< Previous Written by Josh CarmodyThe company first came to life in Racine, Wisconsin as a general contracting firm that went to work building houses. Over the years, it has evolved to meet shifting client needs and those of its skilled employees.As time went on, the work began to shift to more commercial and industrial markets, and in1976, Jim’s son Nick had joined the company as a professional engineer. The company’s influ-ence in the Midwest continued to spread as it poured more resources into commercial and industrial construction, and in the early nineties, Nick bought the company from his father. This ushered in one of the biggest challenges faced by Bukacek Construction, which was turning the privately-owned company into one that was owned by its employees. “That transformation from a single-entity, privately-owned company into an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) was a challenge but it worked out for those employed at Bukacek,” said Bukacek Construction Director of Project Development Vince Milewski. AndisExteriorAndisHomeMAY 201920 The company had to seriously evaluate its employee capability during this complex period of transition. This started in 2001, and it should come as no surprise that Bukacek Construction is still run as an employee-owned company that values long-term commitments to both its employees and its clients. People who care deeply about the company’s success are at the reins, ensuring the client’s needs are precisely met. Staff take on a myriad of jobs that range from a day’s work to several months of both planning and execution for projects that can reach up to $30 million.“One of the biggest keys to our company has been becoming an ESOP, so that creates an ownership team which is larger than just two or three key individuals in a company, and I think that makes the difference, as it allows us all to act like owners as we perform our job, because we are. So we very much have a stake in the game and want to make sure we’re successful and do a great job for our clients,” said Vince. Today, Bukacek Construction serves the Midwest through purely commercial and industrial construction projects, con-structing factories, warehouses, distribution centers, and more. These can be offices, such as the work done for Johnson Credit Union, or retail build-outs for restaurants. The company has also worked closely with the Racine Unified School District and occasionally within the healthcare industry. Recently, it com-pleted large jobs for Roland Machinery Company and Kriete Truck Center, two companies found in Racine County. “Bukacek is proud to have strong ties to the local community where it originated.”GoodwillExterior building “We create an environment where we build trust through our processes and build a long-term customer base,” said Vince. Bukacek employs cement masons, rough and finish carpen-ters, and building laborers to round out the traditional trades and contractor work that is done in house. Project managers and administrative personnel make up the office side, along with Vince Milewski being the staff architect. Other specialists such as painters, drywallers, flooring experts, electricians, and plumbers are contracted, employing local businesses as part of the company’s major projects. Bukacek is proud to have strong ties to the local community where it originated. These ties cover supporting a variety of charities, local advisement, and employment for people who live in and around Racine County. Bukacek Construction supports local charities like the Homeless Assistance Leadership Organization (HALO), which attempts to give homeless people a true second chance and not just a roof over their head for one or two nights. It is heavily involved in Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce (RAMAC) which rep-resents all businesses in the community, big or small, to ensure “We provide a good living to those trades, and we take pride in doing our own work because we understand the scheduling, the quality, and the costs.”Whole Foods - NebraskaInterior storeMAY 201922 everyone gets a voice and help the community thrive on local business. The company also has ties to the Racine Prairie School and acts as an adviser to the mayor for downtown planning and growth.“Maintaining our own base crews of tradespeople represents a commitment on our behalf to the local Racine and Milwaukee area. We provide a good living to those trades, and we take pride in doing our own work because we understand the scheduling, the quality, and the costs that have to be met. So we’re very proud of the fact that we’re more than a paper general, which many contractors are in today’s world,” said Vince.Many modern contractors get bids from sub-contractors and take the lowest bid but lack the knowledge held by the owners and operators of Bukacek Construction. The people at Bukacek have the experience to assess the time and cost of a job, and the company employs people who know how to work safely, all the procedures, and how to put together a quality building.Bukacek Construction is well-known is southeastern Wisconsin but has also not been afraid to venture forth to other surround-ing areas like Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan, and Minnesota. With 2019 in full swing, the company aims to further increase its sales volume, increasing the value of the company for its employees. One of the many ways it intends to entice new clients is through its recent partnership with Varco Pruden. As a supplier of Varco Pruden, Bukacek will be able to add com-puter-designed metal buildings and steel construction to the existing construction offerings. Bukacek Construction fully intends to continue offering the same quality work for which it has become known. From its early days to the bustling employee-owned company of today, it has worked hard to maintain a legacy of quality and trust that has seen it through to this level of success.23CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Every day, many of us walk, bike, or drive over bridges or skyways without paying a second thought to their importance in connecting us across roads and highways, rivers, lakes, mountains, or from one building to another. From wooden bridges in parks and forests to massive, magnificent structures like the recently-completed Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, they are vital to our everyday lives.The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau BridgeMAY 201924Written by Robert HoshowskyThe Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge – made at the cost of approximately $20 billion US from 400,000 metric tons of steel – is actually a system of bridges and tunnels spanning thirty-four miles and a remarkable engineering achievement. The bridge is designed to last 120 years and bear the force of earthquakes and other natural disasters.The bridge was not erected without controversy since at least eighteen workers perished during its nine-year construction, about the same number who died during the building of the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge. The 1,595-foot Brooklyn Bridge – which spans New York’s East River – was the world’s longest suspension bridge and a marvel of engineering and construction when it opened with great fanfare on May 24, 1883. World records seldom last, however, and the bridge’s length has been dwarfed many times over by other bridges since it was built.The world’s longest suspension bridge currently is Japan’s Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, with a record span of 6,532 feet and a total length of 12,831 feet. It joins the list of ten longest suspension bridges in the world with the others located in China, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Norway.As remarkable as bridges can be, disasters have occurred with lives tragically lost during the construction process or shock-ingly soon after completion, much like Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which opened to traffic in July of 1940 and fell to pieces during a fierce windstorm just four months later. The suspension bridge had been nicknamed ‘Galloping Gertie’ due to its wild, whipping movements during windstorms.On March 15, 2018, the world was stunned when a massive, 175-foot section of the $14.2 million FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity pedestrian bridge collapsed in mere seconds onto the Tamiami Trail, the southernmost section of U.S. Highway 41. Eight vehicles which had the misfortune to be driving beneath the bridge at that moment were crushed, and six people died. The company behind the bridge, Magnum Construction Management LLC, is facing eighteen lawsuits for wrongful death and personal injury for the failure of a bridge that was meant to improve pedestrian safety.Unlike other failed bridges, the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity was not made of steel and wire but concrete. It was built using a technique called accelerated bridge construction (ABC), which enables bridges to be replaced quickly, with the least amount of disruption to the flow of traffic and reduced risks to construction workers and the public. The main section of the 320-foot bridge had been placed on March 10, just five days before it collapsed. “As remarkable as bridges can be, disasters have occurred with lives tragically lost during the construction process or shockingly soon after completion.”The Akashi-Kaikyo BridgeBrooklyn Bridge25CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS It should have maintained its structural integrity for over a century, but cracks were soon discovered and reported on March 13 by the project’s lead engineer. Further signs of impending problems occurred when, at 9 a.m. on the day of the collapse, a university employee heard a cracking sound. Just hours later, at 1:47 p.m., the defective section came crashing down, horrifically captured on time-lapse video.The subsequent National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the cause of the collapse revealed numerous red flags. Experts criticized the bridge’s unusual zigzag diagonal support structure, which was uneven, resulting in insufficient support for the strut and anchor to bear the weight of the enormous bridge section.An article in FIU News entitled First-of-its-kind pedestrian bridge ‘swings’ into place, heralded the placement of the main section of the state-of-the-art bridge as it was lowered into what was supposed to be its permanent spot for decades. “The main span of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge was installed in a few hours with limited disruption to traffic over this weekend,” the article stated.“FIU is about building bridges and student safety,” stated FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg in the article. “This project accom-plishes our mission beautifully.” The ABC method of bridge construction used to build the doomed bridge was being advanced at FIU’s Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC). Although meant to be able to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, less than a week later, the bridge section, weighing a staggering 950 tons, came crashing to the ground.The bridge was the first in the world to be made entirely of self-cleaning concrete, incorporating titanium dust to remove pollutants and keep its surface a shimmering white, and was America’s largest pedestrian bridge moved via self-propelled modular transportation (SPMT). Sadly, these innovations and others, including environmentally-friendly LED lighting, did nothing for the structure.Given the extreme safety and engineering considerations in their design, bridge disasters are usually associated with natural events or aged and weakened structures, not bridges built just days or months earlier. One of the most recent bridge collapses was not totally unexpected. The pedestrian bridge was con-structed in 1939 and was once part of a Packard assembly plant in Detroit. This old, unmaintained bridge had been off limits to the public for years before it fell.However, even more recently constructed bridges, such as the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy, are not immune to disaster if not properly cared for. Witnesses said that the bridge was struck by lightning before it fell, but engineering.com stated this would not be enough to fell the fifty-one-year-old bridge, adding “Preliminary investigation points to a combi-nation of poor design, questionable building practices, and insufficient maintenance.” FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridgepleasecat / Shutterstock.com26The 3,878-foot cable-stayed bridge with a reinforced concrete deck tumbled to pieces on August 14, 2018, killing forty-three people and leaving another six hundred homeless. For Italy, a nation priding itself on centuries of concrete-making extend-ing back to ancient Rome, the Morandi Bridge failure came as a huge blow.In the very near future, expect drones to play an increasing role in bridge building and inspection. As infrastructure costs become greater – making future replacement costlier – and newer materials are introduced, bridges will need to be engi-neered to last much longer than ever before, with self-cleaning coatings and low-energy lighting to reduce maintenance and operating costs. Land is becoming scarcer in large cities worldwide, so bridges of the future will serve multiple purposes. Where they were pre-viously used only to move people and vehicles, more bridges may serve as public gathering places in the coming years. Washington D.C.’s 11th Street Bridge Park, planned to open this year, calls for a bridge, enclosed café, and environmental center, all within a large central plaza. Many bridges are iconic, like San Francisco’s famous Golden Gate Bridge which is still the most photographed bridge in the world over eighty years after it was unveiled. But bridges, walkways, and overpasses do not necessarily have to be massive to be remarkable. The Grand Canyon Skywalk opened in 2007. This is a horseshoe-shaped bridge supported over the world-famous canyon with an elevation of 4,770 feet. It provides breathtaking views of the Grand Canyon, one of the natural wonders of the world.Not to be outdone, China – already home to many of the longest bridges on earth – is also where many of the most terrifying are to be found. Hebei Province is the location of the 1,601-feet glass sky bridge at Hongyagu Scenic Area in Shijiazhuang. China also has the Tianmeng Mountain Pedestrian Bridge in Linyi, Shandong. Its 1,378-foot length makes it the longest spanning pedestrian bridge in the world.These are more than tourist attractions for thrill-seekers who want to walk on glass thousands of feet in the air. These bridges and others boldly push the boundaries of what is possible and represent the future of construction. While glass-bottom bridges appeal to thrill-seekers and the curious, they are also marvels of design and engineering and leave us wondering how they were built and what the future of bridge-building around the world might be. Morandi Bridgemaudanros / Shutterstock.comThe Grand Canyon Skywalk27MAY 201928 APRIL 201928Structural steel manufacturer Newport Industrial Fabrication, Inc. (NIF) specializes in architecturally and geometrically challenging builds. NIF is located in Newport, Maine and works primarily throughout New England but has worked on projects in New York, Florida, and beyond. Newport Industrial Fabrication was established in 1997 and has since grown from an eight-thousand-square-foot fabrication plant to eighteen thousand square feet. The company works closely with general contrac-tors, engineers, architects, and other on-site teams to provide project management and engineering support services. The company’s philosophy is to get involved at the early stages of the project so it can lend its experience and its expertise to every phase of the job. Its project management team collaborates with key groups on a job site, understand their needs, and communicate its own guidance, all toward providing the best result for the customer. Employees have a broad range of experience across many related fields, giving them a deep understanding of the technical details and inherent complications in every area of the project. By keeping the lines of communication open, everyone on the project is able to operate efficiently as a team. The company website describes this approach as “service oriented and pragmatic.” This commitment to efficient on-site communication is fun-damental for projects with geometric and architectural com-plexity, and these are the types of projects that suit its exper-tise. It has developed a portfolio of technical structural builds. Because many of these designs are at a level of complexity well beyond the scope of traditional processes, Newport Industrial Fabrication complements its expert engineering talent with custom three-dimensional (3D) modeling software. This allows the company to create intricate, complex structures that fit pre-cisely to the client’s specifications.Written by Ryan Cartner29CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS 29CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Next >