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CONSTRUCTION
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The Industry’s Newspaper July 4, 2015
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www.constructionnews.net
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(210) 308-5800
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Volume 17
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Number 7
JULY 2015
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His daughter’s hero
Steel relevant
L-R: Hilda Ochoa, with her daughter, Iza, and her father, Juan Ochoa, are a positively charged team at 8A Electric.
Duffy Shea has been president of Alamo Iron Works since the company was purchased in 2010. He continues to lead the company under new ownership as of November.
hen Juan Ochoa considered retiring, his daughter, Hilda Ochoa, believed in his skills and the work he had done in the electrical industry for more than 30 years too much to let him walk away from it. Together, the father-daughter team started 8A Electric in May 2012. “I believed in my father 110 percent,” says Hilda. “He’s amazing at what he does.” Juan was working as chief estimator and project manager for an electrical contractor in San Antonio, and when the company closed, he was going to retire, but Hilda knew how much he loves his job. She encouraged him to start his own company, and he agreed only if she
would join him in the venture. At the time, Hilda was preparing to apply to medical school, but as she was getting ready for the MCAT, she found out she was pregnant. She wanted to make being a mother her priority. As she offered her father a way to keep working, he reciprocated with the promise of a family business where she could bring her child to work and be a mother while having her own business. “For me, getting the business off the ground has been one of my greatest accomplishments,” she says, adding that her daughter, Iza, now 4 years old, is growing up in a positive environment. “I know in my heart that the decisions that continued on Page 24
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riginally established on the spot where the Alamodome stands today, Alamo Iron Works (AIW) is celebrating its 140th anniversary this year. Founder George Holmgreen, a blacksmith who moved into foundry steel and industrial supplies, started the company only 10 years after the end of the Civil War. For 115 years, AIW was headquartered on Durango until 1990 when the company moved to make way for the Alamodome’s construction. In almost a century-and-a-half, the company has only had a few owners. The Holmgreen family held the company for five generations, and then Tony Koch became the owner. In June 2010, the company was
acquired, and Duffy Shea became its president. Now, as of November of last year, AIW has a new owner, Sonepar USA. “What we have seen over the last five years, regardless of who owns us, is Alamo has become probably more energy focused and a leaner, more aggressive, quicker-to-respond company,” says Shea, noting that AIW refocused a lot of sales, inventory and support to the oil and energy markets. He believes this shift has helped to transform the company in the last four years. The company has also joined other distribution companies to form an energy division to cross-sell and create synergies with customers. continued on Page 24
A Page out of the book on teamwork
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hen an owner is a member of the construction community, the general contractor and owner can become a team and the project can become a team effort. That’s what happened when R.C. Page Construction took on the job of building the new San Antonio headquarters for Big State Electric. Clay Page, president of R.C. Page, and Vincent Real, president of Big State, have a long-standing work relationship. So, when Big State outgrew its former location on St. Mary’s Street, the electrical contractor enlisted Page’s company to create a complete facility for Big State’s new home. “It’s a testimony to us that our subcontractors trust us to help them, and that makes me feel good,” says Page. “The interesting thing was Big State and R.C. Page basically teamed up together to build the building together.”
The new Big State Electric office was a team effort between general contractor R.C. Page Construction and its client. Photo by Bibb Gault Photography
R.C. Page built the office and did the site work. Even though R.C. Page’s projects are typically much larger in scale, such as the 106,000-sf office building they are currently working on, Page took on the project to oversee the building of Big State’s 7,000-sf office. “We teamed up with Vince from the very beginning,” Page recalls. “Vince was onsite practically every day – as were we – and that’s unusual for an owner to be as involved as Vince was. It’s also unusual that the owner is actually a subcontractor.” Real bought a property on Aero Street with an existing 38,000-sf building that became warehouse and prefab space. He also purchased a metal-frame building as an owner. And the Big State team handled all of its own electrical work, including comm and fiber. They chose to do 100 percent LED lighting throughout the property to make it as green as possible. continued on Page 24