BUILT
ON
TRUST
honesty and integrity above all
Winter 2020 Newsletter
On the Cover
The Dome in transition at Syracuse University Photo by Justin Hayward
Team Highlights
A Note from Jeremy We have a very busy year ahead of us and a lot to accomplish in the next 10 months. Many new projects will be breaking ground with some very tough schedules. The operations team will have their hands full as we bring some significant projects like the Dome Roof Replacement, The Lakehouse for Turning Stone, and Oswego Health’s Behavioral Health project to a successful completion; we also have to ensure we bring new projects like the Crouse medical office building and Feldmeier’s Riverside plant expansion out of the ground on time. Depending on the timing of various project starts, this year could be one of the busiest we have ever had.
WELCOME TO THE TEAM!
Joanna Barton
The service awards banquet is scheduled for May 15, 2020 at Turning Stone Resort Casino. I look forward to the opportunity to see everyone and to celebrate the career milestones of our many team members. If you have not been to the banquet, I highly encourage you to join us. The Turning Stone never fails to provide an outstanding dinner and atmosphere. We have also placed as A Best Company to Work for in New York State for the 13th year in a row! We remain one of only eight companies in the state to place every year since the program was started by SHRM. Our continued placement as a Best Company to Work for in NYS is largely in part to all of our wonderful team members that make our culture what it is today. Thank you for that and your continued efforts to make us successful. I look forward to seeing you all soon. Stay safe.
Jeremy Thurston President
Admin
Estimator
Celeste Craig
In addition to managing a considerable workload this year, we have also made improving the training and development of team members our number one strategic priority. In order to accomplish this, we have hired additional human resources staff to ensure we can continue to provide support for the business while completely overhauling our performance evaluation process and to develop a robust training and development program for many positions in the companies. We have not executed reviews as well as we should and I look forward to implementing a better more meaningful process. We also completed our first “Emerging Leaders” training session with about 24 people participating and look forward to the continued roll-out of this effort. We recognize that finding talent is extremely difficult in today’s competitive employment market, so growing and developing our own team is the best, and perhaps only way to ensure that we have the right people and skills to allow for our continued growth and success.
Jennifer Crowley
Kelly Smith
Estimator
Marketing Assistant
Julie Smith
Human Resources Manager
PROMOTION
RETIREMENT
Nick Kier
Lou Poletto
Assistant Project Manager
Estimator
IN THE COMMUNITY
Distribution Day
Wrapping Presents for McMahon Ryan Child Advocacy Center
Discount Shoe Repair Shoe Drive
Interior insights with kevin parkhurst vice president
I would like to start off by thanking everyone for 800 days of work without any recordable accidents. Safety is our number one priority and this record depends on the vigilance of every single one of our team members. Keep up the safe work! We lucked out with a fairly mild winter which allowed us to successfully complete numerous exterior projects. The last few months have seen our guys dispersed throughout Central New York. We’ve wrapped up work at 61 Brown Road and Community Corners in Ithaca, the Rathbun Lofts and student housing in Utica, the Tailwater Lodge in Altmar, and Gould Pumps in Seneca Falls. Locally, we’ve completed multiple projects for G&C Foods, Lockheed Martin, the State Tower Building, and Thruway Building.
SRC Building #5
Mike Whalen (PM) and Bud Maiura (S)
Going into the spring, we’ll be continuing work inside Oswego Hospital on the medical surgical unit project, the Addis Building, SRC Building 5, condos at Sylvan Beach, Nexus in Rome, along with projects for G&C Foods and Lockheed Martin. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and we’re looking forward to getting started at Compass Federal Credit Union, the Dome at Syracuse University, Hunt Realty, the Salvation Army, Prison City Brewery, and two apartment buildings in Oswego. Congratulations to Mike Sgarlata whose grandson was born on Valentine’s Day and Andy Hilts whose daughter was born at the beginning of December!
Oswego Med Surg
Steve Gordon (PM), Marty Livingston (S)
Masonry Mention Late fall and this winter has seen Doyner wrapping up several projects. Cubesmart on Erie Boulevard has wound down, along with structural walls at the Ravine House in Kevin Agostini Jim Cziesler Manlius. Doyner started and completed the masonry Project Manager/ General Field work at NOVA in Liverpool and is wrapping up work at Estimator Superintendent St. Joe’s parking garage and the Oswego behavioral health services projects thanks to a relatively mild winter. We were also able to finish several additional small Charter Spectrum projects in the fall. Currently, Doyner is performing concrete and masonry work at Syracuse Research Corporation, masonry at Hobby Lobby in Watertown, along with work at Wegmans, Syracuse University, and numerous projects for Hayner Hoyt’s building services division.
SRC Building #5
Looking toward spring, we will be starting the season with masonry at Compass Federal Credit Union in Fulton, masonry at Oswego BHS, and a series of smaller projects. Additional Charter Spectrum work is likely and a series of other projects we’ve been bidding throughout the winter, all currently waiting to be awarded. Lastly, for everyone at Doyner, keep up the great work on safety! We have passed 572 days without a lost time injury. The entire Doyner crew has done a great job of identifying potential hazards and addressing them before they can lead to an incident. Thank you for taking the time and effort to ensure we continue to have safe job sites.
Ravine House
Ravine House
Oswego Health Behavioral Health Services
Project Spotlight
Bio 365
Project Team Jim Polakiewicz, Bill Enright, Kyle Robinson
Compass Federal Credit Union Project Team Jim Polakiewicz, Jim Lostracco, Aaron Devereaux
Oswego Health
Oswego Health Behavioral Health
Project Team Adam Legg, Tim Moran, Nick Kier, Jack Barni, Jim Cziesler, Doug Hammond, Chris Burke, Jim Condon
SUNY UMU Oncology Unit
Project Team Fred Van Riper, Jim Dimitrievski, Jake Bratek, Jeff Wrobleski
Cayuga Medical Center Radiation Medicine Addition
Project Team Adam Legg, Dale Coss, Jon Livesay, Nicholas Kier, Greg Frigon, Mark Burkey, Lucas Floyd, Chris Burke
3rd & 4th Floor Medical surgical
Project Team Fred Van Riper, Jamie Stoffle, Demetrius Pettway, Jim Condon
Meier’s Creek Brewing ComPANY
Project Team Sam Doss, Eric Taber, Jon Livesay, Eddie Monnell, Justin Bailey
At 33 Rippleton Road in Cazenovia lies the old Empire Farm Brewery. Feldmeier Equipment Co. acquired the facility after the brewery went bankrupt. They had installed the original brewing system and are taking the opportunity to showcase their capabilities in a thirst-quenching way by starting their own brewery, Meier’s Creek Brewing Company. Our carpenters began demolition at the beginning of this year to make way for a renovated tasting room, re-conceptualized restaurant, and the installation of a small Feldmeier-build pilot brew house to showcase their manufacturing capabilities.
Welcome to the
Crown Syracuse University Dome roof project Hailing from the Great White North, crown truss box girder piece #2181 arrived from Groupe ADF Inc.’s shop in Montreal. Heavyweight champ weighing in at over 131,000 lbs and measuring roughly 60 feet long, this is one of the largest pieces of steel being installed and is classified as a “superload”. That status requires special travel permits, police escorts, and a custom made trailer to make it navigable. Buckner HeavyLift Cranes’ “Son of Walt” was called into action to unload the unwieldy beast. Project Team Vinnie Mowers, Jason Wheeler, Shawn Bryant, Justin Hayward, Josh Ringen, Jeff Uryniak, Jim Condon
Yellow Brick Road We built the original Yellow Brick Road Casino back in 2015, and in an ongoing effort to provide exciting entertainment options for patrons, the Oneida Indian Nation brought us back to renovate the casino. Over the last nine months, we’ve worked in phases to complete a substantial amount of work under challenging schedules. The casino now boasts a new sports book bar, brand new flooring, new and refreshed restaurant options, and over 38,000 square feet of new gaming options including bowling, Topgolf, pool, and shuffleboard. Project Team: Maggie Werts, Bob Mastro, Bob Young, Craig Duda, Conor Utter, Demetrius Pettway
Awithseason of transition Tim Dunn Vice President of Pre-Construction
It’s been a season of transition in the estimating department. After a lengthy career with Hayner Hoyt, we were sad to see Lou Poletto go, but wish him the best in retirement. It was a pleasure working with him. Joanna Barton started in September and has since worked on some long developing projects where she’s seen the evolution of design, most notably for Meier’s Creek Brewing and the Crouse medical office building.
hospital-wide medication dosing machines, called Pyxis. Jeff Wrobleski has spent significant time over the last few months working on many rounds of bids and redesigns for the Yellow Brick Road expansion. He’s happy to see it come to a successful conclusion. Finally!!! Jeff Uryniak has spent much of the winter putting together conceptual budgets for future projects. One we are particularly excited about is the Gordon Science Center at Utica College.
Jen Crowley and Kelly Smith started on the same day in mid-October. Jen is the cheerful backbone of the preconstruction department offering administrative support. She’s involved with a majority of the projects that go out the door and helps tie everything together.
As our preconstruction project manager, Jack Barni handles a mix of project development and estimating work. Lately, he’s been dedicating himself to developing a budget for Sitrin, one of our repeat customers, to best use a government grant they received; work we hope to start this spring.
Kelly is one of our much-welcomed re-treads and joined the estimating team digging into Community Memorial Hospital’s Master Plan. She assisted Jeff Wrobleski on the second round budget and then worked as the lead estimator on the final bid. Kelly is currently bidding The Lake House at Sylvan Beach.
Looks like we have a long list of projects teed up for another successful year!
We try to keep a rotation of one Project Engineer working on preconstruction. MJ Park is currently stationed in the estimating department where she has a mix of responsibilities from assisting on large team projects to bidding some of her own. Jeff Beckwith handles many different estimates and is currently involved in a multi-phase remodel to upgrade St. Joseph’s
Safety First! with Stu Cavuto Director of Safety
This month is the anniversary of 1980’s Olympic “Miracle on Ice”. The miracle was that an unranked group of motivated American amateur hockey players outplayed the world’s best for the gold medal in the 1980 Olympics. The secret to their success has been chronicled in books and movies. They achieved their goal with a combination of hard work, attention to detail and the belief they could achieve. Two years ago, the Hayner Hoyt companies made a commitment to refocus on safety. At that time, we recognized our safety record was just average. It was decided if we were going to be leaders in the industry, our safety record had to be first rate as well. In 2018, we set a goal to eliminate accidents and injuries. Thanks to all of you, we are achieving that goal. We are succeeding by using some of the same principles as the winning Olympic hockey team. By setting a goal and focusing on details to reduce accident potential, we have seen a dramatic decrease in incidents. In 2019, we worked over 347 THOUSAND hours (347,141) with just three recordable injuries; a broken toe, a thumb laceration and a back strain. In each case, the safety division conducted an accident investigation with the objective of determining why a worker was injured and how we could prevent it from happening again. In each case a “root cause” was established. Knowing the root cause helps us determine a corrective action to prevent the likelihood of reoccurrence. For example in the case of the broken toe, we recognized that new employees require more supervision and training to prevent
injuries. In the case of the cut thumb, we recognized cut free gloves could have prevented that injury. We are now evaluating different gloves for use during demolition. While we are proud of those results, I know we can do better. We look forward to the year-end report that says NO ONE was injured. A lofty goal yes, but we know that goal is attainable. In 2018, Hayner was injury free. In 2019, Doyner and LeMoyne proved they could go injury free as well. In 2020 our company goal is no injuries company-wide. The reality is our goal is your goal. All of us want to go home each day healthy and safe. Your safety team is always available to help make your projects safer. Contact us anytime to discuss concerns or upcoming work. You should be proud of your success, I know your safety team is very proud of all of you.
GO FOR THE
GOLD
HR Updates with Joyce Dennington
Director of Human Resources We may build, but our employees are at the heart of what we do. I see these words on our website and they remind me that we walk the talk. Last month we earned the distinction of being named one of the 2020 Best Companies to work for in New York… again. We have earned this distinction since the inception of the awards 13 years ago. That’s right, for 13 consecutive years we are 1 of 8 companies to earn this distinction in NYS. Earning this distinction is based, in part, on employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction is measured in a variety of ways, including company communication and providing employees with resources. We have recently rolled out a new Employee Portal at www.workforcenow.adp.com that includes regular updates to company announcements and employee tools. Some of the information you will find includes announcements about company events like the upcoming Service Awards dinner, company policies like the new holiday policy, medical/dental/vision insurance plan information, a link to your retirement plan, and thousands of employee discounts on LifeMart. In addition to this website, you can download the ADP Mobile App to view your pay statements, your vacation balance, tax
Four Simple Steps to StAYING SECURE ONLINE with Vadim Potorac Network administrator
Cyber criminals are getting smarter and their attacks are increasingly more sophisticated which makes staying safe and secure online harder to do. Here are four simple steps that will improve your security measures: 1. Focus on You: First and foremost, technology alone cannot fully protect you; you are your best defense. Attackers have learned that the easiest way to get what they want is to target employees rather than corporate computers directly. If they want passwords, credit cards, or control of your computer, they’ll attempt to trick you into giving it to them, often by creating a sense of urgency. For example, they might call you pretending to be Microsoft tech support and claim that your computer is infected, when in reality they are just cyber criminals who want you to give them access to your computer. Or perhaps they send you an email warning that your package could not be delivered and pressure you into clicking a link to confirm your mailing address, when in reality they are tricking you into visiting a malicious website that will hack into your computer. Ultimately, the greatest defense against attackers is you. So Stop, Look and Think. 2. Passphrases: Modern computing speeds have made the old, eight-character password outdated and vulnerable. When a site asks you to create a password, create a strong and unique passphrase instead. A passphrase is a series of words that is easy for you to remember—the longer your passphrase is, the stronger.
withholdings, and get company news. Instructions to access the Employee Portal and the mobile app were sent via email or U.S. mail if you did not have an email address on file. If you have questions or need information again, please contact me. Save time AND money! This year we rolled out new health insurance plans from Excellus without an increase in employee contributions. Employees and family members enrolled in an Excellus plan have 24/7 access to health care professionals through MDLive at a cost of $10 per visit instead of $20 or $25 for an in-office visit. With telemedicine, a doctor’s care is just a phone call away – anytime, anywhere – for non-emergency conditions. Think pinkeye, sinus infections, allergies, the unexpected rash, etc. Save time and money by setting up this feature so it is ready when you need it: Web: Register/Log in at excellusbcbs.com/member App: Download the MDLive app Text: Text EXCELLUS to 635486 Voice: Call 1-866-692-5045 Know someone who looks good in high-vis? If you know someone who would be a great addition to our team, please refer him or her to me! If they are hired, you will earn employee referral payments through their first year of employment!
A unique passphrase should be used for each online account you have so that if one gets compromised, your other accounts will still be safe. As an added precaution, enable multi-factor authentication which requires two pieces of information to be provided before allowing log-in to be completed. This is often a password coupled with answering a personal question only you would know the answer to, or a code texted to your mobile device. 3. Updating: Make sure each of your devices and apps are running the latest version of its software. Cyber attackers are constantly looking for new vulnerabilities in the software your devices use so they can exploit them. Meanwhile, the companies that created the software for these devices are hard at work fixing the vulnerabilities by releasing updates. By ensuring your computers and mobile devices install these updates promptly, you make it much harder for someone to hack you. To stay current, simply enable automatic updating whenever possible. All our corporate computers are centrally managed, so there’s no need to change any settings, but you may want to verify all of your personal cell phones and laptops. 4. Backups and recovery: No matter how careful you are, you still may be hacked. If that is the case, often the only way to restore all of your information is from backup or cloud solutions. Make sure you keep all of your project-related files and information in Procore Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. These two solutions are available to all employees and if you have any questions using them, please contact me to discuss your needs and training options.
Employee Spotlight
DALE COSS
625 Erie Boulevard West Syracuse, NY 13204
Dale is stationed out at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca where we have a few different projects going on. Anyone who knows Dale knows that he is a friend to everyone. Dale stopped to help an older gentleman who was struggling carrying some belongings into the hospital. In typical Dale fashion, he struck up a conversation with the man as he was helping him get to where he needed to go and found out his wife had just passed away. The man was lonely and just wanted someone to talk to. Dale sat with the man for an hour and had the pleasure of hearing some of his stories. The hospital took notice and awarded Dale with a Planetree person-centered care certificate signifying his efforts to make it easier for someone to face their time in a hospital setting. People are at the heart of what we do. Dale, we’re proud to know you and work alongside you. It’s often the little things that matter most, and we’re all in this together.
New Recruits
company anniversaries November Kevin Rodford (21), Spencer Young (2), Mark Foley (39), Jimmy Dimitrievski (31), Tom Kaulback (7), Gordon Hilts (3), Jim Polakiewicz (36), Fred Young (5), Bill Enright (30), Carmen Pontello (29), Jeff Malay (26), Jim Cziesler (10), Tatiana Salisbury (1), Sam Doss (9), Chad Mikalunas (27) December Vadim Potorac (6), Andrew Henderson (2), Stacy Sheppard (4), Stu Cavuto (2), Tim Dunn (3), Joshua Ringen (1), Jim Condon (2), Thomas Kiselica (11), Caleb Cramer (5), Nathan Hopkins (10) January Steven Gordon (13), John Dauler (25), Erik Mott (15), Joyce Dennington (1), Mike Lacey (13), Jack Barni (2), Tim Hourihan (24), Albert Merithew (3), Nathan Faherty (2), Ben Blackwelder (7), Adam Legg (5) February Joe Cutro (7), Matt Herron (7), Maggie Werts (9), Nicole Rio (2), Jim Swinnerton (8), Dale Coss (3), Aaron Devereaux (3) March Jerry Drouin (22), Forrest Todd (17), Graden Decker (7), Craig Duda (8), Rebecca Todd (2), Fred Van Riper (9), Keith Clark (12), Daniel Jamerson (2), Silvana Oliver (9), Kody Parkhurst (12), Christopher Chism (5), Kim Rossignol (5), Richard Bates (5), Adam Wood (3), Andy Stoffle (14), Randy Shantel (4), William Barker (4), Igor Caterenciuc (2), Jeff Uryniak (8)
Social shoutout
For the latest company news, follow us at: New recruits just in time for the ramp up in interior work at the Dome roof project. Welcome to the team!
facebook.com/HaynerHoyt linkedin.com/company/hayner-hoyt/
@HaynerHoyt haynerhoyt.com/news.html