Inside This IssueMessage from the CEO ....................................... 22014 People Building Value Awards .................. 3I-90 Kishwaukee Bridge ...................................... 4Good Shepherd Hospital......................................5

John Deere Road........................................................ 6Update on Commercial Paving...................................7Kalahari Water Park- PA..............................................7Industry Involvement...................................................8

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2015 Mechanical Freeport Hosts

MCAA Fabrication Conference 150 contractors visited Mechanical’s Freeport pipe fabrication shop at the end of April as part of the MCAA Fabrication Conference. MCAA is the Mechanical Contractors Association of America and members came from as far away as Australia, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico to see Mechanical Inc.’s operations.

The conference has been around for the past 15 years and attendees are a mix of shop foremen and company executives. Always a sellout, the conference this year set a record by selling out within five hours of registration opening. After visiting Mechanical’s shop on the first day, attendees went to Hill Mechanical’s shop in Franklin Park on the second day.

In addition to the shop tours, there were sessions where company executives outlined their company’s experience with fabrication and also a session where attendees discussed best practices from their own shops.

The conference was an opportunity for attendees to see how others are using pipe fabrication to save man-hours on a project and also allows presenters to showcase new techniques and equipment. Mechanical set up 15 different stations that attendees rotated through. Mechanical was able to showcase a few offerings that are unique in the industry, including their pipe bending machine, their structural steel fabrication capabilities, and their blast/paint booths. The participants were all impressed with Mechanical’s capabilities and the company was able to improve some of its processes based on suggestions from the attendees.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Brian Helm,Helm Group CEO

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Each March, salaried employees are given their annual performance review. As part of the process, we ask them to list three strengths and three opportunities for improvement in the company. There is a lot of good information in the answers and it helps us capitalize on the strengths and shore up our weaknesses. It is probably only fair that I answer the same questions, so here it goes:

First, a word on strengths. I look at our strengths as attributes that are unique to us. Our tools, equipment, and even financial capabilities are strengths, but these could be replicated by many of our competitors. Our strengths can’t be purchased and to really be differentiators, they are probably developed over a long period of time.

Our first strength is our corporate culture that I define as Small Town, Big Company. We originated from a small town in Northwest Illinois. We developed a small-town attitude where we have great employees that work hard and are fair to do business with. Our employees follow this same mindset to remote jobsites and multiple office locations and even our largest projects in big cities are managed this same way. Our competitors can’t say this.

The company’s second strength is that we are diversified. We rely on private money in part of our business and public money in another part. The availability of both public money and private money goes through cycles and many times they are counter-cyclical meaning that when one is up the other is down. If you were to focus on any one segment, the results would be inconsistent and many times this variability is due to low demand for our services in a certain market. When you put all of our markets together and primarily look at public and private money, our results are much more consistent and impressive.

Third, we take appropriate risks. We know contractors that are doing the same revenue with the same people that they did 30 years ago. We also know of contractors that took on projects that involved too much risk and ruined the company. I believe we have taken on the appropriate amount of risk and that has been one of the company’s strengths. As I said in our first strength above, we started small. As we grew, we had to get outside of our comfort zone and take on some risk. There were times when the level of risk seemed like it was too much. There were other times when we didn’t have much work and we wished we had taken on more risk and entered new markets. Overall, the risk level has been appropriate and we expect this risk tolerance to continue to be a strength going forward.

each of us needs to develop multiple specialties so that we have more options available for each new project.

Second, we are not sharing our technical knowledge as well as we could be. We have a lot of technical knowledge among employees, but the two main ways we have to learn these skills are to be on a project with an expert or to learn the skills from scratch. We need to have a systemized process to share this technical knowledge and we have only had limited success with the knowledge-sharing methods we have tried in the past.

Third, we don’t consistently get earned budget data to the field. On our best jobs we get cost information to the field, but costs are just that – a record of what we have spent. Very rarely do we know how much quantity we have earned on a regular basis so that we can understand our unit cost for each activity. Whether we are doing lump sum work or unit price work, we should be using quantities, or at least percentages of the work, to track our progress. Without tracking earned budget, we develop the mentality of, “We’re just doing the best we can do,” and unfortunately, the best a person can do may not be good enough.

I don’t think any of these opportunities for improvement are unique to only our company, but we should be disciplined enough to make these improvements. One of the reasons we list strengths and weaknesses in our performance reviews is that over time, we want to make sure we are working on improving the weaknesses. Without this self-awareness of our weaknesses, both individually and as a company, we will have the same list in the future that we have today. By continuing the discussion of our strengths and weaknesses, we can capitalize on the strengths and improve on the weaknesses.

As far as our opportunities for improvement, the first is that we are not as diversified from an individual employee standpoint as I would like to be. Most people are very specialized in 1-2 areas, but are not so deep that they can manage multiple disciplines. In the past, this problem was not as severe, but I think the technical demands of our projects have necessitated this specialization. The concern is that as projects become more specialized,

2014 People Building Value Awards Announced

3Spring 2015

Todd WhitlockRockford Fab Shop Foreman

Every year, nominations are accepted across the company to honor those employees who have done exceptional work. Those that are nominated are recognized by their peers and coworkers to have gone to great lengths to produce excellence and build value. This year, a total of 34 nominations were received for 24 individuals. Nominees attended the People Building Value luncheon and were considered for the prestigious People Building Value Award.

The winner of 2014’s People Building Value Award goes to Rockford Fab Shop Foreman, Todd Whitlock. Todd exemplifies the values and vision shared by Helm Group employees and is a role model for new employees.

Todd became a Mechanical employee after the Norstar acquisition in 2009. At Mechanical, he traveled into Chicago and the suburbs as the foreman on the Central DuPage Hospital Bed Tower, the Little Company of Mary project, and the Northwestern Memorial GIBE project. When a new sheet metal fabrication shop was started in 2014, Todd was chosen as the shop foreman. Todd is responsible for 30 employees and schedules the fabrication, spooling, and delivery of duct and hangers for all of the company’s sheet metal projects.

“Todd works daily to improve work conditions and speed up production time safely. He is reliable and hardworking; a real role model for his fellow workers”, says Joe Giambeluca.

According to Matt Personett, Todd is “always open to new ideas and willing to implement them if they make work faster and easier”.

Many people at the Rockford shop felt the same: “I enjoy working for Todd as my foreman. He is very organized and efficient and comes up with very good ideas to save time and money. He also controls the quality of the product that we are making to satisfy the customer. He is also very fair to all the employees; very patient to show apprentices how to do something they are not familiar with. Todd is a very good employee to be running the shop for Mechanical.”

As the winner of this year’s People Building Value Award, Todd has received a travel voucher to be used for a vacation. With this, Todd plans to take his two kids to Disney World in the upcoming year.

Todd would like to thank all the employees in the Rockford Fab shop for their continued hard work and dedication.

Congratulations to all the nominees on a great year.

In addition to the People Building Value Award, three other awards were given out.

The I-88 Tollway Bridges at Highway 26 and Harmon Road won the President’s

Award for the best small to mid-size project. The Project Manager on the

project was Curt Ihrig.

The Civil Roads Division won the Safety Award for working 130,000 man-hours

without any accidents.

The Chairman’s Award went to the Mechanical Service Division for overall outstanding results in 2014. Jeff McCoy

accepted the award for the Service Division.

Kishwaukee Bridge Crews Manage Tight Schedule

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As part of the Illinois Tollway’s $2.5 Billion reconstruction and widening of the Jane Adams Memorial Tollway, Civil Constructors was the bridge contractor on the I-90 bridge over the Kishwaukee River. The project included demolition of the existing 7-span concrete beam bridge and erection of a new 4-span steel plate girder bridge. The new 60-inch deep plate girders weighed 1.4 million pounds in total. Substructure and superstructure concrete totaled 3,600 cubic yards with 580,000 pounds of rebar. There were 6,900 feet of driven piling in a combination of shell and H piles.

The Tollway Authority scheduled the work so that the Eastbound and Westbound bridges were awarded separately and one year apart. The bridge is one complete structure, but Civil’s Westbound portion was built second and made the cofferdams tougher to build because the Eastbound portion of the piers were not prepped for Westbound as they would have been if one contractor had built the entire bridge.

The contract start date was April 7, 2014 with an October 31 completion, but work was not allowed in the river until after the spawning date of the gravel chub fish. The gravel chub spawn until July 1 and made the schedule very aggressive. In addition to the tight schedule, access was always an issue. The project was located among multiple other contracts on I-90. To schedule each delivery, the team had to coordinate with other contractors building adjacent sections of the roadway. There were many times when the other contractors would change their plans at the last minute and complicate Civil’s material access.

Coordination with other contractors and an accelerated schedule made the project very challenging, but the Civil team scheduled their work down to the hour. Project Manager John McClelland worked closely with foremen Dour Dawson, Doug Diddens, and Brian Schiess to open the bridge to traffic before the October 31 deadline.

Spring 2015 5

Latest Advocate Project: Good Shepherd HospitalAdvocate Healthcare, the largest healthcare provider in the Chicagoland area, has been a valued client for Mechanical for years. With current and past work at 7 separate Advocate hospitals, the Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington is one of the largest and the most innovative.

The biggest difference in the project is the cost collaboration with the owner and other trades. Cost savings among the trades are split between the parties, which leads to each trade partner helping the others get their work completed quickly and efficiently. The owner is actively involved in helping everyone control their costs by implementing a pull planning system where work activities are scheduled by all of the trade foremen and interferences are dealt with immediately.

The scope of work includes a new 5 story 200,000 square-foot bed tower and a 150,000 square-foot renovation portion spread over 23 phases. There are 7 new custom Air Handling Units and an additional 3 units that are to be re-built. New and existing equipment is located in each of 5 mechanical rooms.

BIM work was completed on site and was led by Anthony Commisso and Randy Warkentien. Having CAD stations set up on site allowed the trades to coordinate work in real time rather than in weekly meetings and video conferencing. Project Manager Kyle Dewall spearheaded the project and worked closely with foremen Steve Kloppenburg and Brian Albrecht. Bob Johnson, Kyle Warner, and Justin Frautschy estimated the project and, similar to other design-assist projects, the estimate consisted of multiple pricing efforts as the design became more complete.

In addition to the cost sharing procurement method, one of the most innovative aspects to the project was the modularized racks Mechanical built and installed. A structural rack frame was constructed in the Freeport Fab Shop and the corridor utilities were all installed in the rack. Duct, heating water, chilled water, variable air velocity boxes, and insulation were all installed in the rack. The racks were then loaded on trucks, and delivered to the jobsite where they were hoisted into place. Connections were made between each rack in the field. This modularization led to big schedule savings because of all of the hours spent in the shop rather than the field.

The design-assist process began in February 2013 with construction not starting until a year later. Work will run through March 2017. Overall, this project is off to a great start thanks to collaboration, planning, and execution.

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John Deere Road Overpass Helps Relieve Local Traffic

50,000 vehicles per day drive on John Deere Road on the section east of I-74 in East Moline, Illinois. In order to relieve congestion between these major routes and the local roads, a new alignment bridge was designed on Route 38 over John Deer Road. There were two spans on the bridge with 200-foot long plate girders carrying the load. To allow for only two spans on an overpass bridge, mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls allow each end of the bridge to be raised to the required elevation. The 31,000 square-feet of MSE walls were built with 3 sides on each end of the bridge and the concrete panels are placed as the earth is compacted in horizontal lifts.

On the project, Civil was a subcontractor to McCarthy Improvement. McCarthy handled all of the roadwork and earthwork. Civil’s scope included the MSE walls and the structure work. In addition, there is an 850 feet long soldier pile wall and some other miscellaneous work. Chris Snyder was the Project Manager on the project. Foremen/superintendents included Nick Roe, Frank Emry, Kevin Hoppe, John Eversoll, and Tony Martinez. John McCarroll was the main operator for the work.

There were multiple challenges on the project, some planned and some unplanned. Among the unplanned challenges was that the project was delayed for four months while telephone lines to John Deere’s headquarters were relocated. Other challenges included providing the crawler crane access to construct the median pier in a 30 feet wide work zone. Because of the traffic count, bridge beams had to be set at night, but decking was done during the day over the heavy traffic on the highway below. In the end, the project team overcame all of these hurdles and completed a successful project.

7Spring 2015

Pocono Water Park is Moving FastThe Pocono Mountains in Northeast Pennsylvania are the site of the newest Kalahari Resort. Mechanical is constructing the water park portion of the resort, which also includes a 450-room hotel on 150 acres. Project Manager Brian Statdfield along with Foremen Ron Stuckwisch and Glenn Robison lead a crew of eight local pipefitters that performing the work on the project. Among the 14 pools are a lazy river, water roller coaster, spas, and indoor-outdoor pools. Most of the pools are under-roof in the 200,000 square-foot building.

Equipment consists of 63 pumps, and 14 complete UV, filter, and chemical systems spread between two mechanical rooms.

Temperature for each pool is controlled separately from 14 heat exchangers. Piping ranges from 1 inch to 16 inches. Mechanical also installed a Pro Slide and Flow Rider, which are water features that allow users to surf on a continuous wave.

Construction on the project began in June 2014 and startup is scheduled for June 2015. Kalahari Resort will join other existing water parks in the area in the hope of being the latest and greatest attraction in the Pocono Mountain area. When phase 1 is complete, phase 2 is scheduled to be started, which will double the size of the newly-completed facility.

Busy Year for Commercial Paving

Civil’s Residential and Commercial paving crew had a very busy 2014 and is working on developing even more work in 2015. Bill Schmelzle and Duane Schurch handle the estimating and sales for the group and price multiple projects each day. Curt Nelson is the superintendent and Dan Hoffman is the foreman on the crew.

Together they ran 225 projects and laid 17,000 tons of asphalt in 2014. Among the large commercial paving projects last year were RR Donnelley in Monroe, Wisconsin;

Rentech in Dubuque, Iowa; and Snak King in Freeport. The Milledgeville School District parking lot and Jane Adams Trail Bike Path were also completed by this crew. The key to success for the Commercial Paving team is being able to plan quickly and move between multiple projects each day. The team is looking forward to another great year in 2015.

P.O. Box 7502283 US 20 BR EFreeport, IL 61032

Industry Involvement Benefits Helm Group

Greg Peet speaks at ConExpo in Las Vegas

Many Helm Group managers are involved in industry groups that not only improve the industry, but also raise the profile of the company. The time that managers give to these boards and committees benefits the company by creating networking and best practice sharing opportunities. These opportunities also allow the company to have a voice in shaping the direction of the industry.

Among the managers involved in boards and committees are:

Art Snyder, AGC of Illinois Board Member;

Shawn Meier AGC of Illinois Safety Committee Chairman;

Eric Helm, Illinois Association of Aggregate Producers Board Member;

Mark Helm, National Asphalt Pavement Association Engineering Advisory Council and Legislative Committee;

Ken Schrock, IDOT/Industry Joint Coop Bridge Committee Member;

Greg Peet, Association of Equipment Management Professionals Board Member;

Steve Asche, Illinois Asphalt Paving Association QC Managers Committee;

Brian Helm, Mechanical Contractors Association of America Board Member;

Gary Statdfield and Brian Helm, Piping Industry Council of the Rockford Area Board Members;

Gary Statdfield, Pipe Fabrication Institute Board Member; and

Brian Helm, Chicago Mechanical Contractors Association Board Member.