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A Healthy Outlook
Cianbro Corp. explores new markets while empowering its employees into ownership and wellness
By Bruce Buckley
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Cianbro Corp. is lined up to build the world’s largest fully enclosed “leisure city,” Destiny USA, in Syracuse, N.Y.
courtesy of Destiny USA |
Cianbro Corp. has been entrenched as one of the country’s premier heavy civil and industrial contractors for nearly six decades, but the Pittsfield, Maine-based company is not resting on its laurels. Casinos, mega malls and massive marine vessels are among the new batch of projects diversifying Cianbro’s portfolio. It’s all part of a plan to prepare future generations of company leaders and employees for growth over the next 60 years and beyond. Cianbro, now employee-owned, reports gross annual sales in excess of $360 million and more than 2,000 employees.
Bud Cianchette, now 80, who helped launch the company with brothers Carl, Ken and Chuck in 1946—incorporated in 1949—looks back fondly on Cianbro’s past triumphs.
The Piscataqua River Bridge in Portsmouth, N.H., established Cianbro as a premium bridge builder in the 1970s. Restoration work on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge near Washington, D.C., showed off the company’s talents on a national stage in the 1980s. The 1981 completion of the $200-million Madison Paper Industries plant in Madison, Maine, proved its capabilities in the industrial sector.
Now Cianchette says he’s looking forward to the company setting its next milestones.
“We’re not just bridge builders,” Cianchette says. “A lot of people think of us that way because that’s what they’re used to seeing from us. But this is a diverse company with people who are willing to carry out any job you give them.”
Exploring New Markets
In one of its most intriguing moves, Cianbro is establishing a name as a restorer of marine vessels. The company is currently retrofitting and converting two sulfur tankers into offshore, multipurpose supply ships. Docked at Cianbro’s Ricker’s Wharf Deepwater Marine Facility in Portland, Maine, the 370-ft-long ships are expected to be the largest of their kind in the world when completed.
Cianbro previously chartered new waters in the marine sector when it completed two 12,000-ton oil-drill platforms for Petrodrill, an international drilling-rig construction firm, in 2004.
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| PETE VIGUE |
It’s a move that has been championed by Cianbro President Pete Vigue. A graduate of Maine Maritime Academy and a former merchant marine, Vigue says he was keenly aware that the shipbuilding industry in the U.S. was deteriorating, but he saw possibilities.
“We look at these problems as opportunities,” he adds. “We evaluate the challenges that exist in other parts of North America and figure out how to take that problem and capitalize on it.”
That philosophy helped drive the company to expand it efforts in steel fabrication and coating. At facilities in Maine and Maryland, the company creates complex components and structures for projects worldwide. Cianbro is in the process of establishing a new facility that will fabricate 2,000-plus-ton modules for industrial and manufacturing applications.
Cianbro also is expanding its work in traditional building sectors. The company is building the Hollywood Slots gambling facility in Bangor, Maine, for Penn National Gaming of Wyomissing, Pa. The $131-million “racino,” which will be built near the existing Bangor racetrack, will include a 70,000-sq-ft slots parlor, a 250-room hotel, restaurants and parking.
In Syracuse, N.Y., the company has been selected for the ambitious Destiny USA project. As conceived, the proposed 800,000-plus-sq-ft facility would be the world’s largest, fully enclosed “leisure city,” with hundreds of stores, restaurants, hotels and entertainment options. A planned research and development park would focus on technology and consumer research.
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The Cianchette brothers in 1972; Carl (from left), Chuck, Ken and Bud created the sense of pride, integrity and respect that remains in the now employee-owned business.
courtesy of Cianbro Corp. |
The project, set on a brownfield site that once housed large oil tanks on the shore of Onondaga Lake, would operate 100% free of fossil fuels, according to the developer.
Cianbro has been selected by Lauren-tian Aerospace to build a $64-million airplane maintenance hangar at the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base in Plattsburgh, N.Y. The 262,000-sq-ft project will include a laser-guided automated docking system that slides the docking station into place around an aircraft—up to 1 cm from the fuselage.
The system will allow Laurentian to begin servicing aircraft within 30 minutes of arrival. Supplied by Multidocking Contec Ltd., Cheshire, England, it had previously been installed only in Dubai.
Employee Ownership
Expanding its opportunities is only one phase of Cianbro’s strategy for future success. The company is making important strides toward overcoming the industry’s labor and professional staffing shortages, Vigue says.
In December 2004, company officials signed an agreement to purchase all remaining shares of Cianbro from Bud and Ken Cianchette, the two Cianchette brothers still living. The event marked the final step in making Cianbro a wholly employee-owned company. Cianbro began that transition in 1979, and Bud Cianchette sees it as a tremendous asset.
“Everyone is a part owner now,” he adds. “Our employees know exactly what’s happening with their company. If times are good, they share in that success. If things are tough and they need to tighten their belts, they know it. If someone is messing up, it’s messing up everyone’s paycheck.”
Employees also are taking better care of themselves and their families. Cianbro offers an attractive and aggressive health-care and wellness program that, in addition to educating employees about at-risk behavior, rewards those who stay healthy.
More than 75% of employees participate in a voluntary wellness program that monitors everything from body mass index to cholesterol levels to tobacco use. Those who maintain healthy lifestyles are eligible for financial incentives.
Regardless of whether an employee chooses to stay healthy, Cianbro maintains a firm antitobacco stance, not allowing smoking areas on its worksites. “If you’re going to run a healthy company, you need healthy people,” Vigue says.
Other long-standing programs, such as in-house training of everyone from laborers on up, have also helped Cianbro retain employees. The company is filled with veteran staffers who have more than 20 years of experience.
They include Mike Hart, who started with the company as an engineer in 1984 and now runs the company’s mid-Atlantic regional office, and Linc Denison, who started with Cianbro in 1974 as a laborer and runs the southern New England regional office.
In the meantime, Cianbro is grooming its future leaders. In recent years, senior management has been tasked with identifying their replacements and mentoring them.
Vigue says that Cianbro’s next generation of leaders needs not only to help the company evolve but also preserve its values. Vigue grew up in Pittsfield and knows the Cianchette family from the days when he delivered newspapers to Bud.
“Even as a little kid, I admired [the Cianchette brothers] greatly,” he says. “They all became mentors in one way or another. I learned something from every one of them. That’s how I established my behavior and my growth in this company.”
Now 60 years old, Vigue has promised Cianbro’s board of directors that he will pick a successor by the end of the year. His goal is to find someone who will keep the Cianchette spirit alive.
“My primary job is to transition this company to the next generation,” he adds. “Our goal is to give the next generation the same opportunity that we’ve had. We won’t lose sight of our culture.”
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A Monumental Success
Cianbro Corp. recently constructed foundations and erected the three stainless-steel spires of the new Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Va. The curved spires reach up to 270 ft in the air, like silver jet trails bursting onto the Washington, D.C., skyline.
The three-sided spires were manufactured in Canada and shipped in 16 pieces. Cianbro created detailed in-house rigging designs to ensure precise placement of the pieces, which ranged from 40 to 70 ft long.
Each piece, constructed of 3⁄4-in. stainless steel, was set in place, welded and filled with 12,000-psi concrete. The sections were preloaded with rebar before placement. Cianbro recruited its best welders for the job, which required nearly perfect welds. Crews used scaffolding on the first 100 ft, but platforms linked by ladders were used for the remaining sections. Each section required seven to 10 days to complete.
After the spires topped out, the welds were ground- and bead-blasted to blend in with the stainless-steel faces.
This was tough from a structural and architectural perspective because everything was done to an exacting tolerance,” says Mike Hart, vice president and general manager of Cianbro’s mid-Atlantic region. |
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