A Lesson Learned

Help push the car out of the mud? Easy, I thought.

The photo to the left says otherwise.

On Easter Sunday, my family and I gathered at my parents’ house.  With about ten cars, parking was tight, so we utilized some of the grassy areas near the driveway.

After a dinner of salad, ham, ribs, corn, green beans, baked potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, potato salad (I’m just now realizing what a potato-heavy meal this was) and three desserts to choose from, we all wanted nothing more than to head home, slip into some sweatpants, and fall into a food-induced sleep.

We began our good-byes and car after car filled with people, pulled off the grass and into the drive, and headed home.

There were just a few of us left when it came time to pull the Mustang into the drive and return it to its garage parking space.  With 20+ people coming for dinner, the garage had been cleared of vehicles, cleaned up nicely and set with several banquet tables and folding chairs.  The pink tablecloths were a nice touch, very Spring-like.

My dad got behind the wheel of the Mustang and hit the gas.  Wheels spinning, the car wasn't moving.

My grandpa, two brothers and I made our way out into the grass, lining up at the rear of the car.  It was awfully wet.  I guess it did rain on Saturday night.  I had to kick-off my flip flops to avoid slipping.  How embarrassing would it have been to slip and bounce my face off the trunk of the car?

With four of us pushing, you’d think it would be a pretty easy job, right?  It was.  It took us only a couple minutes to get the car out of the mud.

But I learned a valuable lesson that night.  When pushing a car out of the mud, you never line up behind a wheel.  My Easter ended with me covered head-to-toe in mud, my family all around me laughing.  How was your Easter?

Discover High Performance Precast

Precast concrete is a high performance material that integrates easily with other systems and inherently provides the versatility, efficiency and resiliency needed to meet the multi-hazard requirements and long-term demands of high performance structures.

Choosing precast concrete during the design build process can provide a multitude of architectural, construction and design benefits.  Whether you are designing commercial structures, residential structures, parking garages or another type of structure, consider precast concrete as your building material of choice.

Versatility
Precast concrete provides excellent versatility in aesthetics, structural design, and use. Precast concrete provides a number of architectural benefits. It comes in almost any color, form, and texture, and can also be veneered or embedded with natural materials. It can also be utilized as the primary structural system saving material, time, and money. Precast concrete can also provide greater open spans by reducing the number of interior columns thereby increasing flexibility in the use of the floor space.

Efficiency
Precast concrete provides efficiency in use of materials, construction, and operation. Precast concrete is the fastest building system available and minimizes negative effects at the project site. Precast also provides a very thermally efficient and almost maintenance free envelope that helps reduce overall life-cycle costs. Precast concrete has been used in a variety of projects focused on sustainable design due in part to its efficiency benefits.

Resiliency
Precast inherently provides a high level of resiliency which protects against multiple hazards such as fire, severe storms, explosions, and even earthquakes. Precast also does not contain any VOCs or provide a food source for mold which helps maintain a healthy indoor environment. It is also a great sound insulator and can help maintain more uniform indoor temperatures thereby improving occupant comfort.

~ Information provided courtesy of PCI.

Your World-Class Partner

You deserve the best!  At Mid-States Concrete we focus 99-percent of our energy on you, the customer, and only one percent on the competition.  This allows us to stay true to our mission, which is to be your partner.

When you work with Mid-States, you are working with the best.  We offer an expertise that can’t be beat in the industry and take pride in every piece we design, pour, and set.  We will communicate with you every step of the way to ensure that your project is completed on-time, on-budget, and on-target, helping you to meet your project goals more efficiently and effectively.

We want our partners to trust in their relationship with Mid-States so much that, as soon as they start thinking about a project, we are their first call.  From project assessment, design and planning to installation, Mid-States does it all.  We partner with our customers to innovate, design, and build meaningful buildings in which to live, work, and play.

So, how are we doing?

Do you have a project success story that involves Mid-States?  Do you have an example of how someone (or multiple someones) went above and beyond to help make your project a success?  We’d love to hear about it, please share it in the comment section below, or send an email to s.kohl@msprecast.com.

And if you feel there is something we could improve on, please share that, too.  We want to be your world-class partner.

Training a Team of Leaders

What happens when you train an entire company to be leaders?  That’s what Mid-States aims to find out.

The company currently has 10 people enrolled in leadership training based on John Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, led by Jeremy Olivotti, Vice President of Preconstruction.  Olivotti is certified by Maxwell to teach the program.

John Maxwell is the top leadership expert in the world.  He has written more than 70 books and spoken to millions of people on the subject of leadership and what it takes to become a great leader.  One of the things Maxwell is known for saying is “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

The Mid-States group meets once each week and training lasts for 11 weeks.  After the first introduction week, it covers two chapters of the book at each session.  The goal is for everyone to not only understand what good leadership is, but also to empower them to become great leaders.

“The dream is to have every employee go through it,” Olivotti said.

Leadership skills are useful at work, home and in all aspects of life.  Really, the course will help members of the Mid-States team develop not just into leaders, but the type of leaders people want to follow.

“We’re learning that the more we grow our people, the more fulfilled they are,” Olivotti said.  “The better they are at home, the better they are at work.  It’s contagious.”

The training offers a common language in which to discuss leadership.  The laws help people identify deficiencies, discuss them and, ultimately, correct them, making for a more positive company culture.

Olivotti is a firm believer that people want leaders who believe in them and want to help them achieve their goals.  This training program will help create that kind of leader here at Mid-States.  Among some of Olivotti’s favorite chapters to study are: The Law of Respect, The Law of Picture (people do what people see) and The Law of Victory (leaders find a way for the team to win).

“Leadership is defined as influence,” Olivotti said.  “Nothing more and nothing less.  We want to give our people opportunities to influence people in a positive way.”

The training sessions also allow the team to get to know teammates they might not get to interact with on a day-to-day basis and incorporates plenty of participation.  The group is very candid in discussions, leading to insightful, open, and productive dialogue.

Now, you can’t have a company full of leaders and no followers, so the course also teaches participants how to be better followers.  Through the training, participants learn to understand what other leaders are trying to accomplish and help them understand what they need to do to support these leaders.

Some of us will lead at work.  Some of us will lead at home.  Some of us will lead our kid’s soccer team.  The important thing is we all lead by example.

New Safety Program Launched

Here at Mid-States, we always want everyone to go home to their families in the same condition they arrived in.  How do we do that?  By committing to safety.

Our newest safety program is SafeStart.  The program offers Critical Error Reduction Techniques for work, home and on the road.

"It makes it so personal to each person," said Mike Wolff, Vice President of Safety and Plant Operations.

SafeStart is a safety training program developed by Larry Wilson, who was a behavior-based safety consultant in Canada, prior to creating the program.  He developed the program from investigating real injuries of more than 20,000 people over the course of two decades.  What he found was states like rushing, frustration, fatigue, and complacency contributed to human errors, much more than lack of knowledge did.

And what are the results of these states?  Errors - like eyes not on task, mind not on task, line-of-fire and balance/traction/grip.  These states can lead to injuries.

Like SafeStart, Mid-States has a passion for safety.  SafeStart's motivation is simple.  They believe: "what we do is important; too important to stop growing or to stop improving.  We are honored to share this motivation with the safety professionals we serve."

Everyone on the Mid-States team recently completed the first round of training with a representative from SafeStart.  Twelve members of the Mid-States team were trained to lead the next rounds of SafeStart training.  A steering committee has also been created to help keep the SafeStart programming going strong at Mid-States.

"Safety is part of everyone's life," Wolff said.

SafeStart will only enhance the current successful safety program at Mid-States.  In 2016, we had just seven OSHA recordables, our lowest number yet.

"It truly shows our employee involvement in safety," Wolff said.  "Our team is engaged on a daily basis.”