MECHANICAL CONTRACTING Q&A Dunbar Mechanical
Answers from Stephen E. Dunbar (Steve), president and CEO
Delta, Ohio, a small town just west of Toledo, by the husband-and-wife team of Glenn and Victoria Dunbar. The company moved into Toledo in the late 1950s and went into commercial construction at that time. Stephen’s older brother, Harley, became president in the mid-1960s and took the company into refineries, where the Dunbars learned to be an industrial contractor and a prime contractor. Please describe the history of
D
Dunbar Mechanical after you took over as president. I became president and part owner
of Dunbar Mechanical in the late 1980s. During the 1980s and 1990s,
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unbar Mechanical started in 1936 as Glenn Dunbar Plumbing and Heating in
strategy, as well as living our mission, “To be customer driven, fair and predictably
excellent with a commitment to employee growth,” allowed us to grow to be one of the 100 largest mechanical contractors in the United States (according to industry magazine rankings). In 1990 we moved into our
115,000-square-foot facility on Reynolds Road, which allowed us to add greater value by focusing on planning and scheduling, 3D CAD, building information modeling (BIM) and production fabrication. We also began to focus on design- assist partnering and integrated project delivery to allow the owner to know exactly what they were paying for and to assure that they were getting the finished product they needed and desired. On the last day of December,
1998, we sold the company to FirstEnergy Corporation, a utility holding company that purchased 11 mechanical/electrical construction firms across the Northeast and Midwest. I continued to manage the company as president and CEO. FirstEnergy’s strategy was to vertically integrate their deregulated services. We also looked at it as beneficial to Dunbar, because we believed it would allow us better access to customers at a different level, as well as allowing us to expand our services. During our time as a
STEPHEN E. DUNBAR, PRESIDENT AND CEO, DUNBAR MECHANICAL
we developed a strategy of focusing on the ultimate end users (owners) of our services. We also focused on bringing value to our customers and becoming more than just a run of the mill mechanical contractor. This
“We see opportunities in alternative energy, energy services and sustainable energy work, but only to the extent that it is economically feasible and has a reasonable payback.”
FirstEnergy company, we expanded and professionalized our service group and established offices in the Cleveland, Columbus and Detroit areas. We also developed FirstEnergy as a long term customer. In 2000, Dunbar
focus on operational excellence and on expanding our product offerings to our customers. I continue as president and CEO, Peter is chairman. How did you get involved in the
industry? I grew up in Dunbar Mechanical. I
worked in our warehouse and shop while I was a teenager and drove a truck as soon as I had my license. After I graduated from Mt. Union College in Alliance, Ohio, I taught high school math for a year and then decided to join the company on a full time basis. At the same time, I entered the University of Toledo to earn my mechanical engineering degree. What are your initiatives for the
company? I am working with my son Erik to
identify and develop the next generation of managers for Dunbar. We are installing a completely new project and business management system. We intend to go live in April 2011. We anticipate that this will streamline our project management processes, eliminate redundancy in reporting and eliminate paperwork. In Estimating, we are working on
estimating using electronic takeoff with a touch screen process. We are
Part of a prefabricated piping system awaits shipment for installation in a brewery.
Mechanical became ISO certified. We determined to become certified to have authoritative third party recognition that Dunbar truly does what we say we will do and to show operational excellence. Currently, Dunbar Mechanical is ISO 9001:2008 certified. We perform 33 annual internal audits of our systems as well as two annual external audits by a registered ISO auditor. In October, 2006, Peter Corogin,
majority owner of Lake Erie Electric, and I bought the company back from FirstEnergy. Since regaining our independence, we have continued to
also looking to implement a process that will allow estimating software and CAD software to communicate directly with each other. We have a drive to increase the
percentage of our labor that is done in our production and manufacturing facility, and we are putting increased emphasis on safety, which will be
“top of mind.” We want to show both our employees and our customers that safety has value. We are implementing additional safety processes and have instituted a glove policy that, hopefully, will eliminate hand and finger injuries.
phc march 2011
www.phcnews.com
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