Mount Pleasant Town Hall Magazine

34 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.MPTownHall.com MOUNT PLEASANT Town Hall much easier by the work of his top assistants, Field Project Manager Bryce Howie and Project Superintendent Tim Rich . • • • • • • • • • • As field project manager for McKnight Construction Company, Howie supervised the day-to-day operations at the construction site for Mount Pleasant’s new Town Hall. He was on this job for two years, “handling everything from the first shovel in the ground to when that last paint brush stroke went onto a wall.” Howie pointed out that McKnight Construction was responsible for the masonry and concrete work at the Town Hall site but parceled out all the rest of the job to contractors it selected by competitive bidding among subs that met the town of Mount Pleasant’s requirements. “I like to think that we do an excellent job of picking subcontractors,” he said. “On this job, we had some 20 subcontractors, plus between 10 and 20 of their subcontractors working under us.” Among the other major area jobs Howie has worked on with McKnight are the Alston-Bailey and Sand Hill Elementary schools and Rollings Middle School of the Arts, all in Dorchester County. “Every job has its own challenges,” he noted. “We’re fortunate that on the Town Hall project, both the architect and the town itself were very good to work with. We had an excellent group of subcontractors as well so, ultimately, the quality of work is top-notch.” Importantly, he added, “Safety is always our overall goal. We have a corporate safety officer who came out to the site on a month-to-month basis, and OSHA has been on the site several times with no write-ups or violations on our record.” On each job, according to Howie, “Once everything gets underway, something’s always going to go wrong. What matters is how you recover. That’s the business we are really in – confronting problems and solving them.” “Fortunately we didn’t have any major problems on the Town Hall,” said Rich. “We had minor problems like an architectural drawing might not match up exactly with how a door was supposed to be laid out, but that’s just the typical type of stuff on every job.” Rich has plenty of experience – he has been around construction sites for nearly 30 years. His first major project was working on building the Agricenter in Perry, Georgia. “I went from roofing and framing houses to commercial jobs, where I started as a laborer and worked my way up to carpenter’s helper, apprentice foreman and so on, up to what I do today,” the project superintendent explained. Hailing from Roberta, Georgia, just outside of Macon, Rich remembered “growing up poor, but we didn’t know we were poor until somebody told us.” At first, Rich found Mount Pleasant “confusing.” Now, he feels that “it’s a real nice town, even though it’s bustling all the time. I’ve been out at two o’clock in the morning and there’s still traffic on the roads.” • • • • • • • • • • After the site had been cleared and foundation poured, it was time for Division Five , highly skilled steel fabricators, to take the next step. Open since 1996, Division Five is an American Institute of Steel Construction-certified fabricator of steel framing and has been locally owned and operated for 21 years. Owners Charles Duffy and Roy Prescott said they were thrilled to help build the new Town Hall and to participate in such a tremendous project. “We aggressively went after this job,” Duffy said. “It’s a landmark structure, and it’s really great to be a part of something like this.” Taking seven to eight months to complete, Duffy said they used approximately 600 tons of steel for the structure. “We came in after they poured the concrete and began erecting the steel frame,” Duffy said. While every project has its share of problems, Duffy said this one didn’t have anything out of the ordinary: “There is one aspect of doing construction in the Charleston area. It has a higher seismic activity zone, and Bryce Howie Charles Duffy Tim Rich