What’s your plan?

Meet Don “Buzz” Sawyer, Summit’s VP of Field Operations

Q: What led to your position at Summit Contracting?
A: I would say the biggest impact on my career path was having mentors who believed in giving me opportunities. Prior to my position at Summit, I worked at the same company for 25 years. During that time, the owner of the company and my general superintendent were great about providing me with opportunities to grow. I worked my way up from a laborer and equipment operator, which required skill sets that came natural to me from being raised on a farm, to Site Superintendent. It was a natural progression because I knew that I wanted to be involved with the planning and execution of projects, and the only way to do that was to step into supervision. I came to Summit because the owner also believes in growing our employees. From Site Superintendent, my responsibilities grew to VP of Field Operations.

"I’ve also learned the importance of trusting the judgment of our employees in the field. When they come to me with an idea or a concern, I take it very seriously. I believe being heard and being involved in decision making processes is an important part of training and mentoring our younger employees to be able to step up when it’s their turn."

Q: What’s the most important thing a person should know before taking a career path similar to yours?
A: That you can’t learn what it takes to succeed over night, and just when you think you have it mastered something will change. You have to want to do this type of work, and be willing to put in the effort to become good at it. Learning that things come in due time was one of the biggest lessons for me, and I am still working on developing patience. I would encourage anyone looking to advance in the civil construction industry to take advantage of the variety of continuing education courses that are offered, and to never take technology for granted. Technology has changed this field of work tremendously over the course of my career. I have learned that you can’t be afraid to dive in and learn how to use something new.

Q: What is the most important part of your position?
A: I believe the most important part of my job is to help set our teams up for success. I try to remove as many obstacles as possible for our field crews, such as making sure they have sufficient tools, equipment and manpower to perform their assigned jobs. By fully understanding the specs and prints, I can assist them with getting their projects off on the right foot and make sure the work is being done efficiently and profitably. However, I’ve also learned the importance of trusting the judgment of our employees in the field. When they come to me with an idea or a concern, I take it very seriously. I believe being heard and being involved in decision making processes is an important part of training and mentoring our younger employees to be able to step up when it’s their turn.

Q: What’s the biggest news in your company right now?
A: Really the biggest news right now isn’t necessarily new it’s just something that we are very proud of. Summit’s Civil Team is very successful at partnering with large clients and serving their needs wherever they may be. For example over the past year, we have completed the site work on our third Toyota Manufacturing Facility, kicked-off our second Abengoa Ethanol Plant construction, and developed a new relationship with J.F. Shea. Like I said though, this isn’t really new – our first Toyota Manufacturing project was in 2004 and our first Abengoa Ethanol plant was in 2008.  These companies alone have taken our teams to San Antonio, TX; Hugoton, KS; Blue Springs, MS and have projects in the works in places such as Los Angeles, CA; Charleston, SC; and Cincinnati, OH. We understand the needs for large construction projects, and consistently exceed our clients’ expectations and that’s why the relationships work.

Emergency Response: Selecting an emergency response provider before an emergency

Featured in BIC Magazine

No one calls an emergency responder to their facility because they want to…they call for help because they have to. When the decision to call an outside organization or agency is made, something has gone wrong. A breakdown has occurred in the company’s normally fluid systems, processes, or procedures, and an accident has occurred as a result.

Equipment or property may be damaged, production slowed or stopped, and perhaps injuries to personnel. Any or all of these things combine to critically raise the stress level in even the most seasoned of managers. At that moment, the most critical aspect for the responder is projecting confidence and professionalism to the client.

Asking questions that are pertinent to the situation and requesting relevant information about the product or process goes a long way to ensure the situation is handled in the safest and most efficient way. During all stages of the emergency communication is key. There are a few pieces of information, in addition to whom and where, the responder will need immediately when the call is placed in order to ensure they are adequately prepared when they arrive onsite:

1. What is the emergency? Has there been a release of a substance?
2. What material and how much was released?
3. What actions have been taken? Has it been successfully contained?
4. Has it migrated off site or into a body of water

"Evaluate potential risks in your facility and select an emergency responder whose equipment, training and experience best aligns with handling the potential situations."

Oftentimes, facility personnel, or first responders, will have started what they consider to be viable solutions to the problem.  Sometimes, their efforts are helpful, and make a big difference in quickly mitigating the problem. However, sometimes those initial efforts, no matter how well intended, exponentially increase the time and cost of a response. Trained experts will know when it’s better to let a fire burn off, how much base to add in order to neutralize an acid and when adding water to dilute the hazardous material will just create more hazardous material.

The best advice for handling emergency situations is to plan before the emergency happens. Evaluate potential risks in your facility and select an emergency responder whose equipment, training and experience best aligns with handling the potential situations. A good place to start identifying potential responders is with the local regulatory agency. They cannot recommend one responder over another, but they can provide unbiased information about responders in the area. Soliciting information from the local regulatory agency is a good strategy because selecting a responder with a good reputation can mean all the difference on the agency’s outlook if they are involved with a recordable release at your facility in the future.

Once a response provider has been selected, the goal should be to take care of as much red tape prior to the event of an actual emergency as possible. Inquire about signing a service agreement so a large portion of paperwork is on file and they can quickly reference it upon receiving your call. Also, ensure their employees meet all the criteria, such as certifications, identification cards or specialized training to enter your facility. Share a copy of your facility’s SPCC (Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure) Plan with the response provider and make sure they are familiar with it prior to your call.

On a regular basis, an audit should be conducted to ensure the provider has the proper equipment to handle an emergency at your facility. For instance, if your facility is located along a river or there is a large lake on your property make sure the responder has adequate amounts of lake and/or river boom on hand to contain a spill on those bodies of water. A recommended practice is to conduct mock spill drills where the responder is called to your facility and interacts with employees as if an emergency has occurred.

If proper steps have been taken to prepare for an emergency, it will be much less stressful to pick up the phone and call a responder because trust will have been established and the communication lines will already be open. However, if you’ve had the misfortune of having an incident, and your response company seemed just as perplexed and off-balance as you felt during the response, you should consider another response company.

For more information about Summit Contracting’s Emergency Response Services, please call (812) 421-1744 or visit www.summitcontracting.net.

Your turn:
What proactive measures has your company taken in preparation for a hazardous material emergency?

First-Class Safety Programs Go Beyond the Safety Department

Developing an effective safety program involves significant amounts of communication between corporate safety and field personnel. It is the responsibility of corporate safety personnel to communicate new safety policies, but the best policies and practices often come from observations made in the field.

The importance of field supervision in a safety program cannot be overstated.  In most cases on small or short term projects the field supervisor is the safety contact for a crew on the project site.  Therefore it is imperative to give field supervision the proper tools to safely complete their assigned tasks and to adjust to the changing needs that may arise throughout a project. These resources include, but are not limited to: reference materials (books, websites), Material Safety Data Sheets, comprehensive training, and open communication with project management and corporate safety personnel.

Responsibilities on the jobsite

Examples of safety responsibilities carried out by field supervision include conducting daily tool box talks and safety task analyses.

Daily tool box talks are held by the supervisor in order to discuss the activities that are to be accomplished that day.  These meetings allow an opportunity for the supervisor to stress the need for specific attention to safety sensitive tasks that are on the agenda for that day.  They also provide a forum to share concerns or lessons learned from the previous day’s events.

A safety task analysis is a detailed assessment of how each job-related task is to be performed.  During the analysis a task is broken down into a series of actions, thus allowing the parties involved the opportunity to consider the potential hazards that might be encountered. More importantly, the team decides how to protect the workers from the identified hazards. Safety task analyses provide greater opportunities to identify concerns and mitigate hazards when utilized during complex projects.  For example when performing a long term tank cleaning project hazards change from the initial entry to the final rinsing of the impacted area.

Adopting new practices

As is the case with most safety goals the common enemy is complacency. It is important to not only find effective methods for getting safety-related messages across, but also to be prepared to implement fresh ideas.  Examples of innovative ideas include:  work gloves with high visibility fingertips to increase awareness of potential pinch points, new-hires being required to wear a distinct color hard hat or other identifying clothing to make fellow workers aware of a less-experienced crew member, and the use of glow sticks on the back of tank entry personnel. The glow stick idea came from a concern that confined space attendants expressed when experiencing difficulty identifying multiple entrants inside an aboveground storage tank. Applying glow sticks on tank entrants’ backs allowed for easier visibility and monitoring of the entrants.

For contractors, there are valuable benefits to working for multiple clients with varying safety requirements.  Different facilities have independent safety programs with many imposed requirements, some being industry standard and others unique to their facility. By evaluating the unique requirements of clients, it allows an opportunity to adopt best practices. Utilizing this approach can lead to several meaningful improvements without the cost associated with waiting until someone gets hurt to implement a new policy.

Safety programs and implementation programs should always be evolving. It is of utmost importance that safety messages and procedures flow to the field supervision and from them to the crew members. However, the real value comes from awareness of field supervision and open communication between field personnel, project managers and the safety department.  A first-class safety program goes beyond the safety department; it’s everyone’s responsibility to ensure implementation of best work practices and to promote a safe and efficient working environment.

To find out more about safety at Summit Contracting, or to discuss an upcoming project, please visit www.summitcontracting.net or call (812) 421-1744.

Your turn…
What are your main safety focuses right now? Where do you look for fresh ideas?

Expert in environmental, civil services has history of success

Featured in BIC Magazine

Since its inception, the employees of Summit Contracting have formed many relationships with Fortune 500 companies and completed numerous multimillion dollar projects across the nation. Summit’s unique mix of services allows them to wrap their arms around a company and serve them in a multitude of ways, leading to the strong relationships they have established throughout the years.

The founder of Summit Contracting and several members of upper management began working in the environmental industry more than 30 years ago when the industry was in its infancy. In January 1999, Eric Dodd started Summit Contracting, a hybrid environmental and specialty civil services company. The combination allows Summit to offer remediation, Haz-Mat response, industrial cleaning, demolition and site development services to their clients.

“The depth of our knowledge in both environmental and civil construction allows our employees to approach projects from a unique perspective. This knowledge and experience leads to substantial value creation for customers by effectively anticipating future challenges and generating solutions before they arise,” said Andy Wehr, Summit’s manager field operations.

Striving to be a top service provider

Within its first five years Summit’s ability to provide value to its customers led to signed master service agreements with Temple-Inland, CSX Transportation, Marathon Petroleum Co. LLC and DuPont, as well as a site preparation project for a new Toyota Manufacturing Facility in Princeton, Ind.

“We were getting opportunities to perform projects for these companies and we were wowing them with our knowledge, work ethic and professionalism,” said Andy Shoulders, Summit’s senior vice president, accounting and administration. “We do not want to be just another contractor on our clients’ list, we want to be their top service provider.”

CSXT Emergency Response Preferred Provider Program: Performance Quality Award

As a testament to this mentality, through CSX’s ER Preferred Provider Program, Summit received Contractor of the Year in 2003 and four employees have been presented Field Service Awards since then.

Within the past year, Summit renewed the National ER & Waste Management Agreement they have had with Temple-Inland since 2000, completed the third landfill closure project for Aleris International Inc. and the third facility site preparation project for Toyota Manufacturing.

Upon the completion of the latest Toyota project, John Elizalde, Toyota Motor Sales’ project development manager had this to say about their relationship with Summit, “As a truly valued contractor, Summit has performed beyond expectations on a number of our Vehicle Distribution Center (VDC) projects. The VDC and Railyard project in Mississippi is yet another example of that performance. Summit’s management, quality of work and sincere interest in constructing what best meets the needs of the customer is unfailing. They unwaveringly act as stakeholders in the success of each project. We look forward to the next opportunity to have Summit as part of our team.”

Industry leading safety, training program

“We tend to let the satisfaction of our clients speak for itself, but we feel like it’s important to communicate the standards of excellence we place on ourselves as a company,” said Mark Winchester, Summit’s executive vice president and COO. “We work for a vast array of companies, from the very small to multinational. Many of them provide us with some of the strictest rules and regulations in the world. We pride ourselves in not just meeting those strict requirements but setting our own standards in excess of what is imposed upon us. We have found that doing so further solidifies our relationships and elevates client confidence levels.”

In both the environmental and civil construction industries, safety is of the utmost importance. Summit emphasizes this importance by requiring that all of their employees attend a week-long “safety shutdown” in January. During this time important skills and certifications such as confined space entry and rescue, CPR and first aid, and OSHA HAZWOPER are renewed. A combination of internal and external industry experts are selected to lead these sessions.

According to Jim Reed, Summit’s manager of Health and Safety, “We feel it is important to have a mixture of both internal and external instructors to ensure we strike a balance between teaching our employees about specific situations they will encounter on jobsites and ensuring we learn the latest best practices in industry.”

In order to perform work for certain clients, Summit’s employees routinely obtain specialty training and certifications such as API — Tank Entry Supervisor (TES), Railroad Emergency Response Advanced Tank Car Specialist (40-hr), NCCER Pipeline Training, TWIC, Association of Reciprocal Safety Council (Basic Plus Training), Mine Safety and Health Administration Safety Training, among many others. In an industry where the average EMR rating is typically 1, Summit’s average over the past five years is .70, reflecting the success of their strategy for performing excellent work safely.

Investment in state-of-the-art technology

“Due to the scale of projects we perform for our clients, we feel it’s important to make investments to ensure we are using the latest technology to aid in delivering impeccable results,” said Winchester.

For instance, it was the relationship Summit developed with oil spill containment equipment manufacturer, Elastec American Marine that landed them the opportunity to provide services during the cleanup of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

“Elastec received a contract from BP to provide Hydro-Fire boom for use during the in-situ burning of the oil at sea and their oil skimmers for use as the oil approached the shore. Elastec contracted us to captain the in-situ burning ignition vessels and to instruct cleanup crews on how to operate their skimmers because they knew our employees had experience in effectively utilizing their equipment,” explained Jamie Bergeron, Summit’s general manager of Environmental Services.

Summit has also invested in state-of-the-art technology for their civil project managers and site supervisors. Project managers use professional earthwork quantification and modeling software, allowing them to develop accurate site models from which to develop estimates and project timelines.

"In the field, our site supervisors have GPS capable and robotic total station equipped machinery, allowing our crews to produce finished sites that are always within grade specifications."

“In the field, our site supervisors have GPS capable and robotic total station equipped machinery, allowing our crews to produce finished sites that are always within grade specifications. This technology makes each project move at a faster pace and makes our field operation much more efficient and cost effective,” said Don Sawyer, Summit’s vice president and general manager of Civil Operations.

During the final certification of a recent 30-acre landfill closure project, Don Pedigo, DDS Engineering’s survey division manager, had this to say, “We have worked with Summit on two landfill closure projects for Aleris International in Morgantown, Kentucky.  Summit’s work is consistently within tolerance and is closer to design grade than the majority of other construction companies we have worked with on projects of this type.”

An additional way Summit incorporates new technologies is by investigating alternative ways to perform routine services. An example of this kind of application is utilizing dry ice blasting for cleaning and decontaminating in industrial, refinery, pharmaceutical, and food and beverage environments. This cleaning application can be used for the delicate removal of contaminates or can be modified for more difficult industrial situations where higher pressure is required. The benefit of this application for Summit’s clients is the dry ice pellets sublimate (change from a solid to a gas) upon impact and leave behind no secondary hazardous waste.  This process significantly reduces the disposal costs associated with the cleaning project.

The value Summit provides is not only recognized by their clients, but by their competitors as well. Shoulders chuckled as he remembered a time when he was bidding on a tar tank cleaning project and the client told him, “Andy, I can’t find anyone to bid against you.” The client explained that when he called a competitor about the project they told him, “That’s a job for Summit,” because it involved hazardous waste and they did not have enough knowledgeable, adequately trained employees to perform the job.

Through continued investment in the development of knowledgeable, experienced employees, continuous training and certification, and technological advancement Summit is dedicated to continue to grow and provide expert remediation, hazmat response, industrial cleaning, demolition and specialty civil services for their clients.

To find out more about Summit Contracting, or to discuss an upcoming project, please visit www.summitcontracting.net or call (812) 421-1744.

Your turn…
What qualities are most important to you when selecting a contractor?

Hydroblasting vs. Dry Ice Blasting: Which cleaning method is best for your job?

When presented with a situation requiring industrial cleaning, the solution most often thought of is high pressure hydroblasting. This method requires cleanup of all debris and disposal of the generated waste at the completion of the project. Over the years, alternative cleaning methods that produce less waste, such as dry ice blasting, have been developed. Often times these methods can be implemented in a beneficial way to solve today’s industrial cleaning challenges. However, there are circumstances in which hydroblasting is still the best solution.

Factors for Determining the Best Method

When selecting the best cleaning method for a given situation, these factors should be considered: the surrounding environment of the subject to be cleaned, the type of material to be removed, and the necessity of waste disposal.

For example, if the project is a tank cleaning and the tank is in a confined perimeter where bystanders will not be an issue, and waste can be disposed of onsite or returned to the process, the best method would be hydroblasting.

Given the same situation, except the tank is in a high traffic area, there is risk of runoff flowing into a storm drain or sewer, and the waste would have to be disposed of offsite, dry ice blasting would be a better alternative.

Reasoning for these choices will become evident as the cleaning methods and their associated benefits are explained below.

Exploring the Methods:

Hydroblasting is capable of cutting through grime, deposits, manufacturing fouling, and slicing through hard surfaces with unprecedented cutting power. It is the most versatile technology available to industry.

This method is especially beneficial for the plastics, power generation, aluminum, chemical, pulp and paper, and petroleum industries, due to its superior ability to clean:

• Build up in boilers and heat exchangers
• Dirt and rust in towers and lines
• Fouled tanks
• Reactors
• Encrusted sewers and pipes
• Old paint on nearly any surface

A hydro blaster is capable of generating up to 40,000 p.s.i. of water pressure, offering the flexibility to remove the most adherent substances, and also effectively cut alloyed construction materials, concrete, steel and a variety of other materials.

Dry ice blasting is a form of abrasive blasting, where dry ice, the solid form of carbon dioxide, is accelerated in a pressurized air stream and directed at a surface in order to clean it. The method is similar to other forms of abrasive blasting such as sand blasting, plastic bead blasting, or soda blasting.

Dry ice blasting leaves no chemical residue because dry ice sublimates (vaporizes) at room temperature. It is for this reason the EPA recommends dry ice blasting as an alternative to many solvent-based cleaning methods. Dry ice blasting has many unique and superior benefits over traditional blasting media, including:

• non-abrasive, nonflammable and nonconductive
• environmentally-friendly, contains no contaminants
• clean and approved for use in the food industry
• allows most items to be cleaned in place
• can be used without damaging active electrical or mechanical parts
• can be as gentle as dusting smoke damage from books or as aggressive as removing weld slag from tooling

These benefits provide industry the flexibility to clean numerous objects with differing, complex geometries, the ability to clean equipment without time-consuming disassembly and without producing fire or electrical hazards, and a clean, environmentally friendly method for decontaminating surfaces of Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria.

Choosing the Appropriate Cleaning Method

It is tempting to use a cleaning method because it worked well in the past or because it was the cheapest method for the last project. However, it is important to consider the factors listed above when planning an industrial cleaning project because every job presents unique circumstances. A cookie-cutter solution for industrial cleaning does not exist, making it important to choose a contractor that is an expert in the implementation of several available methods.

For more information on Summit Contracting’s industrial cleaning services, please visit www.summitcontracting.net or call (812) 421-1744.

Your turn…
How do you make decisions on what method to utilize for your industrial cleaning projects?

Energy Generation: Building & Maintaining Energy Facility Infrastructure

Written by: Garrett Grumieaux & Mark Lovelace, Estimators/Project Managers

Back to the basics

Whether your goal is to build new infrastructure for one of today’s emerging renewable energy sources or maintain the integrity of a traditional one, the principles are identical. In this rapidly changing industry it can be easy to lose sight of the fundamentals that make for a successful project. Perhaps the most important is ensuring your contractor has a crystal clear understanding of your needs. If your contractor starts a project without this seemingly obvious information it is certain you will encounter many obstacles.

A few considerations

Alternative power facilities such as wind, hydro and solar are being constructed at the speed of air, water and light. Additionally renewable energies such as biomass, bio-fuel’s and geothermal are increasing in demand. These new facilities are usually large in scale and need to be located in such a way as to allow for intermodal transportation. For this reason the land area that is impacted in order to construct them is large and commonly

Ethanol plant construction: before

located in areas containing unsuitable soils, such as river basins. The demand for well constructed access to these sites is incredible, requiring streams and rivers to be diverted and hills and valleys to swap places. These landscape altering projects are usually performed at the beginning of every construction project and have the potential to hold up the arrival of other trades if scheduled

Ethanol plant construction: after

milestones are missed. Savvy infrastructure contractors will utilize stabilization techniques to meet very tight schedules and strict guidelines such as substitution with aggregate, geosynthetic reinforcement or chemical soil modification.  Chemical soil modification is essentially the incorporation of a reactive lime, Portland cement, etc. into the native soils to change its chemical properties, allowing unsuitable or excessively wet soils to dry and compact much quicker than traditional methods.

Currently most of the world’s energy is being generated at more traditional types of facilities such as coal, natural gas, nuclear and petroleum. Due to the ever increasing demand for energy, the infrastructure at these facilities must be maintained efficiently and to strict guidelines. For example, power generating stations produce some byproducts for which there is no practical beneficial reuse. Containment methods for these materials can vary widely depending on the region, governing body and the type of byproduct being contained. Often landfill cells are constructed to dispose of the material. In order to protect the environment surrounding the landfills, permeability guidelines are set by the local department of environmental management and monitored closely by an independent engineering company. Most landfill basins are constructed with a synthetic liner system or reconditioned and compacted soils in order to meet permeability requirements. The integrity of containment construction is often a direct reflection of the quality of the contractor, therefore choosing the right contractor has the single largest impact on your bottom line and the protection of the surrounding environment.

During construction projects at power generating facilities extraordinary circumstances arise due to extenuating conditions, such as heightened security and massive volumes of traffic. As a result of these conditions contractors working on power generation projects must have extensive experience and impeccable safety record. It is imperative they have the ability to work under increased safety regulations, manage extensive multi-channel communication and coordinate complex logistical maneuvering, while giving consideration to environmental concerns. The infrastructure needs of the power generation industry are complex, and that is why it is essential to ensure the contractor you choose for your next construction project has experience in successfully exceeding clients’ expectations.

For more information on Summit Contracting’s energy infrastructure services, please visit www.summitcontracting.net or call (812) 421-1744.