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Building a Foundation for Success

Contractors realize, maybe better than most business people, that you never know when you start a business how it’s going to turn out. All you can hope for is that by doing most things right, everything will work out the way it should.

Craig Stewart and his father Don were in that uneasy predicament when they started up Keystone Concrete Placement, Inc. with 15 employees early in 1993. Both had extensive experience in the concrete foundation business, but experience doesn’t always guarantee success. If the subsequent growth of the company is any indication, they must have done just about everything right.

A Family Affair

Business was so good that first year, Craig’s brother Mark, who worked as purchasing manager for Village Builders in Houston, joined the new company mid-year. Soon after, brother Brad, who was working for another Houston homebuilder, left to join what had now become the family business.

Today Keystone is still involved in some residential projects, but the company has expanded far beyond that. They now have over 700 employees, and are currently working on a $9 million concrete job on a new six-story school of management building at Rice University, as well as a nine-story apartment loft project in downtown Houston. They also completed a $20 million year out of a second office in Georgetown, just north of Austin, including concrete work for a San Antonio complex consisting of a seven-story office building and four-story parking garage.

Don Stewart is president of the firm, which is located in Jersey Village (northwest Houston). Craig serves as vice president of field operations, overseeing day-to-day project work and superintendents. Mark Stewart is vice president of management, with project managers and estimating reporting to him, and Brad Stewart runs the Georgetown office.

What They Do

Generally speaking, Keystone offers a turnkey foundation package, to include site work, form setting, grade beam excavation, fine grading, reinforcement installation, pump place and finish the concrete, and finally remove the forms. Work required varies from job to job, usually dependent on how much of the concrete work the general contractor wants to take on themselves. The company owns six Schwing concrete pumping trucks to ensure the concrete can be placed wherever it is required.

Keystone is also heavily involved in tilt-wall projects, such as a couple of IMAX/AMC theatre complexes they’ve completed in west and southwest Houston, several warehouses and the Super Target store finished last year at Highway 6 and the Southwest Freeway.

Their First Caterpillar Backhoe Loader

Keystone uses backhoe loaders to move materials, load dump trucks and move form lumber around. After using competitive machines for a couple of years, they decided in 1995 to try a Caterpillar 416B. "We bought that first one because we liked the curved boom on the Cat backhoe loader," says Stewart. "It greatly simplified picking up concrete and putting it in the back of a dump truck."

Stewart was pleased with that first machine: "We ran it for 3 1/2 years and put a lot of hours on it without having any problems. When it came time to trade it in, Mustang offered us a good price, and we wound up buying two 416C’s."

Standardized on an IT Machine

Because they frequently switch back and forth between a bucket and forks, the company welded forks on the top of their loader bucket, which could be flopped down when they needed to carry forms. But some of the redwood forms they use are customized with dowel connectors. The flop-down forks often damaged these forms and proved unsafe to carry any substantial weight.

The integrated toolcarrier (IT) version of the Cat 416C had an answer for each of these problems. This model comes standard with a hydraulic quick coupler for fast change out of tools. The parallel lift system of the IT machine provides the safest, most efficient loading system by keeping loads parallel to the ground. But the most important feature in Craig Stewart’s mind is the extra lift (almost 14%) and breakout capacity (12.5%) offered by the IT backhoe loader.

Today, Keystone has nine Caterpillar 416C backhoe loaders, eight of which are the IT models.

Precision Grading Vitally Important

Some of the warehouse slabs Keystone pours cover as much as 400,000 square feet. Precision grading of the surface to be covered is critical to guarantee proper thickness of the concrete throughout the slab. This ensures structural specifications are met, while at the same time minimizes waste. Grading is accomplished with a Cat D4C equipped with a Spectra Precision laser leveling system. "This system is vitally important to us," explains Craig Stewart. "The concrete we’ve saved by using this technique has certainly saved us over 10 times the cost of the equipment."

Training is Challenge for the Future

Stewart sees training as the major challenge ahead for contractors: "It’s getting harder and harder to find trained craftsmen out there. We take good care of our people, so our turnover isn’t as much of a problem as some contractors experience. Still, you can’t get around the need for training, especially safety training. We do all our own operator and safety training in-house. No one gets on a Keystone machine without having been certified on that machine." Training is the responsibility of Training Director Dave Brown, who himself is heavily involved in train-the-trainer classes. Since Brown came on board, Keystone’s lost time record has improved drastically. Last year the company worked over three million man-hours without a lost time accident and received a significant rebate from their workman compensation carrier as a result.

Prospects Remain Rosy

So far, Craig has not seen any slowdown in their business. The recent lowering of interest rates seems to have rejuvenated new home construction, and there has been no deceleration in commercial activity. There are numerous major jobs, in the $10 million and up category, that are still on the drawing board or waiting to be released for bid.

With no shortage of work opportunities, there seems little doubt that the solid foundation Craig Stewart and his family built under Keystone Concrete Placement over the past eight years will ensure their continued success.

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