Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesThey say if you want something done, ask a busy person. It's no wonder Michael Fall, vice president at Unit Company in Anchorage, has so much on his plate these days and still manages to get it all done. Fall became involved in the construction industry more than 23 years ago. After only one year of working in the industry, Fall was assigned as a project engineer to manage a project consisting of constructing four buildings simultaneously in Prudhoe Bay. From that point, his career took him to bigger projects in Alaska, and then on to Los Angeles, California and Portland, Ore., and back again to Alaska, which is where he grew up. He's headed several projects from start to finish along the way, including a $35 million facility in Prudhoe Bay, twin seven-story office buildings, and a $25 million design-build aircraft hanger. Fall has a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas. He's been with Unit Company since 1993 and obtained a shareholder position and vice president title in 1995. Despite his busy schedule, Fall recently managed to share with Alaska Business Monthly a behind-the-scenes look at what life is like in the construction industry.
ABM: How many projects do you work on a year?
Fall: Our volume goes up and down. We construct an average of $30 million to $60 million a year. On the low end, we do about five or six (jobs), upwards of about 10 or 12. And there are a variety of projects. Certainly, most of our projects take a year or longer so there is definitely overlap from one year to the next.
ABM: How far do you have to travel to jobs?
Fall: Our company concentrates on the road system so our projects go from the Kenai Peninsula all the way north to Fairbanks. The total mileage between those two is 500 miles from one end to the other. There is a whole lot of work in Alaska that is not on the road system and they have to get there by boat or by airplane. Our specialty is commercial construction and there's not much of that off the road system so we stick to the projects on the road system.
ABM: How does winter construction differ from summer?
Fall: Well, what you try to do is get a job started in the spring or summer when it's no different than anywhere else in the world. You start out excavating the ground. The obvious difference if you were to start in the winter is that the ground is frozen and covered with snow. Typically, you'd start a job in the winter as the very last resort. If you got one started in the summer and didn't have it totally up and enclosed by the time winter was here-which is the norm because the projects are big enough here that you can't get them finished in five months-then basically you would cover the buildings in scaffolding that you wrap with weather protection and install temporary heating systems and fans to circulate the air. Basically, you're working in a cocoon that you temporarily constructed to allow you to continue working in the winter months.
ABM: Would you say that construction jobs have become year-round jobs and that they're not as seasonal as they used to be?
Fall: Absolutely. The construction industry used to shut down and quit when "termination dust" arrived. Termination dust is a nickname for snow on the mountains and that meant your termination notice was a couple of weeks away. In the building trades we work year-round, and again that's a function of being able to wrap buildings in temporary protection and heat them and continue on. The road construction industry is still mostly seasonal though. They usually shut down in October and don't start up again until sometime in April.
ABM: What are your views on union versus nonunion?
Fall: We're a pretty heavy unionized state when it comes to construction. The unions are an excellent source of the skilled labor we need in the construction industry. They are a reliable, steady source of skilled labor. For us, it's a much better scenario than us putting an ad in the paper for 10 carpenters. In this state, most of the larger general building contractors use union labor.
ABM: What are some of the difficulties of your job and what are some of the benefits?
Fall: As for difficulties, there's always pressure related to time, money and quality concerns. That's the juggling act of a contractor. Essentially, you have to weigh in all three of them and keep a proper balance between them. Sometimes you can build things really fast but it will cost you more money. You have to maintain a high level of quality and focus on the end result, which is a good quality project you're trying to turn out for the owner of the project. It's always time, money and quality, and you can't give up any of the three. So there's got to be flexibility going back and forth.
As for advantages, my job is an exciting job. No day is the same, that's for sure. The only thing constant about this business is change and I see that day in and day out. For instance, you can build two buildings that are identical with the same set of plans but in two different locations and you're going to run into a different set of problems on each project because you've got different site conditions and different people working on each of them.
We're also reliant on a material supply system that goes either by ship over the ocean, by rail, or by truck over the road from the Lower 48. You think your truck or your shipment is coming right on time and you need it and then something happens to delay it like a ship being delayed by weather or a truck goes off the road. Nothing is certain in this business.
They're also changing code requirements in the building industry. You can build the same type of steel structure, for instance, for 10 years and then on the 11th year the codes change and so the requirements change.
The weather also can be a significant change from day to day or week to week or month to month. I think our state is probably more prone to unpredictable weather than most other states.
Everyday is different. One day, things with one project can be running as smooth as clockwork and then the next day a challenge pokes its head up and you have to fall back and come up with Plan B.
FEED