LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT - WELDON WEEKS
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Unfortunately, we will not be personally seeing each other in a couple of weeks. Instead, we find ourselves in unprecedented times in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our companies and world are very much impacted economically and socially. Many of us can possibly work from home with the shelter in place requirements, but most of us are in manufacturing of essential products and are still conducting business. Of course, business is quite different as we work to protect our employees and take care of our customers. The SPIDA Board and I are hoping and praying our membership and families keep safe from this virus and continue to stay safe in the coming months ahead of us.
I am sure you know that we have cancelled our 2020 Annual Meeting in San Diego, California for this year, but the great news is we have rescheduled our Annual Conference for April 22 & 23, 2021 in San Diego at the same venue. Our guest speaker, George Hedley, will be at next year’s conference as well. Unfortunately, we all must wait a year to see most of you.
I am very happy to begin serving SPIDA as the President for 2020-21. I have been involved in SPIDA for around 10 years, and it has been a great learning experience. I am so thankful for the business relationships and loyal friendships I have developed through this time period. I want to thank John Newland for doing such a fantastic job in growing and providing valuable content for our membership over the last two years as our President. Job well done!
The 2020 General Membership Meeting guest speakers were Brent and Kyle Pease. Everyone has expressed that this was an inspiring and emotional presentation. This presentation is evidence of SPIDA striving to provide informative speakers to our membership that can be used productively in our businesses and specialized industry.
I want to thank all our members, sponsors and engineers that make up our organization. We truly appreciate your involvement and dedication. Our board welcomes your input, opinions and ideas on how to make our organization beneficial and valuable to you. Please reach out to anyone on the board if you have any input to make SPIDA successful.
I again send my prayers and thoughts to all SPIDA members and hope you and your families stay safe. Thanks again for your involvement and support of SPIDA.
Weldon Weeks,
SPIDA President
VP of Operations, M&M Manufacturing
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The Winter SPIDA Membership Meeting took place in Orlando in conjunction with the 2020 AHR Expo. Outgoing president John Newland, Hercules Industries, opened the meeting and announced that Weldon Weeks, M&M Manufacturing, will be assuming the presidency at the end of the meeting.
Robin Stegall, Hamlin Companies, announced the speakers, sessions and activities for the San Diego meeting in April, please see details below. Pat Brooks, SMACNA, updated the membership that flat oval deflection testing was accurately computer modeled by finite element analysis and should be able to predict deflection at various pressures, gauges and reinforcement. He also asked for members to submit ideas for future projects. Consolidating flat oval gauge/reinforcement charts into a few easy to use pages was popular among the membership.
Robin Stegall was recognized with the Ted Hamre Award in recognition of outstanding service to our organization. Robin is a past president, past vice president, chair of numerous committees over her 29 years as a SPIDA member. She attended the very first SPIDA meeting in 1991. Robin has been and continues to be an integral part of SPIDA. Thank you Robin on behalf of the entire membership – past and present.
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SPIDA thanks our Diamond Sponsor, Owens Corning, for making our guest speakers possible.
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Our keynote speakers Kyle and Brent Pease presented “Together We Wheel”. Theirs is an inspirational story of the brothers’ entry into triathalons (swimming, biking, running) and how together they perservered.
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Their adventure started when Kyle, who suffers from cerebral palsy, asked his brother if “people in wheelchairs can do Ironman competitions?”. Kyle, being the competitive brother, pushed Brent into entering their first triathalon. Brent’s response to being asked why he entered was “how can I say no to my little brother”. Kyle’s ultimate goal was to compete in the Kona Ironman Competition, the Super Bowl of triathlons.
After 8 years of competing and attempting to qualify, they were accepted into the Kona, HI race. They would receive no special treatment, if they did not meet time requirements they would be removed from the triathlon. After 2.5 miles of ocean swimming pulling Kyle on a kayak, 112 miles of cycling, often uphill and into the wind, on a special bike and a 26 mile run, Brent and Kyle cross the finish line in under 14-½ hours.
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Proceeds from the organization go to purchasing road racing wheelchairs.
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SPIDA in San Diego - CANCELLED
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SPIDA’s 2020 annual meeting has been canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. We would like to thank our 2020 organizations’ member-sponsors. SPIDA wish our best to you and your family during these troubling times. SPIDA is in the process of rescheduling the San Diego meeting in 2021.
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SPIDA STAR
Bill Busch
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Northeastern Sheet Metal
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An explanation of what defines a SPIDA Star for newer members and interested readers: SPIDA is an association that was organized to promote the use of spiral pipe in construction versus rectangular duct. We wish to honor individuals, that have been instrumental in the promotion of spiral duct and have played a key role in our association over the years.
One such individual is SPIDA past-president Bill Busch. Bill is Vice President and Joint Majority owner at Northeastern Sheet Metal in Goffstown, NH. Northeastern Sheet Metal was one of the founding members of SPIDA. After receiving his BSBA from Northeastern University and his MBA from Babson College, Bill commenced his working life in the HVAC industry. In one way or the other Bill has been promoting the use of spiral pipe for 35 years now. Bill spent time at spiral duct manufacturers United McGill and at SEMCO before joining Northeastern Sheet Metal 16 years ago. Bill joined the SPIDA board of directors 10 years ago and served as President from 2014 -2015. When asked what makes SPIDA worthwhile, Bill’s response was “SPIDA is a great diverse group of people from all over United States and Canada. Being a member has taught me a lot of different practices and methods from regions all over North America.”
We wish to thank Bill for the many years of service to SPIDA and for being one of the “diverse group that we can all learn from”.
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SPIDA Original: Steve Cutts, Don Park USA
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SPIDA Pipeline’s continuing series focuses on the original founders of our organization.
Steve Cutts got started in the Sheet Metal business in the 1970’s working for an HVAC Contractor in Toronto Canada. In the early 1980’s he started his own commercial HVAC fabrication and installation company, Gentry Environmental Systems, and grew the business to 75 employees. In 1993 he started a new venture by purchasing a defunct sheet metal shop in Atlanta Georgia and named it Don Park USA. Don Park Canada was already a large manufacturing operation owned by his new business partner Stan Meek with branches throughout Ontario, Canada. One of the first equipment purchases for the Atlanta shop was a spiral duct machine. From there the spiral duct and fitting business grew to the point that the company quickly outgrew its small building and had to move to its current 77,000 sq ft plant. The company joined SPIDA in the late 90’s and Steve spent many years on the Board and on various committees. In 2011 Steve was presented with the Ted Hamre award for dedication to SPIDA.
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NB Handy Company
N.B. Handy Company has been owned and operated by the same family for 129 years. Nathan Handy first started delivering sheet metal and accessories in Lynchburg, VA by horse and buggy in 1891. Still headquartered in Lynchburg, N.B. Handy now has 14 distribution warehouses, a steel processing center and fabrication facilities in North Carolina and Florida. They service the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Florida territories with HVAC and metal roofing products.
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Brennan and Anna Hall welcome baby girl!
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SPIDA would like to welcome the newest future member of our organization, Landry Laura Hall. Congratulations to Brennan (Johns Manville) and Anna Hall, proud parents of their new 6-pound, 13-ounce baby girl born on January 13
th
. Landry joins brother Banks and sister Abigail. Congratulations!
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Hercules Industries: The ESOP - An American Dream is Reborn
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The life of a business owner has a continuum of responsibilities. We track our progress from days, to months, to quarters, to annually and beyond. Successful entrepreneurs carefully calculate how to improve the balance sheet, profitability, employee benefits, management succession, capacity to grow and on, and on… A question on the mind of many owners is, where is the finish line? Further, to whom will we hand off the baton when we get to that line? To the ownership group that is more focused on company legacy and employee well-being, the answer to the question of the successor owner is obvious – the employees who made your success possible.
While I am eternally grateful to the customers who supported us, the vendors who stood by us, the financial institutions that provided our rocket fuel; I am most grateful to those 550 Herculeans who chose our company as the place to plant their career banner. For 57 years we celebrated success, and we agonized over downturns. In between the ups and downs of business cycles, we laughed about comedies in our marketplace and shared anxieties of business uncertainties. We developed relationships not unlike the loved one’s you go home to after a hard day’s work.
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Bill Newland, one of the founders of Hercules Industries
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The beauty of a transfer of ownership to an ESOP is that none of this great life of an American capitalist needs to change. What changes is that we just created another 550 capitalists. These are well deserving, hard-working Herculeans that will now see the fruits of their labor accumulating in ESOP retirement accounts. These accounts will fund their future lives and those of their families. Their ownership is financed through future profits built on the continued legacy and culture that built this great company.
The Newland family will still be side-by-side with their new business partners. So, what opportunities lie ahead for these new capitalists and how will this new Hercules be perceived by the HVAC marketplace? The business model is the same; we will continue to build on the strengths of products we know best. A manufacturing legacy that was built on spiral pipe and the many related HVAC products that sprung out of this passion for quality products. A distribution legacy to provide the products the industry needs from the people they can trust.
There is a saying in the ESOP world that in a comparison of the before and after, “Everything is the same, yet everything is different. How an employee sees his place as an owner is a cornerstone to the new Employee Owned Company. This perspective is the same, yet very different.
From this employee’s perspective, “Everything is the same, yet everything is different” really rung true on the day The Newland family announced their decision to transfer ownership of Hercules Industries to the employees through the ESOP. The initial shock of, “The Newlands are selling Hercules”, quickly became the realization that “I am now an owner of Hercules.” Becoming an owner of this extremely respected and established business was overwhelming. Not in a sense of “How do I own a business”? But, rather “how do I deserve this business? The answer lies in the statement Bill Newland expressed in the lines above. “The successor owner is obvious-the employees who made your success possible.”
Everything is the same. The management structure, processes and procedures are all the same. Only the Hercules mission statement changed slightly to include, “employee owned.” Yet, “everything is different.” We are all now invested in the continued success of our company. We are now more accountable to each other for personal, personnel, and financial decisions. We, the owners, decide where Hercules Industries is in 10, 15, or 20 years. When it is my turn to pass my share of the Hercules baton, I hope to look back at a greater success story than Hercules Industries is today.
My American Dream of being financially secure in retirement became much, much brighter that day. Through no direct action on my part, other than being a valued employee, I was given an additional conduit to improve my financial outlook for the future. To transfer ownership to the current and future employees of Hercules changed everything for this very grateful employee. The Newland family had many options on how to, and to whom they would pass the Hercules baton.
Thank you, Newland Family for this wonderful gift, and exciting opportunity.
By contributing writers Bill Newland and Roy Plumisto. Bill Newland is one of the founders of Hercules Industries and Roy Plumito is an Operations Manager at Hercules Industries.
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SPIDA Board of Directors Meeting
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Clockwise: Ryan Barnes - Sheet Metal Connectors, Robin Stegall, John Newland, Reid Boydstun – Spiral Pipe of Texas, Scott Witherow – Design Polymerics (not pictured), Alvin Dueck – Tradesman Manufacturing, Steve Stratton – Dixie Metal Products, Bill Busch – Northeastern Sheet Metal, Pat Brooks – SMACNA, Jerry Liddell – Set Duct Manufacturing, James Nicholson – Association Headquarters
The SPIDA Board of Directors met prior to the general membership meeting in Orlando. The board review the minutes for the previous meeting and discussed filling one vacancy. Other topics of discussion included finalizing the Spring meeting itinerary, increasing membership and possible future technical committee projects.
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Technical Committee Report
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SPIDA recently completed flat oval deflection testing and the subsequent computer modelling that showed flat oval deflections could be accurately calculated based on size, pressure, gauge and reinforcement. SPIDA’s technical committee will be taking on new research projects. The committee is looking for input from our membership. Please let us know your idea(s) or if you endorse any of the recommendations below:
- Develop a skin temperature app to determine if condensation will occur.
- Determine the pressure loss of 45 and 90 degree taps directly off spiral duct to grilles versus the pressure loss of grilles attached directly to spiral duct as a way to make spiral systems more cost effective.
- Develop standards and tables for using spiral duct to complement the SMACNA Round Industrial Duct Construction Standards. These spiral duct standards are not currently available.
- Develop a simple, easy to use flat oval reinforcement chart that can be used by the members and used as a selling tool to end users and engineers.
- Research the benefit of using flanges on spiral ductwork in lieu of standard couplings by comparing shop/labor field installation and flange cost.
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SPIDA will be back in Chicago in 2021!
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Please send photographs of spiral duct projects of stadiums and arenas, along with details (name, location, size of project in pounds, feet, etc) to switherow@designpoly.com and james@madcrouch.com for upcoming Pipeline publications.
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Add your story here!
Please share your member news with SPIDA. Has your company opened new locations, added a key employee or other news you would like to share?
Please contact
Scott Witherow
for inclusion in future Pipeline Newsletters at (614) 451-0780 or
switherow@designpoly.com
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