Milton J. Wood Company

Milton J. Wood Company (MJW) was founded in 1969 on a simple premise: Provide customers with straightforward services and top-of-the-line products to build exceptional value. Integrity, dependability and quality continue to represent MJW’s core values, which have allowed the company to succeed and grow over the course of over 40 years.

MJW operates as a full-service mechanical and general contractor, with a specialized sister company that designs and installs fire protection systems. Both divisions provide the talent and manpower required to provide full-service construction services in a design-build capacity. Despite the various specialties, each MJW employee comes together to drive growth by focusing on upholding the company’s exceptionally high rate of repeat business.

The incomparable ability to solve any problem fashions MJW’s core, but it is the company’s passionate employees who continue to make all the difference. “I’ve been here sine 1976 and I still love what I do,” admits David Tankersley, president of MJW.

Tankersley’s passion is spread across the South. From headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla., and secondary locations in Lakeland, Fla., and Savannah and Brunswick, Ga., the team is able to reach customers around the world. The company averages over 300 wholehearted employees at any given time, with busy periods and plant outages pushing the number closer to 700.

Anything You Can Do…

The abundance of talented personnel allows MJW’s general and mechanical contracting division to provide the traditional array of project management and design-build services. The company also provides specialized services for mechanical process piping, precision alignment, equipment installation, steel fabrication, steel erection, pile driving, and concrete placement as well as HVAC installation and service. The extent of services offered has allowed the company to establish a loyal following of clients in many heavy industries, including power and utilities, chemical production and aviation, and pulp and paper.

Likewise, the fire protection company goes beyond simply providing design-build services by maintaining an experienced staff capable of working with the gamut of fire protection systems. The fire protection company works with clients in an advisory capacity providing consulting services. The team is also happy to work with clients throughout the lifetime of the fire protection system, providing annual inspections and performing regularly scheduled maintenance.

Safety is paramount, and MJW strives to create a corporate culture that emphasizes the critical role safety plays in the success of the company. MJW has led the way toward more effective safety programming in the industry by creating the POWER team, where the POWER acronym stands for Providing Observations While Eliminating Risk. The behavior-based safety program was developed in 2005 as a combination of two behavior-based safety models with a goal to create a culture of safety that is proactive rather than reactive.

So far the POWER team has been able to implement an aggressive jobsite inspection and review process, as well as design and issue a job hazard analysis form. The form aims to provide a level of standardization that facilitates the rapid identification of any problems or concerns, while also increasing transparency by making the form easier to both use and fill out.

Building a Corporate Family

In addition, the company runs safety seminars regularly to refresh employees for the well being of all. MJW’s safety seminars provide owners, prospective clients and existing clients the chance to see the company’s safety program in process.

Trusting one another goes hand-in-hand with the safety measures the team takes on a daily basis. The team’s confidence in the company translates through each project. Additionally, MJW is proud to be an employee-owned company, which reinforces the role safety and client satisfaction play in the continuing success of the company.

The shared sense of responsibility has helped the teamwork together to find solutions to projects with multiple logistical snags. In 2011 MJW’s fire protection company was tasked with replacing aging fire mains for one of its clients. The facility serves as an unloading point for cargo ships to pump cryogenic storage tanks of liquefied natural gas into an underground distribution pipeline.

MJW and the fire protection team managed to install 16,000 lineal feet of pipe and the new mains without affecting the facility’s ability to use the existing mains. MJW and the fire protection team completed all installations, testing, commissioning and inspections while the plant remained at full production capacity, allowing the new system to come online before taking the existing system out of service.

And even the recent economic downturn couldn’t stop the MJW team. “We tightened our belt, scraped barnacles and took a different approach, but we’re ready and waiting for an upswing that should bring us some controlled growth,” admits Tankersley.

With a diverse array of services, a strong reputation, a national client base and over 40 years of experience, it will be anything but a surprise to see Milton J. Wood Company continue to set the tempo of the industry.