Welcome back to all our staff for a new year, 2019. We’re hoping that everyone enjoyed their Christmas and New Year’s holiday with family and friends. For at least the last 40 years or so, Western has always closed a day or so before Christmas, and not opened until a day or so after New Year’s Day. The timing all depends on what day each holiday lands on. It has always been important for Western to give all staff members this time off. First, it’s vital to have a break and be able to recharge and spend time with family. Second, many staff members travel to visit family and this gives them time to travel at a peaceful pace. We’ve always strived to compensate all staff members with over one year of service for this time off, so as not to interrupt income.
So, here we go again, another year and it’s shaping up to be one of the best. With all the private development, housing-starts, TXDOT and NMDOT work, we’re really going to be busy. That is a great thing—starting to think about tons per day being poured and number of structures being cast weekly is so important to our clients.
All our contractors are depending on Western to keep their jobs on track. Having each station ready and onsite to drop into the hole and move on to the next station, without interruption, is our goal here at Western. It’s a sort of “plug and play” that comes to precast.
It’s perfectly understood that in today’s competitive bid process that our contractors are working efficiently for slimmer margins. Precast is typically such a very small portion of the overall project’s price and our contractors certainly have a million, larger things to worry about that could create potential delays. No matter what part Western plays, we never want our part to be a slow-down for our clients. Western truly is in the problem-solving business for our contractors and precast concrete is just one piece of the puzzle.
As always, don’t let “safety” be just a word with hollow meaning. Let’s bring safety to life in 2019! If each staff member adheres to their extensive, daily training in safe procedures and never takes a shortcut, we will be ringing in 2020 with no lost-time incidents and each staff member will be safe. Make it your mission to look out for your co-worker and remember the song, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” by The Hollies, (the younger staff will have to look that up—Ha-ha!) should be our mantra this year. Each staff member is a brother, sister, son, daughter, spouse, partner, father or mother. Please, let’s make sure each staff member gets home each day to spend their life with their loved ones. Of course, thank you to all our contractors and our El Paso community … this is our town and we love it!
By/Por: Leo Feuerstein
