Meet Jon Anglin: Paulina Torres

 Jon Anglin: Safety Director

            Jon Anglin is the Safety Director at Ideal Contracting. He has been with Ideal for 10 years now, since 2006. Jon started off working with environmental, followed by demolition, and worked his way through the construction industry. Jon joined the construction industry because he witnessed many accidents while working in environmental and demolition that it became a passion for him to look after the safety of people. The safety department gives Jon the opportunity to help people, learn from accidents, and advocate safety.

Some of the responsibilities that Jon has as Safety Director are site inspections, site auditing, train people for safety positions, oversee the safety of all field personnel, communicate incidents and among others. The most challenging part of Jon’s position is people. He explains that there are different learners, and he sometimes encounters stubborn people. There are different types of injuries that can be reported. Those injuries include near misses, property damage, First Aid, or recordable. The most common injury that occurs out on a job site is bruising or pulling a muscle: soft tissue injuries. People who do not warm up properly are more likely to pull a muscle or a tendon. Jon strongly emphasizes that for this reason, Ideal Contracting has the Stretch & Flex Program that is performed on every job site first thing in the morning.

Aside from working with Contracting, Jon also works with Shield and Setech. Jon explains that he sees a couple of differences working within the different companies at Ideal. Contracting has a full safety program. Contracting is mainly in their costumer’s site and not the other way around. For this reason, safety requires much higher communication and he explains Contracting as having the most eyes watching over them. On the other side, Shield is Ideal’s own facility. Ideal Shield makes parking blocks, bollard covers, and steel fabrication. They still have a good safety program, but the work environment is much different than Contracting’s. Jon explains that their safety program is more internal. If someone were to get injured, it is not likely for them to let everyone of their customers know about the injury. Whereas with Ideal Contracting, if someone were to get injured at the Warren Tech Center, Contracting would have to notify the customer and everyone else affiliated.

Jon is involved with the winter and summer Incentive Program. This program is a great way for families to demonstrate their safe practices at home, and teach people about them. Family involvement is what Jon likes the most about the Incentive Program. On his free time, Jon enjoys to spend time in the water: swimming, jet-skiing, tubing, work on his home, cook and he likes to drive.

Steven Sinn: Week 10 DEC Building C Progress

Week 10 was a very busy and exciting week. This week was a big week with the beginning of steel being set on building C. We also had a pretty big lift for us, we had hoisted a  23,000lb  steel beam that connects building C to the main arena. This had drawn a pretty big crowd since it was considered a critical lift for our crane on site. Building AB is beginning the detailing process with connecting the rest of the stairs. All things beside, on Thursday was the biggest of the week with the top out party for the main arena roof. This is a pretty big milestone not just for Midwest steel but for all of the contractors on site. Plus the shirt and food trucks were pretty cool. But as an intern we are closing in on our final weeks of our internship, it is crazy how fast it has gone by. Here are some of the pictures I had taken through the week.

This is a picture of us setting some steel on building C.

 Here is a picture of a couple of connectors walking at the highest point of Building C

 Here is a picture from our 23,000lb lift.

 Here is Just a overall progress picture of building C.

Chris Kuenzer: More Progress at Building 70

Last week was quite busy for me, as Alex was on vacation for a few days, so I had to take care of doing our meeting minutes, SOP cards, the daily report, and all of our normal duties by myself. I was also tasked with picking out appliances that meet GM’s specifications and getting product data on them for a submittal. We sent in the submittal on Wednesday, and everything was approved. Now we have to coordinate with our subs to get all of the proper plumbing and electrical in place so that all of the appliances can be installed.

The schedule at building 70 is moving along as planned, and we are finished with framing walls, and are almost finished with drywall. Our carpenters have started to frame the ceilings, and Ensroth is making more and more progress with the ductwork and fire dampers. We have painters on site, and they have a coat of primer on most of the walls on the East end of the building, and they have started to repaint one of the stairwells. We also had some guys from Gardiner Voss on site for a few days to install the support steel for the operable partition in one of the conference rooms. In addition to all of this, VAV boxes are getting piped and wired, and we have three drywall finishers working hard to get our walls ready for paint. It is very interesting to watch them work, as they have a few specialized tools that enable them to work extremely fast.

Week 12 in Pontiac

This was a pretty busy week in Pontiac for me. The team and I got several quotes in and took a look at a few different jobs that needed to be walked to get the scope of work. One project was walked today which includes the replacement of about 2 dozen VFD (Variable Frequency Drive) motor controllers on Air handling Units in the Penthouses of Building C. VFD's supply motors with a range of electricity voltage to change the frequency of the motor, to make it run slower or faster, depending on the need. This is going to take a lot of coordination with the subs and the owner to complete the work at specific times when the different units can be shut down. We had to go to each different AHU (14 in all)  in 4 different Penthouses, to take a look at the specific work that needed to be done at each one. All but one was to have the supply and return motors upgraded as they are all outdated.

One ongoing job we had this week was a paving job between building A to the right and building B to the left. A few weeks ago, there was a fire main brake that cracked and sunk some asphalt past those yellow bollards in the background. The rest of the area needed to be done, so that area, plus extra paving and some concrete stairs got done. This picture was taken after the first layer on the right have was done with T&M workeers rolling it. The left have will be done next, as well as the second layer on top of that. This all needed to be done on a tight schedule as there is a company picnic planed on campus soon and this parking lot needed to get done.

Another project that Ideal had was to install these heavy duty shelving units in Building E. There are several sets of shelves being put up and each one is about 40 feet long. This took a lot of coordination with the owner including placement and timing. One problem that we ran into before starting was the bolts needed to erect them were not to be found. The owner had to scramble and locate the hardware which just happened to be misplaced, but the project was delayed a little bit none the less.

Tony's 12th Week

The first week of August was a colossal success. The month of July has come to a close, which means Virg and I had to collect all Home Depot purchase receipts made by employees with assigned Home Depot company credit cards. All receipts were turned in on time, except for 35 of them. This is understandable, however, because the men and women out on the job site are extraordinarily busy.  Virg and I made some phone calls to hunt down these people. By this morning, all receipts for July purchases will be submitted.

"More Saving. More Doing."

In addition to the Home Depot receipts, Dave delegated the small tool and equipment report to me, and this time the large consumables report to Roberto. Last month, I did consumables, and it was fantastically tedious. The small tool and equipment did not take as long to complete, and it is categorized which makes it easier to enter into the SAP system. This week was definitely one of the more bustling weeks at Ideal, and I look forward to next week.

Last Week's Staff Meeting w/ Crew

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Riley Norman MPG

The last couple weeks have been pretty eventful.   Steven Sinn and Dylan Yore both came and took a visit to the Proving Grounds.  Dylan along with Chris, Mike, and I got to help carry drywall onto a job.  Steven came out and helped me open up some jobs.  Everyone was able to walk a couple sites and receive a tour of campus.  All in all it was a good experience.  I’ll be heading over to Warren Tech tomorrow to meet up with Dylan and Gus for my internship site visit.  Looking forward to seeing everyone next week to go over the presentations!

Interning with Ideal!

This past week at ideal has been another enjoyable week. Last Friday was the Ideal garden volunteer day with Magna International, I thought this was a fun way to give back to the local community and a good bonding experience with fellow interns as well as employees from Magna International. Last Tuesday I was given the opportunity to ride to the top of an 86' manlift to look around and take a few pictures which was an cool point of view of the entire project here.