Case Studies Civil

Standing outside in the searing Arizona sun, Brian Heath takes a break to wipe the sweat beading on his brow. It’s hot outside and he’s concerned. He’s just gotten word that the old clay pipeline at the Southside Water Service Center location collapsed and requires immediate repair. At Salt River Project in Tempe—one of the […]

You can’t complain too much when the traffic backs up on Interstate 405 between Seal Beach and Costa Mesa. For many of the 16 car-jammed miles, the vistas of wildlife are breathtaking. Well, sort of. The scenes of plants and animals are at once real and imagined, molded and engraved into the concrete walls, dividers […]

When John Standinger took time to chat with Blueprint from his office in Rochester, New York, he couldn’t chat for long. For it was early summer, meaning it was time to oversee the maintaining of bridges and parks. That can take some doing in and around this medium-sized city on the southern shore of Lake […]

The road paved with good intentions needn’t lead to someplace unpleasant. Quite the contrary, as long as good materials, state-of-the-art machinery and a capable work crew are included in the process. McAnany Construction Inc., an asphalt paving and construction company in Shawnee, Kansas, has long been noted for all of the above, and in the […]

History buffs have long been drawn to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, site of the 1863 Civil War battle that so turned the tide in the Union’s favor and inspired Abraham Lincoln’s famous address. At, of course, a high price. The casualty count could have filled a modern baseball stadium. About 50,000 men, fairly evenly divided between those […]

At four years old, Graham Garrenton knew he would one day join his family’s utility contracting company, Chesapeake Bay Contractors Inc. (CBC). “I was hopeless even then,” he says. “I had been around this business my whole life, and always wanted to ride the equipment and be out in the field.” Based in Virginia Beach, […]

In 1985, the Gregson family set out to start their own logging and road building company in British Columbia and they decided to name it after their first job building roads in Copper Canyon, an area just south of its headquarters in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Their company, Copcan Civil Ltd., a hybrid of “copper” and “canyon,” […]

Of all things, McCarthy Building Companies is stocking up on shipping containers. The reason why? Safety. By opening the front and back doors of enclosed, conex-type containers, the company can use them as tunnels at worksite entrances, protecting workers from falling debris. Robert Coibion, chief estimator for McCarthy, says the idea came from one of […]

Founded by Henok Tekeste, Claycomo, Missouri-based Blue Nile Contractors Inc. is a full-service utility contracting company serving municipal clients throughout the state. Born in Ethiopia, Tekeste says the company represents his idea of the American dream. “When I came to the United States, I never intended to work for somebody,” says Tekeste, president and founder […]