Case Studies Mechanical

While installing massive refrigeration units known as chillers, for Providence Hospital in Mobile, Alabama, James B. Donaghey Inc. Mechanical Contractors ran into a roadblock. The firm needed to connect the chillers on one side of a street to the hospital HVAC system on the other—the trouble was, they didn’t want to disrupt traffic and add […]

In 1963 Josh Wiener’s parents—both dance instructors—bought a fixer-upper, Manhattan townhouse in what was then a bad neighborhood: 91st Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues. Wiener grew up helping his dad repair that townhouse. At 6 years old, he was sorting nails. At 11, he was mixing plaster and rebuilding walls. Now, 53 years later, […]

In 1872 a Scottish sea captain immigrated to Meriden, Connecticut, from Scotland and started his own plumbing company. Nearly 145 years later, that plumbing company, The James T. Kay Company, is one of the three oldest continuously running companies in Connecticut. In the beginning, James T. Kay and his son Frank would travel by horse […]

For the owner and vice president of a company, Rick Barr always finds something to keep him humble. There was the time—actually there have been many such times—when he was roused from his sleep, this time by a customer whose sewer line had just burst. Within the hour Barr and another man, each clad in […]

People couldn’t understand why Bob Whalen wanted to convert HB McClure Company into an ESOP, or employee stock ownership plan, just after he assumed ownership of the company in 2008, but Whalen had a vision. By putting the company in its employees’ hands, Whalen believed HB McClure would be more successful financially, earn a reputation […]

When customers stop by the main office of construction equipment supplier, Knickerbocker Russell, they’re likely to find executives standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fabricators on the shop floor, cutting steel and sweeping saw dust. Even vice president Sam Eaton recalls spending a Monday evening welding together metal storage containers to help the mechanical staff meet a tight […]

People laugh when Jaime Quello tells them one of the businesses he respects most is McDonald’s. But he’s serious. Wherever you are, when you walk into a McDonald’s, it’s the same as all the others. The company doesn’t know if two people or 200 are going to show up for lunch, but regardless, they can […]

A hundred years and it’s still going strong, but that hardly sums it up for S.M. Lawrence Company Inc., the full-service mechanical and electrical contractor that works predominantly in the southeast, but has also installed systems across the country, from Maine to Southern California. S.M Lawrence specializes in HVAC systems, electrical services, plumbing and piping […]

In 2016, Computrols Inc. began renovating the 43,000-square-foot building that will serve as its new manufacturing facility and headquarters in Gretna, Louisiana. According to Drew Mire, the company’s vice president of operations, this new location can’t happen fast enough. He says Computrols has outgrown its old facility, and the new one is just one way […]

For more than a century, O.C. McDonald Co. Inc. has been one of the Bay Area’s leading plumbing, process piping and HVAC contractors and service providers. Located in San Jose, California, O.C. McDonald is known for its quality workmanship and has accomplished some of the most complicated installations in the valley. By building a reputation […]