Masonry Magazine January 2003 Page. 16
Contractor
to Contractor
MCAA member contractors respond to the industry issues of the day.
Calvert Masonry, Inc.
Calvert Masonry, Inc.
Alexandria, Va.
Calvert Masonry, Inc. won the Best of Show award at The Masonry Institute's design awards ceremony in November (award winning project pictured at right). We recently spoke with Wayne Hauter, president, and Bill Kirby, CFO, of Calvert Masonry to get an idea of their team philosophy.
Masonry: In its 18-year history, what do you think has been the key to your company's growth and success?
Calvert Masonry: I would say one of our keys to success is that we have been fortunate enough to attract a very professional management team that works extremely well together. We have always been able to promote our team atmosphere and execute on that. We also provide our clients with a quality product through our excellent managerment team, and that's not just with the office management, that goes for the field management too. We continually strive to provide our clients a quality product at a reasonable price. By providing a team approach, we've always been able to meet or exceed our client's expectations with scheduling and meeting the job specifications. Our team approach has also helped us with our General Contractors. We've been able to work on their larger projects and shown ourselves to be problem-solvers for these guys. The General Contractors seem to be looking for people who come, not only with issues, but with answers. We've built a niche for ourselves because our clients know that if there's a problem, we'll find a solution and we'll work with them as a team to get the project done, on time and under cost.
Masonry: Calvert Masonry has worked on projects ranging from $27,000 to millions of dollars. Are there are differences between working on these projects?
Calvert: Not really. We break our jobs down into individual tasks anyway. We're more oriented toward the larger jobs, because they suit our needs a lot better. We can apply our team philosophy, which is more geared toward those jobs and makes us more efficient. We break our jobs down into individual tasks and look at all problems individually. The way we approach them, there's not really a difference. Between the project managers, estimators, and accounting staff, everybody just pulls together. Each job is assigned a group of individuals who manage it. We all work extremely well together.
Masonry: Calvert Masonry won Best of Show at The Masonry Institute's design awards in November for it's work on the Louis Stokes Health Science Library. "Tell us more about this project and what you feel made it stand out as the overall winner.
Calvert: The design had a lot to do with the reason it won, but we were able to take that design and execute it. It was a difficult masonry concept. Overall, there are over 300,000 face brick. This includes 20,000 different brick in 18 special shapes, complicated arches, 6 foot high jack arches, and special lintel systems. We had to corbel out an inch and a half on each course to build a four foot high solid brick corbel in flemish bond. We really had to put a lot of thought and engineering into how to make it work. The Best of Show award I really owe to my employees. It just shows how strong We break our jobs down into individual tasks and look at all problems individually. the Calvert team atmosphere really is. They took this job, they bid it on their own, they managed it on their own, and they executed it on their own. I helped them with best technology and equipment I could offer them, but really we owe that success to our employees.
Masonry: You said that it had a lot to do with the design. Would you say there was a very good cooperation and partnership between you and the architect?
Calvert: I think so. They listened to a lot of our ideas, because their original design was flawed. It just wouldn't have worked. They incorporated many of our ideas and it made the project successful. In addition, we had to have the project done in seven months. We were working with the architects and design, thinking on-the-fly and making decisions, and had to resolve the problems as they arose. There was no time to wait and make the decision later.
Masonry: In addition to the Best in Show award, Calvert Masonry has won 17