Chapman Construction Company: Building the Infrastructure
Energy Solutions
Written by Meghan Flynn   
Monday, 31 August 2009
Chapman Construction Company: Building the Infrastructure
A culture of collaboration and opportunity combined with flexibility and diverse revenue streams have sped up the pace of growth for this construction company.
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Calvin Hargrave’s career has always been in the energy construction industry and with the McKinney, Texas-based Chapman Construction Company. The current president said he was hired to work for a dollar and a dime per hour building a transmission line. He worked his way through the company until he and a partner purchased Chapman in 1995, when it was bringing in $10 million annually. Together, the two long-time employees grew Chapman into an $80 million company before selling it to the Infrastrux Group in 2002.

Chapman is a construction management and general contracting company that specializes in building transmission lines and substations up to 500 KV but also excels in construction and installation of fiber-optic communications
systems and wireless base transceiver stations. Hargrave said since the company was founded in 1948, it has always been willing and able to take on any special requirements to complete installation at any site, be it urban or rural, desert or marshland.

With the support of its parent company, Chapman has nearly doubled in its annual revenue earnings. InfrastruX Group is a leading provider of electric, gas, and telecommunication construction and maintenance solutions for a wide variety of customers. But for Hargrave, there is one crucial reason Chapman continues to be so successful.

Chapman Construction Company: Building the Infrastructure
Calvin Hargrave, president
“Comprehensive and complete safety programs are what make companies profitable or not,” he explained. “The safer a company’s operations, the less down time for the equipment or crews, the lower its insurance costs, and the greater its reputation for thorough and responsible work.”

Chapman partners with Texas A&M University’s Engineering Extension Service for certifications for crane or digger operators and to supplement its inhouse safety program. The company has three full-time safety trainers who belong to the Job Training and Saftey Association for the industry and hold regular training meetings, review each incident, and develop new ways to avoid future incidents. Project foremen are also in on the program, conducting daily safety reviews for all equipment or practices to be used that day. Hargrave said the company is continuously investing in new equipment to always provide its teams with the best. As result of these efforts, Chapman can boast a better-than-average insurance modifier.

So there is a lot of safety information moving through the company at all times, but Hargrave said career development training is also important to him and his team.“I’m a prime example of how much opportunity there is for our employees, and we encourage foremen and superintendents to give everyone the chance to try new positions or earn new certifications and to look out for management prospects,” he said. “If one team tries a new approach to a certain task that’s more efficient or effective, we have a process for sharing that information throughout the company so there is continuous internal improvement.”

He added that the keys to keep employees working hard is to pay well, provide the best tools, and give them opportunity to learn and grow professionally. Hargrave said that’s how Chapman has maintained high retention rates over the years. Its general workforce has an average tenure of six years, and its foremen and superintendents have all been with the company between 14 and 30 years.

“We demand that every employee pull his or her own weight, and that policy fosters a culture of hard work and respect,” he said.

Diversification and growth
Hargrave said business is slow for Chapman every summer when the heat limits the flexibility energy companies have in their power grids. The company has been doing a lot of rebuilding work of old transmission systems recently, but that work is impossible with the powerload in the summer. So, the company has relied on new projects to keep busy, and fortunately, there are a lot to be had.

“The recession certainly isn’t helping anyone in this industry get funding, but the fact remains that people are always in need of more power, and systems always need to be improved,” Hargrave said.

In the mid-1990s, Chapman expanded its service lines to include telecommunications systems construction and maintenance, and that sector continues to grow. Between January and June of this year, the company built its first SVC switching station with partners ABB and Oncor. The station is in Dallas and, when it was completed, was the largest of its kind in the world.

Chapman’s reputation for efficient and effective internal training was put to the test as the company needed its best crews to learn about SVC stations and the equipment required to build them in a short period of time. Even with a learning curve, the team completed the project on time and on budget. ABB recently signed Chapman on to build a second station this year.

The other primary growth sector for Chapman is related to the explosion of interest in renewable energy. Its generation customers are all looking for ways to include more wind, solar, or biomass energy into their mix and need new transmission systems to deliver them. In the next four or five years, the company will be working on the CREZ Projects in Texas. These projects are a joint effort between a number of utilities and will result in at least 3,000 miles of new, specially designated 345 KV circuit to bring wind power from the west to the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.

Chapman has purchased a new, fourth fleet of specialized stringing equipment, lift trucks, rope rigs, and more to handle the specific requirements of this project. In the last two years, the company has also bought 14 cranes, 12 boom trucks, six bulldozers, and 10 Mack trucks with trailers.

“These are long-time customers and partners of ours, so we’re investing in our fleet to give them what they need,” said Hargrave, who added that over the years, Chapman has always grown to meet the changing needs of its clients. “There will only be more of this kind of work coming our way in the future, so we want to be ready.” Work on this project will allow the company to bring in new employees over the next two years, bringing its staff of 650 up to close to 800.

Most of the Chapman’s customers have worked with the company for years and some for decades. Hargrave said they trust him and his team to handle this new kind of business with the same care as always, which bodes well for the future of this industry veteran.
 
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