Technology helps a small contractor overcome a big problem
There stood Beau Wissing, staring at a mess someone else had created — and now was his to fix. “It was a disaster,” Wissing says of the parking lot being built for a new grocery store.
Heartland Concrete Construction, based in Nebraska, had been hired to finish grade and concrete pave the 100,000-sq-ft lot. The job had turned out to be much more difficult than advertised – and then some.
“This was without a doubt the most complex parking lot we’ve ever done,” says Wissing, who owns Heartland with his father, Jeff. “There were valleys and ridges and crazy stuff all over. The elevations were off. Nothing matched. The engineer had been fired. The plans made no sense.”
That was the good news. “The entry was unworkable,” Wissing says. “It was the worst part of the whole project. There was an approach that had a ridiculous elevation change.” The general contractor told Wissing to take whatever steps necessary to move forward. Yet Heartland is a small firm with limited resources. So what do you do when a job is falling apart — and fixing it is up to you?
