How engcon Helps Win Multi-Million Dollar Shoreline Projects

Mccrillis is Project Manager at Total Grounds in Tilton, New Hampshire, where large lakes with names like Waukewan, Kanasatka, Pemigewasset, and Winnipesaukee, provide miles of scenic shoreline, and thousands of lakefront properties. That’s where Total Grounds does most of their high-end residential landscaping, construction, demolitions, hardscape, septic work, outdoor patios, and shoreline walls.

It’s also where New Hampshire has strict protective requirements for those who perform ground work or construction near its lakes and wetlands. “Based on our permitting,” he explained, “the town or certain watersheds won’t allow us to have a machine close to the shoreline,” because of the potential environment effect of oil or hydraulic fluid spilling into the water. “So that means you have to have all the work done either by people, or by an engcon.”

Without the engcon, he said, he would need people doing much of the labor along the waterline by hand. “An engcon virtually eliminates your labor force, if you have a good enough operator,” he said. “If we’re limited to say, a 100-foot buffer, sometimes we’ll rent a machine with an extra long 100- or even 200-foot stick to do all the work (with the engcon),” he said, explaining that the engcon can work from outside the buffer or from a barge on the water. “Having an engcon allows you to keep a safer, cleaner work environment and do it in less time,” he said.

On a big project, he said, that could add up to weeks of time saved. And if he has fewer workers on that project, he can have more workers on the ground at other projects.

“We’re able to do the job at a lower rate. And sometimes in a competitive market like, on the shoreline, that lower rate can be the difference between landing a multi-million job or not landing one,” he said. “Or maybe getting a job that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to get unless you had a really creative way to do it.”

Although protecting the environment along the shoreline is important, using an engcon is environmentally friendly all the time.

Whatever the project, Mccrillis says, “The biggest thing is you’re cutting down idle time…time when that machine is just pluming out exhaust, because we’re able to move faster, use less fuel, and obviously that helps out the environment.”

Mccrillis was introduced to engcon about 10-years ago. He had a degree in horticulture, but his interest in and desire to work with large equipment led him to a job with an excavation/construction company in Maine.

He saw what an engcon could do, and wanted to learn how to operate one. When there was no training program at that company, he taught himself, on his days off.

“…I made a deal,” he recalled. “I’d come in on my own time, fill the excavator with fuel, and my boss would let me practice in the pit.”

Eventually, he got good, so good that he spent the next four years operating an excavator and and engcon 360, often doing the most challenging work. “It allows you to do so much….You can maneuver between duct banks and utilities …working with live gas, live electric…that’s my favorite time,” he said.

After honing his skills, it was time to move on from doing mostly civil construction, and he looked for a company doing more diverse work. About a year ago he signedon as project manager at Total Grounds. He’s there because he wanted an up-and-coming company, and one other reason.

“When I was leaving my last job I was looking for teams that had engcons,” he said. “I wouldn’t work for a company that didn’t have engcon.”

Total Grounds was a good fit, and they have five engcons. The job he was working on the day we visited was grubbing-out about 8,000 square feet of vegetation at a car dealership to install 3- to 5-inch round rock to reduce maintenance for the property owner. He said the engcon was indispensable on this particular job. “Because of the traffic and the pedestrians,” he said “You can’t block off the street and work it from the there.”

He explained that in New Hampshire, because of the narrowness of some roads, road closures are not allowed. He had to work from the parking lot out of a 9-foot footprint.

“If I had a machine without a 360-degree bucket, I would have to be constantly going in and out of the bed to reposition,” he noted. He’d also have to be careful about hanging over the road.

But with the engcon he said he can just dig out from any angle, spin around and dump into the truck. He estimated the engcon on this job reduced the work by two laborers, and the speed that he can work with the engcon reduced the length of the job from seven days to three.

“I can do with one stroke on the engcon what would take five strokes with a fixed bucket,” he said. Saving time on a job is important to Mccrillis, but so is making life easier for the laborers on the ground.

“I started at the bottom,” he remembered, “I started as a shoveler, worked my up to a mid-level operator setting up lasers and doing skid steer work.” From there he joined a pipe crew and did low excavation trenches and laid pipe.

“Because I worked from the bottom up, when I got my hands on an engcon I became popular with the crew… because the better the operator, they less physical labor they have to do.”

He said the ground crews make up what really drives these companies. “The more you can take off the labor force and put it on the heavy equipment, the more you’re going to retain employees. Having an engcon, not only does it save time and money with labor, but fuel costs because you don’t have to reposition the machine so much.”

As a project manager, Mccrillis spends most of his time planning a job and making sure it progresses smoothly, so that it comes in on time and on budget, and that includes the time saved using engcon. He still gets in the seat several times a week, when things get tricky or when another operator is uncomfortable. Or maybe when he gets the urge to do a little elegant digging. “From the day I meet the client…I’m charge of the entire project,” he said. “Having five engcons in my tool belt only makes my life easier because I can send one operator in there and he’s able to do the work of three people.”

The engcons help keep his costs down and his deadlines met. After thinking about it for a moment, he smiled and said, “If, logistically, I can get three engcons on a job, then I will.”