Estimating
The substation project for EPTCON in Nobel will proceed later this year. This project involves a lot of concrete bases and it has another Steelway building included which we will be ordering soon. Since the Nobel site is a green field site, EPTCON has a lot of sitework to do before it is ready for us. We are still waiting to hear about the sister project in South Porcupine as to whether it will go ahead. We understand that there is yet another one in Kirkland Lake but it will most likely be done next year.

Congratulations to Quinan Construction for being the successful bidder on the DFO Sea Lamprey Project. Cy Reault and George Stone & Sons were the other bidders. We hear it came in around $6.8 million so Gord Mezzomo should be quite happy. Ron Elliott Jr. works for this firm. We had to pass on this tender along with several others as we are just too busy and out of resources.

Our erection crews should be well versed with overhead crane installations by years end. We have one 20 tonne, one 25 tonne and one 50 tonne overhead cranes and runways to install. We may be getting an order for another 10 tonne as well. Jayson Kitchen, the guy from Steelway Material Handling who commissions the cranes will become quite familiar with the Sault this year!

Mike has been in contact with PGG regarding the solar farm and the starting date and overall schedule. Looks like this job will get underway later this year. Mike still has to make a trip to Albuquerque to review the construction plans. If we time it right, we may be able to complete the Co-Gen foundations some time in August and move right onto this project. It sounds like the bulk of this project will take place in 2009 and 2010.

We have been invited to bid a Steelway building in Port Hope for North American Construction (NAC). It is a very nice project and the building is about 13,000 square feet. Since our plate is overflowing, we are going to get in touch with the Steelway dealer for that area, TaskForce Engineering (Peter Kempenaar) and see if he can handle it for us.

Mike has received the order for the Sudbury building for Anmar DSI. The 47,000 square foot building is quite expensive as it has crane capacity for three different sized cranes and it has a double skin wall and roof. The building has been ordered and once Steelway provides us with the loads, reactions and anchor bolt layout, the foundation design work can begin. The breaking news on this one is it has been cancelled and put on hold indefinitely!

We had to re-price the other Anmar ONTRAC building as the 30 day quote expired and Steelway had two steel price increases during that time. We are waiting to hear how we did.

The building we priced and mentioned last month was for a Client of M. R. Wright & Associates. It was a 50' x 60' Steelway building with a 32' eave height and 26' high overhead doors. Our price was within their budget but they requested another competitive bid. A local firm submitted their price but they were not in the ball park. We are hoping for the order on this one soon.

We received the RFI for the $18.8 million build-finance project we mentioned last month. It is the new facility for the Algoma Health Unit. This project was put out for prequalification last year and four firms got prequalified. Our firm was the only local firm; the other three are from out of town. The Owner is hoping to get his funding approval shortly and he hopes to have construction underway by late fall or early next spring.

We submitted pricing to Dyno Nobel (formerly DTI Explosives) for a small Steelway building in North Bay. Unfortunately, their accelerated schedule required the building erection and completion by the end of September and we could not meet this requirement.

Tom is working on pricing for the No. 7 BF Baghouse MCC room/building. It is a very nice job with a lot of concrete and suspended slabs. He had also been invited to bid on the ASI Plate Mill Foundations for the Plate Transfer Runway. This project has to be completed on the July 20th shut down and requires three Supers and crews to work 24 hours per day for 10 days straight! We had to decline from bidding this project as we do not have the manpower.

New Employees
We have hired some summer students, welcome to Mark Kulmala (Tom's son) and Adam Roy, Dwayne's neighbor. Please remember these guys are summer students and make sure you watch out for their safety and well being. Work safe guys!

We ran an ad in the Sault Star for Carpenters in early June and received ten resumes, unfortunately, none of them were carpenters. The Carpenters Union did send me an email stating they had lots of Carpenters for us! Good one Mr. Pinder!

OPP Forensic Lab

Wayne has Sid helping him complete the deficiencies and chase the subtrades who have deficiencies. The paving is complete and Tranberg has the landscaping nearly finished. Trouble is we are still receiving change orders and change requests.

Sorry no photos this month.

Collegiate Heights Retirement Home Addition

KKC and his crew consisting of Donnie, Andy, Scott, Randy, Sid (part time) and Dan are on the home stretch. Blair has been helping Kenny as he will finish the project up when Kenny has to leave to go to the Praxair project site. Robinson's have installed the curbs and sidewalks and are ready to do the asphalt. Landscaping will follow. We finished up the display unit and the Owner has furnished and decorated it. It looks quite nice as you can see from the pictures. The elevator has been installed and commissioned. Superior Tile has most of the flooring installed and Ideal Colour are finishing up the painting. City Wide Electric is slightly behind but we are hoping that they will pick up the pace with extra manpower. The balcony handrails have been installed and we are waiting for the glass infill panels. Most of the second and third floors are complete and Tim has been doing our deficiency lists so as not to hold up completion.

Photo #1 | Photo #2 | Photo #3 | Photo #4 | Photo #5

AELP Co-Gen Foundations

John M and his army consisting of Gerry B, Jerry C, John B, Ryan J, Craig T, Jason Y, Kevin S, Bob H, Doug B, Nick M, JR, Justin S, Chris M, Cris P, Jake M, Tyson D, Andy B, Andy M, Wayne M, Jorge S and Jake K have now poured 3,146 cubic metres of concrete to date.
John has started the Gas Holding Tank foundations as well as the fan bases, boiler bases, pile caps, duct banks and various slabs and curbs. They are also bush hammering the turbine table top. John had to get some air monitoring done last month as a few employees were complaining about the air quality inside the building. The air quality tested out OK.
The good news is that John's laptop computer has been repaired and he has now joined the Hi-Tech side of things. We no longer hear him say, "Just fax it to me", he now says "just send me an email." John says he still has a lot of work left to complete and will be there until at least the end of August.

GoodLife Fitness Club, North Bay

Design work continues at a slow pace. We have finally received the final, final footprint of the addition and our design team can now start their work. The GoodLife consultants are very busy and it takes a while to get information from them. This project will now definitely extend into the spring of 2009.

Sorry no photos this month.

Husky Station Rebuild

Wayne now has a crew on site completing the foundations. He has Zak, Len, Mike and Nick from our team and has two of General Contracting's guys. General is on site and have been working on the parking lot, installing the underground services and have installed the new tanks. We are now a NO SMOKING site as the tanks had to be filled with product to keep them in place. Wayne has had a few guys from DMC Reinforcing helping out with the rebar installation. Phase Four is on site installing the underground conduits and light bases. S & T Group has moved onto site and are starting the underground plumbing. Jim Shook from Northern Survey has been on site assisting Wayne with layout. We have our share of inspectors visiting the site, MRW for compaction testing, Trow for concrete inspections, Stem Engineering for underground services, Met Energy for electrical inspections and the Building Department. We even had the MOL inspector on site twice last month, both inspections were fine.

Photo #1 | Photo #2 | Photo #3 | Photo #4 | Photo #5 | Photo #6 | Photo #7

Praxair T-900 Oxygen Plant

We had a meeting on site last month and will now be starting on July 7th. We have some drawings released for construction and are waiting for the remaining ones. The Steelway building has been ordered and is scheduled to arrive in late August with the overhead crane to follow.
We have been awarded the contract for the temporary compressor building and have placed the order with Steelway. The compressor will be installed with all of the related equipment prior to us erecting the building in November. Our subtrades on this project include General Contracting, DMC Reinforcing, Gough Masonry, McLeod Bros. Mechanical and Phase Four Electric.

ASI No. 7 Blast Furnace Baghouse Foundations

Ken M. has been having fun on this project. Every time he tries to drive piling, he hits buried obstructions and has to stop work and figure out a new game plan. Keith Avery is driving the piles and Inter Ontario is trying to do the excavation. Our crew consisting of Scott, Bob, Trevor, Wayne, Cal, Jeremy and Jeff have been on site building forms, doing formwork and pouring some concrete. The good news is that the piling has now all been driven and we had our load tests approved, so we can now get at the concrete. Tom is the PM on this job and has Blair and Clinton helping him on occasion.

ASI Iron Making Maintenance Building & Office Complex

We had hoped to have been awarded this project by now but since the 30 day tender period had expired, we were asked to submit updated pricing. We are now hoping to know more about this job early this month. Stay tuned.

Soo Foundry Building

Pat and Bob gave us the green light on June 3rd and the Steelway building and SMH overhead cranes have been ordered. The 35 tonne crane has now been increased to a 50 tonne crane. We have completed the test digs for soil investigations and as soon as MRW receive the drawings from Steelway, they can begin their foundation design. This building is scheduled to arrive in September and we are hoping to have the concrete work completed by then.

CTC Store Erection, Hearst
Jason has been working on this project earlier in the month. He had to leave the site as he was waiting for materials. The building is almost complete and he will need a week this month to finish up. We think that Jason and his crew are going to miss Hearst and the snowman making events in May, but we bet their families will be glad they are home.
Photos:
Photo #1 | Photo #2 | Photo #3

CTC Store Erection, Deep River
Dwayne completed as much of this job as he could and due to extras, he also had to wait for material. He sent Jason and his crew down to try and finish up but they will have one more trip. Jason will go to Hearst first and finish and then slide over to Deep River and finish it off. Then he should be at home for quite a while as we have a lot of buildings to erect starting in August.

ASI BOSP Preheater Foundations
Ken M. has been trying to get this job started but has run into a lot of buried surprises. We believe that he has finally worked out the details with ASI and Stem and can now start pouring concrete.

ASI Utility Corridor Gas Main Bent Foundations
Ken M. has been having problems on this project too. He started work on site on June 2nd with Keith Avery trying to drive sheet piling for shoring of the excavations but could not do it for Bents 1 and 2. Back to the drawing board and they will now build a stay-in-place steel box which will act as shoring and the formwork. Keith managed to drive some soldier piles at Bent # 3 and we will use steel plate shoring in between them. Ken, Tom, ASI and Stem Engineering have had to get quite creative on these foundations.

Filtrec North America Re-Roofing
We submitted pricing on this job back in January and had thought someone else was doing it. We have now been awarded the job based on our excellent reputation. This job involves re-roofing an existing 10,000 square foot building with Steelway's RTL standing seam roofing.

Fall Arrest Equipment
Accreditation for Ontario Workplaces WSIB (Workers Safety and Insurance Board)

I just have to make a comment on something that I consider a complete waste of time, effort and money; that being the WSIB's Accreditation for Ontario Workplaces.

I do not believe that Accreditation for Ontario Workplaces is a waste of time effort and money; but that the WSIB's efforts and their ramming through their version without listening to the stake holders and the construction industry is appalling and typical of the government who think and believe they know best and they really do not.

A very knowledgeable person has put most of the current government agencies into perspective for me. They said the problem with most of the government bodies and the staff that is currently coming in is that they are being filled by young persons straight out of schools and colleges. They do not have any other working experience or understanding. We are losing the experienced workers to an aging economy and most with this knowledge are retired or retiring.
These new people know what the acts, regulations and rules say, but they do not know how to apply them in industry, construction etc. Most have never set foot on a construction site.

How can WSIB ask for and hold stake holder meetings and then listen to nothing that was presented or suggested?

The construction industry including the Ontario General Contractors Association, and the governments own Health and Safety association, the Construction Safety Association of Ontario made presentations and were totally ignored. The Ontario tax payer and voter must be made aware of how far off the rails this agency has gone (WSIB).

The industry has said they will not be part of such an ill conceived and off the mark program.

Just about everything in the proposed pilot program is wrong. Using auditors that must pass WSIB auditor training, audits based on the Workwell Auditing program. (What about any of the other formal Auditor training programs like QMI, IATCA QMS auditors, accredited by the ANSI-RAB National Accreditation Program, to name a few)
WSIB then wants us to renew accreditation after 36 months once it has been granted despite the fact that you are required to have yearly internal audits and annual reviews, in order to keep your accreditation.

They ask that the employer selects members for the Workplace Health and Safety Management System Review Team such as: CEO or senior manager, Employer Accreditation Leader, one or more JHSC certified members or the H&S representative, and The Health and Safety Officer; and at least one member of this team must have internal auditor training. Up to this point this was a great idea for an accreditation review team. Then under Conflict of Interest conflicts may include:

All the Quality Management System auditors that I have been associated with have high ethical and moral standards and have signed a statement to be endorsed and authorized by the various Quality Auditing Training institutions. Who better to do the internal audits then the person trained to do them or is this just another cost inflicted on the contractor by the WSIB?

Please let the WSIB know that it needs to get its act together and actually listen to some rather good stake holder ideas and not just give them lip service only. If they are pro active and are genuinely interested it making Ontario Healthier and Safer then they need to listen and act responsibly.

I would suggest they take a look at another government agency with an already established "Accreditation Program" that has been working rather well for quite a few years and that would be Measurement Canada's "Criteria for the Accreditation of Organizations to Perform Inspections Pursuant to the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act, S-A-01."

Along with the above suggestion, and if the WSIB would actually listen, I would be more than willing to sit down and offer some input and thoughts as a trained, licensed internal auditor who has been auditing for the last eight years on various Quality Standards and Systems. I would love to discuss these issues with someone in a position of authority.

"Safety is a cheap and effective insurance policy"

Clinton met with Barry Sparrow and Sal Ienco from Sault College to discuss several courses. Collin Kirkwood, the Dean of Technology sat in briefly and was on board with the ideas that were being discussed. Clinton will now be sitting on the Sault College Board of Advisors. Congratulations Clinton.

Clinton and Mike met with Rick Thomas regarding an Education Committee within the Construction Association on June 24th. Martin Girardi from S & T Group had also wanted to sit in on the meeting but could not make it. We discussed various ideas and decided to hold another meeting for any one who is interested in promoting education from within our Association. The date for the meeting will be announced later.

Our Construction Association held a seminar on 3 R's (reduce, re-cycle, re-use) delivered by the Ministry of Environment Sector Compliance Branch staff. It included details on legislated regulations 102 and 103 for waste audits, waste reductions plans and source separation. Dwayne attended and found it to be very informative. This legislation will be coming to the Sault, so you better get ready for it.

The CSAO Sector Specific Health and Safety Rep. training course will be held at the Association from July 14th to the 18th. We will have four employees attending who already have completed the first part of this three part course.

I have been in discussions with Dan Padden from Safety Solutions regarding several safety courses. Dan is going to write us a seminar on Creating an Employee Safety Culture that he will put on for our employees on August 22nd. Dan also has one on "Commitment vs. Involvement" which is more of a management course. Since we have to pay Dan for his time and expenses to come to the Sault and put on a 3 hour seminar, we thought he could do the management one in the morning and open it up to association members. He could then do our company related safety culture seminar in the afternoon. Stay tuned for more information.
I am going to speak with Tom Newbery and see if we can borrow or rent the new Multi-Media centre at Sault College for the seminars.

Ted Newbery of Sault College should have the OGCA Concrete Construction course ready to go by the time this newsletter is launched. He has lined up Alvin Olar from TSH Engineers to be the instructor and the course is estimated to be around $450.00 per person. We have a lot of our employees wanting to sign up.

Ted, in conjunction with OGCA has lined up a Gold Seal presentation to be put on by Clive Thurston, President of the OGCA. The presentation is scheduled for September 19th from 1:30 to 3:30 pm in the new Sault College Multi-Media Centre. You should mark this date on your calendar and plan on attending. When Owners and Clients make Gold Seal a "Condition of Contract" you will only wish you had attended and got on board. You cannot simply buy a Gold Seal Certification! This goes for mechanical and electrical trades as well.

Conventions & Social Events
Wayne and Clinton played in the Algoma University golf tournament on June 9th, the rainy drizzle day. They got soaked but had a good time and it was for a good cause. They even remembered to provide us with a picture!
Photo

Our company golf tournament was held on Saturday, June 14th at Island Springs and we are quite sure that everyone had a good time. Thanks John & Yvonne and we'll see you next year. We had 44 golfers participate with prizes for all. We would like to thank all of our subtrades and suppliers who donated some really great prizes, they were:

Guarantee Company Lafarge Canada National Group Nexus Canada Phase 4 Electrical Royal Bank Soo Mill

Service Rentals MR Wright Adler Movers Black Loon Millworks Steelway Building Systems Estate Guard Insurance Sling Choker

Superior Tile Hollow Metal Fisher Wavy Soo Disposal S&T Group Vipond Mike Moore & Sons

Photos:
Photo #1 | Photo #2 | Photo #3 | Photo #4 | Photo #5 | Photo #6 | Photo #7 | Photo #8 | Photo #9

Sid played in the S&T Group's Heart & Stroke golf tournament on June 20th; he had a better weather that day than Wayne and Clinton. Sid said he had a great time and would gladly represent us next year. Guess we're in for next year Denise.

Congratulations To:
Mike Moore on accepting the position as Co-Chair on the Ontario General Contractors Association's Safety Committee. The new Chair, Steve Riddell, from Ellis Don requested to have Mike as his Co-Chair and Mike accepted the position at the June 20th OGCA Board meeting. We all wish Doug Chalmers a speedy recovery as Doug had to step down as the Safety Committee Chair due to health reasons.

Bobby Wood from MRW for becoming a Grandfather! A 9 lb. baby girl named Jane Elizabeth Wood. Congrats to the parents too!

The National Champions Sault Steelers Football team on being awarded the 2008 H. P. Broughton Trophy for being the Sault Ste. Marie's sportsperson of the year. The Steelers whipped the Sarnia Imperials 69 to 7 on June 28. The Steelers are now in first place and have 191 points scored which is more than the next two teams combined! As far as the players who have scored the most point, the first three players are all Steelers.

The July Birthday Club:
Craig T July 3rd
Michael H July 18th
Jerry C July 23rd
Evan T July 24th
Wayne S July 31st

Mike Moore & Sons Construction's Final Donation Status

2008 Donation Goal	100
Donations to Date	27?

July Clinic Times
Tuesday, July 15th, 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Wednesday, July 16th, 12 noon to 2:30 PM and 4:00 to 8:00 PM
Thursday, July 17th, 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Please note that the Clinic is back at the Croatian Hall on Second Line.

Tibits

Fern would like to remind our employees about the 2008 Education Fund for their children that are going onto post-secondary education in September. Applications can be picked up in the office or Fern call e-mail them to you. Please contact her for further information.

The following little tidbit is from Nancy Shuttleworth.

New Gas Coupon!

I didn't realize this but these coupons are good for one litre of gas at most retailers.
I have seen lots of them around but never knew what they were for.
You probably have one lying around somewhere new.
Make sure to use it before it expires!

I just had to put this driving quiz in that I received from my Michigan buddy, Don Hurban.

Traffic Quiz (for those of you who are of legal age and not offended easily)

Question: You are driving along a narrow two lane road with a NO PASSING sign posted, and you come upon a bicycle rider. Do you:

a. Follow this slow moving bicycle rider for the next 2 miles, or
b. Do you break the law and pass?

Why take unnecessary risks and get a ticket?

Photo (Warning must be 18 years of age or older)

I am writing part of this letter at the gorgeous "Tribble Lake Resort" where the weather sucks. Fern and I got out fishing on Friday morning and the only bites we got were from the deer flies! We have been considering putting on a fire but don't feel one should be required in July! Right? Since it has been raining most of the weekend, we have both been glued to our laptops for 12 hours each day, what a way to spend your time at camp! We work longer hours at the resort than we do at the office. Are we nuts? I guess so but I did manage to get four more Safety Quizzes written and Fern has been cursing and swearing while working on our Human Resources policy. Seems some of the Policy Pro formats are not user friendly!
The beagles have been sleeping, snoring and dreaming. We have not seen another single human since arriving at our remote resort which is nice at times. All we have heard is the gentle purring of the generator charging our laptops.

A joke from our pilot, John Kelly, what do you call the day after two days of rain? Monday!

We do have two new friends at the resort. We have two critters which we believe are minks, but they could also be river otters. They are quite interesting to watch and we think they are living under our dock. Once Stormy meets them he will fill us in on the details. I must admit that I don't know much about them and will have to do some research on the net to better understand them.
I am beginning to believe the old joke about Northern Ontario summers; they are 4 weeks of poor snow machining! This is one of the poorest summers I can remember in a long time and I am having great difficulty in believing this global warming thing.

I understand that the Algoma District School Board has decided to proceed with the Province's Alternative Financing and Procurement model for their new high school and their French immersion school along with two other Ontario boards into a pilot project with a proposal for a private partnership. They would be looking at Infrastructure Ontario models. Their proposed new schools come with a price tag of over $45 million. My finance partner has already indicated that we should go for it and I am now in the planning stages to see if it is conceivable. They want the French immersion school opened in 2010 or early 2011 and the high school opened the following year.

We understand that Bobby Wood and Greg Saunders attended their now annual Masset fishing adventure! We were honoured to be invited last year and had a great time. Bob says he caught the biggest fish this time but we are still waiting for the pictures to prove it.

We started our Safety Quiz program in June. Ken James started the quiz idea at our all-employees meeting several months ago. Ken, Dwayne and I have met and developed it into a company policy. We have one quiz every week and so far we have not heard any bad things about them. Actually, we have had some rather good comments. We think it is an outstanding program and will help to keep our employees better connected to safety and keep them thinking about it. We hand out the quizzes each week which consist of between 10 to 20 questions. Our employees then fill them out as a tool box talk one day and then discuss and review the correct answers the next day. They must all sign the sign-off sheet saying they took part and this is filed at the office (due diligence) and posted in the jobsite trailers. If they wish to have further information on the topic, they can contact the office. Mike tabulates the quiz results and adds them to our database. All quizzes results are kept confidential. This gives us a very good tool for measuring the company level of knowledge and helps us to know where to concentrate our efforts.
Heat Stress Quiz

We are now working on a computerized version which makes it much easier to track the results and add them to our database automatically.

Dwayne was on site at the CTC Deep River project on May 26th when Jane Gowland from Advanced Health & Safety visited the site representing CTC. She reviewed our safety information postings in the trailer, reviewed Dwayne's safety binder and discussed our safety quiz program with him. She was very impressed and said she had never seen anything like it before. She has never heard of any company giving safety quizzes to their employees. She was also going to check out our website. Good job Dwayne!

I must once again complain about the Tim Horton's drive-thru service. It SUCKS big time. If I treated my clients with such poor service, I would not have them for long. Why can they get away with it?

We recently under went a PST audit. If you don't know the sales tax laws for Ontario, you had better learn them quickly. I strongly suggest it. Because you will get an eye opener during an audit and ignorance of the tax laws does not cut it. As an employer or business owner, you are expected to know them inside out (for free) same as doing the governments job by collecting GST. You can't believe what is PST applicable including used items. I have asked Rick Thomas to set up a PST seminar and I strongly suggest that you attend. And I can write you a book on Owners and Clients that claim they are PST exempt! Most only think they are and have no idea of the laws and regulations. If you did not collect PST from a client for whatever reason and you are audited and they say you have to pay the PST, you are going to pay it out of your pocket, just try going back to a client three years later and telling them they owe you the PST. Good Luck!

Just a short note to all of those drivers out there who don't know what the lever is for on the left hand side of the steering column. It is called a "turn indicator" or a "signal switch" and by moving it up or down causes either your left hand or right hand signal lights to come on to indicate to other drivers that you intend on making a turn. Really now, what will they come up with next? I would guess about 50% of all drivers do not know about the signal switch or are too lazy to use it!

And hey, no I mean hay. There are a lot of businesses in the Industrial Park that need to go haying or cut their grass. Perhaps they should buy some cattle to graze on their hay fields. There are a lot of business owners who spend a lot of time and money making their buildings and yards look good and it is spoiled by those who don't. I know that our landlord, Tony Barban spends a lot of time and money making our building look very professional and cared for. Thanks Tony! By any chance do you have time to give some lessons?

I am going through a small crisis at work right now. Ken James sold his house and is in the process of packing and getting ready to move. He is clearing out his house of books and binders collected over the years and our office appears to be his dumping grounds. And please don't ask him if he has time to be riding the old hog (his Harley) because I can't stand the tears!