Wayne Brothers Inc.: Safely Exceeding Expectations Thru Best-in-class Concrete

Wayne Brothers Inc. (WBI) may have been founded by two brothers, but the company represents a family of talented professionals that goes beyond bloodlines. WBI became established early on as a leader in industrial concrete contracting and the company ha extended that reputation over the years across both public and private market sectors.

WBI is best known for the team’s technical prowess and for succeeding with challenging projects that would have other concrete contractors doing a double-take. WBI’s talented, ambitious and dedicated team of professionals continues to prove the impossible possible, delivering turnkey concrete packages through collaboration, teamwork and a commitment to improving the communities WBI serves.

“We provide a complete concrete package,” says Bobby Phillips, vice president of WBI. “We pride ourselves on self-performing everything.” The Kannapolis, N.C.-based company was founded in 1985, and this location has allowed WBI’s team of 340 employees to travel across the Carolinas, Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama over the years for work.

Concrete may be one of the oldest building materials, but the WBI team continues to prove the concrete industry is anything but stagnant. The team has the experience to provide a complete turnkey concrete package through collaborative partnering consulting services, where WBI will work directly with clients to establish a game plan to make the client’s vision a reality by applying strategic, targeted value-engineering.

WBI has the capabilities and resources to handle projects from the demolition and site development stage. The company has extensive experience working with all types of concrete from tilt-up concrete to cast-in-place, as well as newer concrete technologies like self-consolidating concrete, which comes in handy when working with large concrete forms and on sites that can’t accommodate compaction equipment.

The company’s specialization in concrete also allows the team to provide the gamut of repair and rehabilitation services. WBI provides civil construction services like water, sewer and storm drain installation and paving, as well as building tunnels, columns, piers, vaults, retaining walls, footings, tank pads, equipment foundations and bio-retention ponds.

Finding Success in Safety

WBI also takes pride in its team’s ability to deliver an exceptional result through the use of state-of-the-art technologies that enable extreme precision. Site grading can be performed with extremely low tolerances through the use of laser-guided equipment. WBI uses laser screeds to create super-flat slabs that have earned the company three Golden Trowel awards from The Face Companies, which is an accolade recognizing the flattest and most-level floor slabs poured around the world.

However, WBI believes that technical expertise should always be complemented with a continuous and comprehensive safety training program so that employees can live up to the company motto of “safely exceeding expectations.” WBI even employs a team of bilingual training managers to ensure total comprehension and comfort with safety procedures.

The company stressed the importance of its safety culture even at the pre-employment level, outlining safety policies and conducting a safety knowledge assessment. Jobsite safety orientation meetings are held before beginning every project and daily safety huddles keep employees refreshed and reminded of site-specific concerns.

WBI assesses improvements to the safety program as part of the company’s strategic plan; the program is documented and uploaded to the WBI server. The extra transparency enables management to look into contributing factors to any safety accidents, incidents or near-misses, while also ensuring that all personnel have completed the requisite OSHA 10, OSHA 30 or OSHA 500 training.

Building a Solid Foundation

The combination of the team’s technical prowess and safety awareness has allowed WBI to become a popular choice for projects with extra hurdles. WBI was recently contacted to provide a complete concrete contracting package on the construction of the Windshear Wind Test tunnel in Concord, N.C. The facility is a 180 mile-per-hour, rolling-road wind tunnel designed to test the limits of commercial and racing vehicles as sophisticated sensor measure aerodynamic forces.

“This is a very large concrete structure that took us about six months to complete,” expands Phillips. “WBI did all the excavation, stone bases, piers, columns, installed the cast-in-place concrete wind tunnel circuit, and took care of the slab-on-grade concrete construction as well.” The Windshear facility also happens to be one of only three of its scale, the first of its kind in North America, and the first commercially available facility of its kind in the world.

WBI also completed work on the foundation for the Siemens Gas Turbine Manufacturing Facility in Charlotte, N.C., in 2011. The manufacturing plant and office complex sprawls across 300 acres, measuring over 489,000 square feet and housing a 450-ton crane. WBI provided turnkey concrete services for Gray Construction, the general contractor on the project, which was also charged with creating 54 equipment foundations ranging from depths of two feet to 34 feet.

WBI was also recently tapped to provide the team’s expertise on the construction of Caterpillar’s new 850,000-square foot facility in Winston-Salem, N.C., where the team will also partner with Gray Construction. WBI began work in June 2011, and within the first year the crew had already poured over 6,000 cubic yards of concrete and built concrete walls over 15-feet thick. A completion date has yet to be set, but the facility will target LEED certification.

Later in 2012 WBI will also wrap up work on the new Center for Performing Arts at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. “The market was down for a few years, but we’re happy to have seen a big pick-up in activity this year,” admits Phillips.

As long as the activity holds there will be plenty of opportunity to keep the WBI team busy, while always ensuring safely. With a few years before WBI’s 30-year anniversary in 2015, the team will channel its efforts to continue a safety record and quality performance reputation worth celebrating. Wayne Brothers Inc. won’t rest.