< PreviousTo build and finish these projects, it operates two state-of-the-art facilities. From design and detailing to fabrication and fin-ishing, its 18,000-square-foot assembly plant is equipped with the machinery to meet the structural steel fabrication needs for projects of any size or complexity. It has sawing equipment and a plasma table capable of cutting through two-inch-thick steel; it has a drill line, as well as 45 and 120-ton punches, and equipment for a wide range of industry standard welding, press braking, and forming processes. This is all in addition to its sixteen acres of developed yard space and a separate seventeen-thousand-square-foot facility designed for painting, coating, and other finishing applica-tions. Its coating facility is equipped for a variety of coating and painting processes, as well as sandblasting and pressure cleaning. NIF is highly proficient and accredited to be able to complete its projects. The company has certifications for welding, coating, inspecting both of those processes, and much more. It is certified by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) to build structural components for small and inter-mediate steel bridges. The AISC has also provided it with a fracture critical endorsement.Bridges are considered ‘fracture critical’ when the failure of a structural component would cause partial or complete collapse. In general, bridges are designed so that if a struc-tural component were to fail, backup components would keep it standing. This redundancy has multiple compo-nents doing the same job, becoming useful only when one fails. To perform work on a non-redundant fracture critical bridge, more stringent fabrication standards must be met than for typical bridge work. The AISC’s endorsement indi-cates whether or not a fabricator is equipped to meet those demands, and Newport Industrial Fabrication has earned it, demonstrating its reliable, quality workmanship. Having so many prestigious designations has enabled NIF to stand apart in its industry. Due to that, the company has been able to seek out more difficult projects and further develop its expertise, the field experience of its workforce, and its reputation. “The company is certified by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) to build structural components for small and intermediate steel bridges.” It has worked on an array of project types, but the majority fall into four categories. These are architecturally exposed structur-al steel, curtain walls and glass support structures, transporta-tion projects such as bridges, and structures for the alternative energy sector.Architecturally exposed structural steel (AESS) is any steel com-ponent that has a structural function, but has been deliberately left exposed to serve an aesthetic purpose as well. AESS com-ponents typically require detailing and finishing processes that are not necessary with standard structural steel, and a greater level of care is required from the fabricator to make the product appeal to the eye while being structurally sound. To achieve this, the company uses a whole suite of software utilities including AutoCAD, Tekla Structures, and Solidworks. The combination of these tools gives precision design and engineering capabilities from modeling structures to calcu-lating the physical attributes of components. Incorporating these technologies allows the company to operate with great accuracy and efficiency. Curtain wall is the term for architecturally exposed steel struc-tures that hold glass. They are often challenging to construct, but tend to be in demand because of their aesthetic appeal. However difficult these projects might be, Newport Industrial Fabrication has developed techniques and processes to make the project feasible. For the transportation sector, the company has worked on an assortment of job types including bridges, bus, train, and subway stations, ferry terminals, and more. Each project has its own unique set of requirements and can be complicated to construct. Because the clients for these projects are often state departments of transportation, certain qualifications are necessary and very strict standards must be met. It has consis-tently delivered the highest possible quality, and as a result, the Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maine departments of transportation are all repeat customers. NIF’s coating capabilities enable it to construct metalized struc-tures that are perfectly suited to handle the specific issues of alternative energy projects. Wind farms and hydroelectric or underwater tidal turbines require robust equipment to with-stand weather and environmental wear. NIF’s coating facility is equipped with thermal transfer equipment for metalizing steel with coatings of zinc, aluminum, titanium, and brass. For more than two decades, Newport Industrial Fabrication has built its reputation by delivering top quality work on some of the most architecturally challenging projects in its region. 31CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Ontario Cutting & Coring Limited (OCC) is a progressive, innovative, Mississauga, Ontario-based leader in the field of concrete cutting. Its trusted team of talented contractors specializes in concrete cutting as well as wall, slab and wire sawing, scanning and imaging, curb cutting, and core drilling.MAY 201932The family-owned business was founded in 1973 by President Tony Zapparoli, who quickly made a name for himself in the industry by taking on even the most challenging jobs with a personal touch. Under Tony’s guidance, his son Mark Zapparoli manages the business along with his stepson Chris Volpe.“We set ourselves apart from a lot of the other companies because we have expertise in what we do. Tony, Mark and I are hands-on and involved in every single major job,” remarks Vice President Chris Volpe. “Other companies will just send people out, while we are in front of the customer, on the job, making sure the job is getting done safely, properly and cost-effectively. Many of the jobs are still done on a handshake.” One of OCC’s specialties is bridge demolition. This skilled capa-bility is invaluable in the construction sector. “We have spe-cialized equipment, and more importantly very experienced staff. Very often, demolition companies only have one night to demolish a bridge. We have to be prepared to mobilize people and equipment, and strategically cut bridge sections ‘hand-in-hand’ with their demolition operations. Many companies such as Delsan Aim, Priestly Demolition, EllisDon, PCL Construction, Verdi Alliance, and Crosslinx often come to OCC to develop a demolition plan,” shares Founder and President Tony Zapparoli.“We work very closely with a lot of demolition companies. When it comes to bridge demolition, there is a very strict time con-straint because usually you are working over a highway. There are not too many companies out there who do the work in the time that it needs to get done,” explains Volpe. Written by Samita SarkarAfter almost 50 years in business, there has never been a situ-ation where a road or highway hasn’t been opened within its scheduled timeframe or less.With the help of major industry contractors, OCC has grown beyond simple concrete cutting to outperform any other cutting and coring company in the business. It is now frequent-ly called upon during pre-t meetings to help major industry players with their bids and find more cost-effective ways to do the job, giving these clients a competitive edge. “We always try to think outside of the box – try to find new and innovative ways to do the work. We are ahead of everybody else with regard to new equipment and investigating what else is out there,” adds Volpe. In fact, the highly regarded company was the first in Eastern Canada to employ the use of the revo-lutionary wire saw.Some of the many major businesses that OCC has grown alongside are Priestly Demolition (bridges, sensitive land-marks, Union Station, Royal York Fairmount Hotel), Delsan-Aim (Ontario Power Generation’s 650-foot coal stacks, Bruce Nuclear Plant), and EllisDon (Union Station, Eaton Centre and Massey Hall). OCC’s last major project with EllisDon was for the Toronto Transit Commission, working on the city’s famous Union Station. “We worked with EllisDon on removing approximately a thousand feet of subway wall, with a live subway running con-tinuously behind that wall. There was no shutdown or interrup-tion to that major hub in the city,” Volpe explains.33CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Conducting such critical work in the heart of Toronto, with thousands of passengers rushing past you every few minutes, is enough to make most people feel a bit squeamish, but such challenges are where OCC excels. “It can be intimidating at times,” Volpe admits, “but we are known for doing the difficult jobs that no one else wants to do, or that they say cannot be done. It’s what drives us. The harder the job, the better.”Tackling such challenging projects, safety is a number-one concern at OCC. At the moment, OCC is striving toward COR™ cer-tification. The Certificate of Recognition (COR™) is nationally trademarked and endorsed certification, awarded by the Canadian Federation of Construction Safety Associations (CFCSA). OCC staff have achieved Federal clearances to work in high security facilities such as the Bruce Nuclear Facility, Nanticoke Generating Plant, and public works facilities like the Arthur Meighan Building.“We do safety talks all the time, continu-ally train through internal rigorous courses through the union, and stay up-to-date on all safety requirements. We always say to our people, ‘we need to get the job done on schedule,’ but first we always need to look at our situation, make sure the job is safe, and if there is a situation where they don’t feel that it is safe or where there is potential for something to happen, stop. Do not proceed with the work unless you are comfortable, and always follow the strict engineered procedures that are in place,” describes Volpe.Over the years, Tony Zapparoli has grown his business from a company of one through hiring family and friends. He believes that running a company based on family values leads to greater commitment from employees. After all, at the end of the day, you are only as good as the team behind you.“We are able to go and get all the work in the world, but if you don’t have dedi-cated employees behind you, it means nothing,” he says. “A lot of our work is repeat business, because we’ve proven to our customers that we are reliable and we get the job done on time, safely, within budget. If there are issues on the job and things are going sideways, they know they can pick up the phone and we will be on the job to address their concerns, help out and make sure we get things back on track.” OCC’s upper man-agement is always a phone call away, so customers know that once a decision is made, it is final.“We are known for doing the difficult jobs that no one else wants to do.”MAY 201934 When hiring, OCC looks for other hardworking, ready-to-learn, safety-oriented individuals who will fit well within its family culture. “We want people who want to be here long-term. We are a family-based business. We treat our people as if they are our family,” Volpe mentions.This family-oriented philosophy that Tony has instilled in the company was one-of-a-kind during the time of the company’s founding. Indeed, Tony Zapparoli founded his business after being denied time off after the tragic loss of his father. “He started erecting pre-casts, and while he was erecting pre-casts there was an opportunity to drill plumbing holes in the suites that were built in this townhouse complex,” Volpe recalls.Mr. Zapparoli bought himself a used, $2,000 Datsun and began drilling holes. From there, the rest was history. Today, OCC operates under a business model of dedication and loyalty. “Hard, dedicated work gets rewarded. I don’t know of any other companies who give their unionized employees a bonus. We have employees that have been with us for over 25 years. We are very loyal to our employees,” says Zapparoli.Although Tony is currently not in the field as much as he used to be, clients are still always asking about him, and often request specific staff on their projects. OCC has built a reputa-tion for safe, high-quality work and a reliable, personal level of service, and takes pride in securing repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals. “We don’t do much advertising. We built our business based on strong relationships,” says Volpe.As OCC prepares for its transition into its second generation of lead-ership, it plans for controlled growth so Tony, Mark, and Chris can keep a level of personal involvement in its projects. It has grown a niche for completing large, complicated projects, working with engineers to determine the safest, strategic and most economical approach to demolishing/removing concrete. But as it grows, OCC never wants to be seen as a ‘big corporation.’ “Our services are in high demand, but like a lot of the construc-tion industry, there is a shortage of qualified workers, especially concrete cutters. We have strategically grown our company by bringing staff on board where they have an opportunity to train under one of our senior crew members,” says Zapparoli. Even though OCC has still managed to keep its company culture more like that of a small business, the company of about 50 team members has continued to grow along with its reputation, working as far as Newfoundland on the east coast and Vancouver in the west. “Although we had no plans to work outside the province, we have also recently been awarded a major cutting project at a heritage building in Prince Edward Island. With our experience in building cutting, we were asked to be personally involved in the cutting work in the restoration of this historic government building,” divulges Zapparoli. “We don’t want to grow too fast, because by growing too quickly, you sacrifice quality and most importantly, your safety. Hopefully in the next five to ten years we could double our capacity, with the right control,” shares Volpe.New leaders in the company, such as Chris Volpe and Mark Zapparoli, will strive to maintain the reputation Tony has been building for over almost 50 years, and will expand in a way that honours his vision. No matter the echelons of growth that OCC achieves in the future, it will continue to deliver its high-demand services safely, efficiently, and with the utmost quality.35CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS The Vee-Jay Cement Contracting Company, established in 1958 and headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, aims to impress its customers to forge enduring relationships. It offers all varieties of concrete work: tilt-up construction, foundations, high-rise concrete structures, parking structures, post-tension concrete, recreation courts, concrete restoration and repair, and concrete paving.MAY 201936“Look at the Colosseum; it’s still standing,” says Charlie (Chuck) Vitale, referring to the massive Roman struc-ture, completed around 80 AD and still dominating the center of Rome. “Concrete is one of the longest-lasting products mankind has ever developed. It will hold up forever as long as it’s maintained and protected from long-term cor-rosion.” And this twenty-first century American also knows a thing or two about building structures that last.As the third generation in the Vitale family business, he and his older brother Sal, both company vice presidents, are main-taining the reputation for quality cement work begun by their grandfather Caesar. “He came from a village near Palermo in Sicily at age seventeen, snuck over on a boat and ate bread and water in a steam room for several weeks and made it to New York. He had family across the U.S., and he eventually worked his way to St. Louis,” says Vitale. “He and another man founded the company here in 1958, but when that partner left, he faced the possibility of having to close because he couldn’t read or write English and didn’t know much about estimating, so my dad came in sometime in the early seventies.” The younger Vitale has been working there full-time since 2005, but from 1996 to 2005, beginning at the age of fourteen, he worked for the company every summer, even while at Florida State University earning a degree in accounting and business management. “I started in the warehouse loading trucks, cleaning forms, worked in the shops – or yards as we call it – and I worked on residential projects,” he recalls. Written by Margaret Patricia EatonHe is still hands-on. We caught up with him in the middle of a Friday afternoon, at the end of a busy week, on his mobile phone as he pulled up alongside a company job site on the north side of the Busch Stadium where the St. Louis Cardinals play.“We’re in the middle of this project, Ball Park Village, building a high rise that will include a hotel, condos, and a bunch of res-taurants right outside the Cardinal’s stadium,” he told us. “I want to visit the guys on the job site and talk to some of them about going out of town for work we’ve got coming up.” While headquarters remain in St. Louis, where Vee-Jay began doing residential work, it has grown significantly. “We’re working primarily in the Midwest, but we’re working coast to coast and have done projects in the northeast, down on the southeast, and some on the west coast. We’re doing close to $150 million worth of projects in a year, and that’s a pretty sig-nificant bump,” he says. Ninety percent of the work Vee-Jay does is by its own people and not subcontracted. Employee numbers vary seasonally, with 400 in winter and up to 500 or 600 in the summer. The staff encompasses a range of construction professionals from engineers and project managers to quality controllers and field employees including iron workers, cement masons, carpenters, operators, and other skilled labor or office staff.“One of the unique things about Vee-Jay is that we’ll do a job as large as a $20 million contract, or we’ll do jobs as small as five to ten thousand dollars. We have someone who will work with small jobs, go into schools or churches that may have to replace their main entrance, for example, and we will do work like that.” Vee-Jay will also work on healthcare facilities which are chal-lenging because medical work must be able to continue at the same time that renovations or repairs are taking place. “But primarily we focus on tilt-up warehouses, high rise build-ings, and specialty concrete work. We also do a lot of founda-tions, drill piers, things of that nature, so we have diversified from when I started fifteen years ago. Then, eighty to ninety percent of our work was flatwork and paving or grading struc-tural slab. We still do that, but only about fifty percent now is flatwork,” Vitale explains. “The company has really evolved – and it’s a neat thing to see, as times have changed – and so has what owners expect from a contractor. They want a one-stop shop, someone who can do the whole package from start to finish, so we had to diversify to keep up with that demand. We’re just wrapping up two one-million-square-foot warehouses, side by side, for the tenant World Wide Technology, with Contegra as the general contrac-tor, and those were the biggest projects in actual volume that we had last year,” he says. Vee-Jay is now also in the fifth year of a six or seven-year-long project to create the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas. The government facility describes its purpose as ‘a state-of-the-art biocontainment laboratory for the study of diseases that threaten both America’s animal agri-cultural industry and public health.’ Because of the obvious security concerns and the non-disclo-sure agreement the company signed, Vitale cannot speak about specifics, but he did speak about the complexity of the work that calls for “over ten different mix designs that we have used for the job, basically everything from slab on grade, slab on metal deck, structural slab, topping slab, low-shrink mixes, self-consolidating concrete, just everything. It’s an 800,000-square-foot building and a pretty impressive project.” While Vitale was occupied talking with his crew at Ball Park Village, we went online to check out another mammoth project he oversaw as project manager. It was a tilt-up warehouse dis-tribution center for USPS in Portland, Oregon, and the numbers speak for themselves. Over eighteen months, an historic snowfall, and fifty-eight inches of rain, Vee-Jay completed the 818,000-square-foot structure which involved 59,000 tons of poured concrete for flooring, 525 tons of steel, and 166 tilt-up panels. And did it on time and within budget. “The company has really evolved… and so has what owners expect from a contractor.”MeramecRooftop Concrete PourMeramecRooftop Concrete PourMAY 201938We were also intrigued to learn about the role post tensioning plays in creating tennis and other recreational courts, includ-ing skating rinks. Post-tensioned (PT) recreational courts do not require as much maintenance as traditional court systems. The concrete is poured over high-stress cables that are then tight-ened, in effect, drawing the concrete in and preventing cracking.Vee-Jay, over the years, has received numerous awards and been recognized by professional associations including the American Subcontractors Association and the Association of General Contractors of America. Vitale says the future looks bright. There is, of course, a labor shortage which companies across North America are facing and which causes concern. “It is an obstacle we have to overcome because when there’s a labor shortage, the cost goes up, so we’re seeing more renovations rather than new construction. Rural areas are a great place to pick up field talent… and we do career days in high schools, and we go to engineering colleges for internships,” he shares.“I think our business model will stay similar to what it is now. We want to remain flexible, try to be as innovative as possible, try new products, and keep working on research and devel-opment. So, summing up, I’d say we will continue to try to grow, to expand nationally, and to exceed our customer’s expectations. Maintaining good customer relationships is what’s really important.”Paric Ballpark VillageTilt upInline Post39CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Next >