employee and a toolbelt, Sealevel has evolved into a premier heavy civil contractor that self-performs services including deep foundations, structural fabrication, structural concrete, earthwork and sitework development with an emphasis on projects with driven piles. Reaching its 22nd anniversary this August, Sealevel has developed a reputation for its eagerness to take on unique challenges and to perform with integrity and safety as top priorities.
With a constant reminder from its founder to "always think long-term," Sealevel has expanded its capabilities to truly self-perform all aspects of heavy civil projects. While its self-sufficiency gives Sealevel a competitive advantage, it also adds value for its customers and engineers. Driven by this vision of thinking long-term, Sealevel strives to create and maintain relationships by completing each job with client satisfaction. The company's goal is to work with integrity, innovation and safe performance. These qualities are found within the company environment and have led to its growth and success.
Sealevel has completed many pile driving jobs in the Gulf Coast region. Most notable are two flood protection projects in Larose, La. that included a total of approximately 6,000 linear feet of steel sheet pile floodwalls. Also, Sealevel recently completed a 1,000 linear foot bulkhead in Port Fourchon, La., that included sheet piles up to 77 feet long and concrete deadmen supported by battered concrete piles.
As a versatile deep foundation contractor, Sealevel has also completed many pile driving projects in the industrial market, including a project at an LNG facility where concrete piles were installed up to 110 feet long in one piece. Furthermore, Sealevel has recently concluded the Falgout Canal Flood Control Structure for the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District in South Louisiana. This job involved successful installation of steel pipe piles up to 84 inches in diameter and over 200 feet long, steel sheet piles over 80 feet long and fabricated jackets weighing 200 tons.
Sealevel's 60-acre facility complements its driven pile work with cutting and fabrication capabilities, including steel and aluminum fabrication, sand blasting, painting, CNC oxyfuel cutting, CNC plasma cutting and a variety of other services. Sealevel also operates a waterfront yard in Houma, La. that offers fabrication and repair services for the marine transportation and construction industries.
With a fleet of cranes up to 300 tons in size, over 30 excavators, air hammers, hydraulic hammers and vibratory hammers, Sealevel has invested heavily into pile driving equipment to better serve its clients and to stay true to its self-reliance.
While equipment is a necessary investment, Sealevel considers its dedicated workers to be its most important asset. There are currently 170 employees with an extensive range of skill and diversity. A handful of employees began in the early days of the company with the majority of workers from the South Louisiana area who are committed to the company's growth in this region.
Roth strives for an "open-door policy" with employees and encourages project managers and supervisors to do the same. Challenges are worked out by using a team approach and focusing on exhibiting integrity, innovation and safe performance. Everyone is important and safety has to be first.
"From a moral standpoint alone, safety really has to be number one," said operations manager Travis Schonacher.
An HSE director, HSE manager and onsite HSE representatives lead Sealevel's safety initiatives. Moreover, Sealevel has established a safety committee comprised of employees with different professional backgrounds. Together, the safety team oversees an extensive safety training program for new hires and existing employees. There is also specific training for project managers and supervisors and the development and implementation of specific site safety plans.
Schonacher is also the president of the PDCA Gulf Coast Chapter.
"One of the most important benefits of being involved in a PDCA chapter is the opportunity to interact and develop relationships with other pile driving contractors in a non-competitive atmosphere," he said. According to Schonacher, PDCA provides a wealth of information and opportunities to build relationships in order to foster success both within each company member and the industry as a whole.

Posted in PileDriver Magazine. Tagged as Edition 4, 2019.

The Hose Company

When navigating many industries with a very specific niche product, like North Carolina-based The Hose Company, doors open to new opportunities to assist customers. The Hose Company provides hose delivery service and on-site repairs 24/7, making many contractors productive even on the night shift.
"And, of course being huge race fans in Charlotte, N.C., we love helping out NASCAR teams," said Justin Robertson, certified mobile hose technician at The Hose Company.
At night service
"I remember the first 2 a.m. mobile repair call from a group in South Carolina, about 10 miles from us," said Rob Smith, The Hose Company's operations director. "These folks were building new warehouses and moving many concrete trucks to avoid traffic congestion during the daylight hours. They were also using multiple vibrating screeds for precise elevation control when suddenly production stopped dead. Think about it: it's 2 o'clock in the morning, full concrete trucks, sitting and spinning, and the precision leveling solution blows a hose."
The Hose Company Team received a quick call and were on the road moments later with supplies already stocked in their service fleet. It is incredible that a $13 part could have shut down a job until 7 a.m., but not anymore.
"Now, there is a choice." said Smith.
NASCAR support
The Hose Company received a Saturday call from Joey Logano Racing, a famous NASCAR team and driver.
"This team was building a kit car for one of the preliminary NASCAR races," said Smith. This team needed choices, without wasting time at a store as they were designing and moving fittings from custom to universal. They really needed The Hose Company inventory and experts on site to help make these adaptations. So, The Hose Company sent in a technician and his fleet vehicle, allowing the race team to walk right in and find all the parts."
Expanding since day one
The Hose Company began operations in 2013 as a supplier of hydraulic hose to the pile driving, drilling, marine construction, manufacturing and redistributing markets. This startup of six people has since grown substantially as the markets and clients have demanded industrial and sanitary hose offerings.
With growth like this, The Hose Company further expanded this year by opening a 7,000 square foot warehouse expansion and added additional loading docks to meet all the shipping demands of its hydraulic and industrial clients.
"We have added industrial and sanitary hoses to our product offering. So not only are we doing hydraulic, but [are] now offering new markets industrial hose and fittings," Smith said. "We cut our teeth on the toughest part of the construction industry, pile driving, while supporting all other construction sectors [and] added a focus on the waste management industry and material handling. Today, The Hose Company has mastered each area they have taken on and are supporting more sectors like the carwash industry, elevator companies and other OEMs that build equipment, like car crushers...."
The Hose Company started out selling B2B in the hydraulic markets. Today, they are doing much more with a fleet of retail and repair vehicles to handle on site with contractors, OEMs and more.
Educated responsiveness is a cornerstone of The Hose Company's strategy. The company's goal is to educate its customers on how best to care for and maintain hoses, but to also always be available when problematic situations occur. The Hose Company team believes their ability to help clients centers around a customer-focused inventory and superior educational resources.
"We want to speak the same language as our clients, so we offer one of the most comprehensive hose glossaries one can find online," said Luke Carpenter, hose team technician.
A manufacturer and distributor
The Hose Company manufactures Hydrauli-Flex, their brand of hydraulic hose in one-wire, two-wire, four-wire and six-wire hoses. The impressive part is The Hose Company carries and sells on a daily-basis 50-foot, 100-foot, 150-foot and 200-foot bundles of the large four-wire and six-wire hose. Many hose resellers in the market are working with The Hose Company as their supplier of this large hose.
The Hose Company is a major distributor for the products contractors know and trust from Anchor Fluid Power, Brennan Industries, Dixon Industrial, Kuriyama, Midland Metal, NovaFlex, NRP Jones, Thompkins Industries, Word Wide Fittings, ZSI and many others. The Hose Company's highly trained team can reference part numbers from all these major fitting sources to best assist clients in getting the right fitting the first time.
What's up in 2019?
In 2019, The Hose Company's big initiative was the expansion into the industrial parts hose, offering to start and service the entire job site. Customers that do pile driving will also need other hoses outside of hydraulics. They need lay flat hose, discharge hose, air flow hose and more.... When the company's repair fleet goes onto a job site, it can fix all hoses and fittings saving customers time and money.
"We really want to show our customers that we can deliver, and we deliver more more service, more advice, more help when they need it... just a lot more," said Smith.

Posted in PileDriver Magazine. Tagged as Edition 4, 2019.

 Binder Equipment Technology

New Jersey's most famous son once wrote that he was born to run, but you might say one of the Garden State's slightly less well-known sons was born to build.
Brendan Binder is the president and founder of Binder Equipment Technology, a Middlesex, N.J.-based company that supplies Leica Geosystems machine controls to a number of construction firms across the United States as well as a full range of support services.
Binder, along with his wife and company CEO Krissy, launched the independently-owned company in January of this year. He's hardly a newcomer to the heavy construction equipment industry, though. Prior to starting his own business, he was involved for many years in Binder Machinery Co., the company founded by his grandfather in South Plainsfield, N.J., in 1957 that was acquired by Komatsu Ltd. in 2016.
Binder says the lessons he learned working for the family-owned enterprise over the years continue to have a profound impact on the way he does business.
"Our focus was always on service and support for our customers and that's a philosophy we've carried forward into Binder Equipment Technology and something we take very seriously, which I think is a differentiator for us in the technology products distribution business," he said.
"I keenly understand the needs of contractors and the significant need of uptime and the cost of downtime that contractors can incur as it relates to construction equipment."
Binder knew soon after his family's business was sold that he wanted to start his own company. He also knew that he wanted to go in a slightly different direction, with a focus on machine automation and the growth opportunities that are available in the technology sector.
In March 2017 he attended CONEXPO-CON/AGG, North America's largest construction trade show, to explore potential partnerships for his new business. The very first exhibit he visited at CONEXPO was Leica Geosystems and signed a partnership agreement with the international manufacturer a short time later.
"I knew that Leica had a very strong reputation in machine automation and other precision products that they manufacture. I just knew that was a company that we wanted to partner with," he said.
Binder Equipment Technology offers a range of Leica Geosystems products for a variety of heavy construction projects, all with a focus on automation. That includes machine-controlled systems for bulldozers, excavators, graders and various other pieces of equipment.
One of the company's most popular offerings is the Leica iCON site construction software system that is geared specifically for the piling industry. As part of the system, a series of sensors are mounted on a machine's chassis and lead vertical system and are constantly determining where the lead is in relation to the machine body using a sophisticated GPS unit.
Shawn Dahl, Binder's technology solutions manager, says the Leica system is unique in that it allows the machine operator to do the work of several people.
"Instead of having to rely on a survey to manually lay out the fields, the operator is able to navigate the machine to the exact geodetic position of that designated pile location without having a surveyor in the field," he said.
"The machine is also able to [assess] where the pile is put in the ground and to gain information about how that pile was put into the ground. If it's a soil mixing situation, we're also able to extract data about the soil mixing [and] the depth that was achieved by that pile."
Binder Equipment Technology has already supplied the system to a number of larger civil contractors in the Eastern U.S. including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New York State, including New York City and Long Island. The largest project the company has been involved with to date is 50 Hudson Yards in New York City. When complete in 2022, it will be the city's fourth largest commercial office tower at 985 feet tall with 2.9 million square feet of space.
Despite its involvement in several big-scale projects, Binder says his company plans to stick with the formula that made his grandfather's business so successful. A major component of that strategy is to continue providing education and training to clients and their employees on all products Binder sells.
"Education and training is key because when it comes to technology products, contractors who aren't already utilizing machine automation tend to shy away from it because of concerns about training and education for their employees," he said.
 "That's why we are very focused on ensuring that our customers' field support personnel are well educated and trained on the products that we sell and also have a direct line of support when they have questions they need answered."
One of the first decisions Binder made after launching his company was to join PDCA. It was in keeping with his family's philosophy of helping the organizations that help them.
"We've always felt it was important to have membership in industry organizations and associations, be involved in various committees and attend marketing functions because we understand the work associations do on our behalf," Binder said. "We also want to make that outreach to the pile driving market and really build our business by partnering with pile driving contractors throughout America who are looking to explore and implement machine automation into their organizations."
Although Binder Equipment Technology is not yet a huge player in the industry, the company's president says it is actively growing and plans to add more people in the near future.

Posted in PileDriver Magazine. Tagged as Edition 4, 2019.

Archives

Powered by BRYNK® Growth Platform