Zachry Group’s Fitness Center sponsored a Step It Up Fitness Challenge this past summer, and when it was all said and done, 404 employees had logged a grand total of 89,445 miles. The competition, which was open to any office or worksite across the enterprise, included 101 teams that competed over six-weeks—all aiming to be the team with the highest reported steps. But the byproduct of all those steps is what the challenge was really about.

“We had a healthy dose of competition, but we were after more than that,” said Fitness Center Manager Jamie Dantzic, who coordinated the challenge. “It was definitely about getting people up and moving, having fun and doing your personal best.” But the ultimate measure of success was to promote long lasting healthy habits that lead to real results like lost weight or inches, lower stress levels, or someone who no longer needs high blood pressure or cholesterol medication.

All indicators, both anecdotal and quantitative, point to a mission accomplished. In a post-challenge survey, more than nine out of 10 respondents—whether a beginner, intermediate or advanced participant—reported an increased fitness level. In addition, the top two reasons employees gave for participating were to improve overall health and well-being and join coworkers in a team effort.

Employees were creative about getting more steps—especially those in office settings. Many printed documents in other areas of the building; some parked farther from an office or used their lunch break to walk around an office or job site—some employees even started “walking meetings.” Many participants reported getting their families and friends up and walking with them—which increased the scale and broadened the impact of the competition.

Still Walking

Many participants are still walking. Both My Personal Physician Health Clinic Office Manager Melissa Gonzales and JVIC’s Coach Application Administrator Talia Dykes declared the challenge isn’t over for them.

When Gonzales signed up to participate, she was interested in getting more than the 3,000 steps she was already logging in a typical workday. Her inspiration came from her Star Trek: The Search for Socks teammates. “Seeing their stats made me want to do more, and our team captain was great at challenging us, even if it was to beat our own personal record,” she said.

Gonzales has continued walking. She strives to do four-to-five miles three or four days a week. “I have a dog, so that helps me get out every day,” she said, “and at work, I’ve been walking both out and indoors during lunch.” Gonzales said she also added healthy eating to her routine and the combination of both better nutrition and exercise have made a difference. “My clothes fit better and I feel energized,” she said.

Dykes had been working on an improved diet all year, but it was the Step It Up Challenge that encouraged her to become more active. “I thought this would be great motivation to become more physically active,” she said. “My job is sedentary, so I challenged myself to take 10,000 steps a day. I was pretty consistent with that and lost 10 pounds during the month of the competition.”

Dykes, who was on Team Café’een, added that the challenge was a learning experience. “I learned not to be intimidated about the sun and heat and to drink more water; the weekly micro challenges and tips also helped.”

Now, Dykes says she looks forward to getting home, changing and walking. Her goal is to continue to do so four-to-five times a week. “I don’t want more than two days to go by without doing this,” she said, adding that she gets her friends and family to walk with her in a beautiful park she discovered near where she lives. “I’m already anticipating when the time changes and thinking about how I’m going to keep this up.”

Keeping the momentum with changing seasons is certainly a challenge. But in the meantime, many employees are content to just keep walking.

I’m extremely proud to say that I’ve worked for Zachry for nearly 19 years. I started out my career with Proto-Power Corporation, a former subsidiary of Zachry, in a client manager role that required an extensive amount of travel. This eventually took a significant toll on me and, most importantly, my family. It became very evident to me that I needed to reset my work-life balance.

After several years at a different company, I was invited to work with Zachry once again. I very much welcomed the opportunity because, despite great effort, I had still not achieved the work-life balance I was seeking.

It was with great passion and pride that I accepted the chance to return and, during that process, I experienced my most memorable moment while working with Zachry.

Upon returning, I was asked to meet with a significant individual within the company at the time. Chief Nuclear Officer Ed Bardgett, who’d taken a personal interest in me, was pleased with my job performance, but was aware of the challenges that I’d faced in the attempt to find a proper balance between the job and my family.

He explained that the company valued me and appreciated my dedication to my job, but he also respected that my priorities rightfully lay with my family. He offered job-role solutions that positively impacted my quest to achieve work-life balance. This meeting solidified my belief that I’d made the best decision and that I was working with a company that really cares about its employees.

Today, I serve as a manager of instrumentation and controls (I&C) with Zachry Nuclear Engineering (ZNE), as well as an account manager involving ZNE’s work with General Electric and Hitachi. I continually seek opportunities that will prove challenging and productive for my team and for the business.

I’m also passionate about giving back to the community and I make every effort to be involved with Zachry-driven volunteer opportunities. I thoroughly enjoy my time participating with a United Way mobile food pantry in southeastern Connecticut because I really like engaging with the recipients and learning their stories. I’m always uplifted by their positive dispositions, despite the often less-than-favorable circumstances they face. Seeing how grateful they are to receive the meals makes me really happy to be a part of something like this.

It gives me great satisfaction to work for a company whose values I strongly identify with. I’m proud to work for a company that has proven to me that its employees matter, and that working for Zachry is more than just a job. It’s what drives me to excel and that is why I am Zachry.

I’m a craft superintendent at the Chevron Phillips Chemical maintenance job site in Old Ocean, Texas, where I’ve been for 15 years.

I manage the maintenance and project side, so I supervise up to 70 employees on crane, rigging, ironworking and civil work. We take care of daily maintenance, project needs and turnarounds.

The best part of my job is the reward of seeing other people learn. When I started my first job at age 18, folks took me under their wings and helped me learn, so I like to do the same thing for others.

I’ve always been interested in teaching others. When employees want to learn, I like to help them get their certifications in rigging, cranes, structural, civil and welding. It’s just something I like to do. The way the industry is going, you have to teach anyone who is willing to learn because, sooner or later, they’ll be in your position.

I have meetings every morning with the whole crew as a team. I try to stay aware of all the individual team members by watching their progress and checking to see if they need to learn something. Your team makes you successful as a supervisor. Without them, you have knowledge, but no way to do the work. I feel that as long as we work together as a team, do the best we can and work safely, we’re succeeding at our jobs.

Outside of work, I’m an emergency medical technician (EMT) and I’ve been a fireman with the Bay City Fire Department for 11 years. We do rescue, interior firefighting, and mutual aid for the other plants around Matagorda County. We’re on call 24-7 and I go in whenever I’m are available to help them. We do training in the classroom and also in the field at Texas A&M University.

I became an EMT and fireman because I’m always up for challenges. The work keeps me on my toes. I love learning new skills and I love being able to extend a hand when someone’s in need.

Being in fire and rescue has actually helped me with my job at Zachry. In fire and rescue, you learn how to manage people in a stressful situation. This experience has taught me how to manage multiple people at one time, and to be able to work well with everyone when things get tough, like during a turnaround.

At Zachry, it’s rewarding to reach our goals, not just goals the customers set, but ones that we set. I like showing the client what Zachry can do. And that is why I AM ZACHRY.

It was neither the biggest nor smallest project ever undertaken by Zachry or its joint venture partner Sargent & Lundy, but the odds are good that it might have been the tightest in terms of space. The joint venture team, called SLZ, finished installing the third of three auxiliary boilers earlier this year at Air Liquide’s Bayport Complex in the greater Houston area. Sargent & Lundy was responsible for engineering and specialty procurements, while Zachry carried out all other procurement and construction.

“Construction took place in an operating plant and, with as little elbow room as we had to work with, it never got easier,” Project Executive Byron Ozenberger said. “When we installed equipment, we would cut off access to other areas, so our sequencing had to be very deliberate to ensure that plant workers could continue performing their jobs and that we didn’t box ourselves in.”

The boilers each supply as much as 400,000 lbs. per hour of steam to the complex, which produces gases, such as nitrogen, hydrogen and helium, for industrial customers.

The success of the project, which was awarded in May 2013, is underscored by the team’s safety achievements. No recordable incidents occurred during more than 240,000 direct work hours.

“It took many individuals working together to achieve this,” Project Manager Glenn Atkinson said. “Communication was the key to our success due to the tight space we had to work in. Everyone understood the task at hand, and what their responsibilities were, so we could successfully and safely complete the job.”

Zachry’s performance contributed to Air Liquide’s decision to award Zachry an additional project to install an air separation unit (ASU) at Air Liquide’s Port Neches, Texas, facility. That project is scheduled to conclude by the end of this year.

I’m a field employment manager at the Mill Creek job site, which is a coal-burning power plant in Louisville, Ky., where Zachry is installing air quality control system equipment.

I’ve been in Kentucky for three years. This is the largest project I’ve ever been assigned to, and the longest. After about six months, I was promoted from senior recruiter to field employment manager. This position presented me with the opportunity to train and develop others in positions I was very familiar with, a responsibility I truly enjoy.

I started working for Zachry close to my hometown in Florida nine years ago as an employment representative. Zachry was my first “real” job. My duties included assisting applicants, hosting new hire orientations and completing various pre-employment requirements. My supervisor, Oscar Martinez, explained my position as “the face of Zachry,” a description that has never left my mind. I had to make sure I was professional and dedicated to my position, as I would provide the first impression many people would have of our project and company. I have carried that vision with me from job to job, representing both myself and Zachry as well as I possibly could.

My parents raised me to have a strong work ethic, also reminding me that first impressions last a lifetime. I’m thankful to have a supportive family and a significant other who push me to my full potential and encourage me to take advantage of ALL opportunities—even moving far away from home. The support I receive from my family and coworkers has allowed me to quickly adapt and overcome the challenges put in front of me.

Mill Creek is my fifth project with Zachry and my first in a management position. I’m always eager to take my career to the next level. I felt as if I had already mastered the fundamentals of recruiting and the employment process, so it was time to share that same knowledge and experience with my direct reports. Being a manager is a rewarding position filled with lessons learned. My duties include managing day-to-day office operations, planning, tracking/reporting our progress and ensuring my team prioritizes hiring needs so that the project can be successfully staffed.

I’ve invested a lot in Zachry and they’ve done the same in return. I feel they take a personal interest in my career and in my personal development. I’ve learned so much—from craft workers to corporate managers, everyone has taught me something. Although there may be future opportunities for me within the organization, I don’t see myself anywhere but Employee Relations.

I value the positive relationships and trust I build with the craft workers and my co-workers. They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life and that is why I AM ZACHRY.

To read more I AM ZACHRY articles, you can find other editions of the Force Report here.

ONE OF THE FIRST POWER PLANTS WITH ENVISION™ SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE RATING

On the shores of Lake Michigan lies a quaint Dutch-like village that bustles with residents and visitors alike. The city of Holland, known for its annual tulip festival and as one of Michigan’s top tourist destinations, is going to become one of the few cities with an Envision™ Sustainable Infrastructure-rated power plant through the development of the Holland Energy Park.

The new 145-MW combined cycle natural gas plant is scheduled to be fully operational in early 2017, replacing the city’s existing coal-fired plant. Zachry is performing the engineering work on the project to build the plant, which will showcase a variety of environmental and aesthetic features:

• A modern building design that creates an attractive eastern gateway to the city
• A 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions and the virtual elimination of solid particle pollutants
• Double the fuel efficiency of Holland’s present power generating station
• The development of open, public space that will integrate with the Macatawa Greenway trail system
• An expansion of Holland’s innovative snowmelt system

BRING ON THE HEAT

Zachry’s plant design includes a means of transferring waste heat conducted from the plant’s heat rejection system to expand Holland’s underground piping system that melts snow in the downtown area.

“A portion of the flow from the hot side of the circulating water system, flowing from the condenser to the cooling tower, is pumped through the city’s snowmelt system,” said Peter Quist, Zachry senior project manager.

Downtown Holland has the largest municipally-owned snowmelt system in the United States. It includes more than 60 miles of one-inch plastic pipe arranged under street surfaces and sidewalk brick pavers. The system can melt one inch of snow per hour when temperatures are between 15 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

“There’s roughly 7,000 gallons of water per minute running through the snowmelt system,” said Quist. “With an annual average snowfall of 75 inches, and a peak of 154 inches in 2013, the snowmelt system is a big benefit to the city.”

The practical and environmental advantages of not having to salt or plow streets help further set the Holland Energy Park apart from the majority of Zachry’s many other power plant projects.

SUSTAINABILITY INCLUDED

The level of thought involved in aligning the plant’s design with environmental standards is another unusual aspect of the project. The Envision™ Sustainable Infrastructure Rating System is the product of a joint collaboration between the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure.

“I don’t know of any other companies that are doing a project like this,” Quist said. “It puts us at the forefront of integrating our design and procurement efforts with the Envision™ rating requirements.”

Envision™ provides a holistic framework for evaluating and rating the community, environmental and economic benefits of all types and sizes of infrastructure projects. It evaluates, grades, and gives recognition to infrastructure projects that use transformational, collaborative approaches to assess sustainability over the course of a project’s life cycle. When completed, the Holland Energy Park will be one of the first power plants with an Envision™ Platinum certification.

To read the full article in the July/August 2015 edition of the Force Report, please click here.

SAN ANTONIO, TX (July 24, 2015) — The National Safety Council announced that Gulf Coast Partners, CPChem U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) Petrochemicals Project has been honored with a 2015 Industry Leader Award. The award is a component of the Council’s member-exclusive Safety Motivation and Recognition Awards Program. The Industry Leader Award benchmarks outstanding safety achievements among member companies based on self-reported data.

Zachry Group Gulf Coast Partners/CPChem received the accolade in recognition of being among the top 5 percent of member companies, units and facilities that have met the criteria and qualified for the 2015 Occupational Excellence Achievement Award (based on 2014 calendar year data) from NSC. Winners are selected based on NAICS code, lowest total incidence rate and employee work hours.

The project team accumulated more than 1.8 million work hours in 2014 at a recordable incident rate (RIR) of 0.32 or 10 times below the national average identified for the industry. The team has continued this trend with an even lower RIR through the first half of 2015.

“We’re extremely honored to be recognized at this elite level of safety excellence,” said Carl Richardson, Zachry Group Vice President, Safety, Health and Environmental. “It shows the magnitude of safety commitment by the project leadership team and craft workers to maintaining a culture where potential hazards are recognized and work processes are actively managed to minimize the opportunity for accidents.”

The USGC Petrochemicals Project in Old Ocean, TX includes two world-scale polyethylene units that will each produce 500,000 metric tons of plastic resin every year. Zachry Group and Technip formed Gulf Coast Partners to build the facilities for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP (CPChem).

“This is a major project that involves more than 1,600 craft workers working approximately 6 million field construction hours,” noted Ralph Biediger, Zachry Group’s President of Construction. “To be truly successful, safety has to be planned and communicated in everything we do. This award is testimony that our primary core value of safety continues to permeate this important project.”

Construction of the USGC Petrochemicals Project began in early 2014 and continues toward a projected completion in early 2017.

I started working for Zachry at Phillips Petroleum Company (now Chevron Phillips Chemical) in Borger, Texas, in 1990. I worked as a surveyor for about six years before moving into quality control (QC), where I am now quality control supervisor. I also still do surveying when it’s required, and I am the site’s lead abatement coordinator and Smart Focus champion.

Although I’m the only one in QC, it’s great to know if I’m in a bind, I can ask for help and someone will jump in. Our numbers fluctuate, but we maintain a core group of about 70 close-knit Zachry employees who laugh together, cry together and work together.

Apart from performing my duties, I enjoy helping others grow. I had good mentors and so I try to do the best I can for others. Sometimes, just making it known that you’re available to answer questions can mean a lot to others who are new or cross-training in fields in which you have knowledge.

One of the things I like best about working for Zachry is that it’s family-owned, and I’m proud and honored to work for a company that takes care of all its employees the way they take care of me and my family. A lot of companies talk a good game, but Zachry doesn’t just talk about putting its employees first. It walks the walk.

I love my job and I try daily to treat people with the respect and dignity that I want to be treated with, and that is why I AM ZACHRY.

Watch for the July/August 2015 edition of the Force Report on the Zachry Group website to read the full article, and more!

But for Dave Tolbert, a senior corporate risk manager in the Denver Design Center, the Ironman is more than a personal challenge—it’s a way to make a difference.

Tolbert and his wife Marianne, who have completed two and five Ironman triathlons respectively, are both members of the IRONMAN Foundation Newton Running Ambassador Triathlon Team, a group of athletes from across the country who combine their love of triathlons with their passion for community service. The team exists to benefit the communities where Ironman events take place through volunteer projects and fundraising. That’s the basis for the team’s informal name, team “kokua,” a Hawaiian word that means to give to others solely for their benefit. Hundreds of applications for the team are submitted each year, but only 40 people are selected.

This is the Tolberts’ second year on the team. As ambassadors, they have committed to participating in one, half-Ironman distance event and two full Ironman distance events this year, while also supporting non-profit groups in communities that host events. Their efforts reflect Zachry’s encouragement of active lifestyles and also align with the company’s concept of Corporate Citizenship, which includes an emphasis on community investment and philanthropy.

Watch for the July/August 2015 edition of the Force Report on the Zachry Group website to read the full article, and more!

This on-the-job training program has become especially important in the current industry climate because of the strong demand for craft skills. ZCAP, which the company created in 2009, is open to all craft employees who want to develop the abilities necessary to advance their careers, from green helpers with no experience to more seasoned craft workers approaching journey-level status.

ZCAP focuses on helping participants become capable of demonstrating competence in their crafts. It addresses both knowledge and physical skills. The employees receive specific information about the steps involved in acquiring journey-level skills. Along the way, proctor instructors assess their progress based upon how they perform the hands-on tasks that their jobs require.

ZCAP Highlights

• ZCAP is made available to all employees and is self-directed, requiring participants to apply individual initiative to learn how to complete necessary tasks and have a proctor instructor sign off as they complete them.
• Once an employee shows mastery of a specific skill to a proctor, the proctor signs off on that task in the employee’s qualification book so the employee can move on to the next task.

REAPING THE BENEFITS

Training Supervisor Mike Word manages the ZCAP program at the Phillips 66 LPG Export Terminal project in Freeport, Texas, where 80 employees are enrolled in the program and 36 supervisors are proctor instructors.

Word noted how ZCAP helps Zachry identify the craft “superstars” who are willing to put in the extra effort to earn their credentials, adding that ZCAP-qualified employees are promoted when possible and receive preferential hiring consideration.

“The whole idea is that we’re training our workforce so we have qualified employees working for us now and we’re developing a workforce for the future,” said Word. “I’ve been out in the field a long time and I’ve seen the need for good craftsmen. There’s a true need for this program.”

To read the full article and learn more about the program, go to http://www.zachrygroup.com/force_report/ZForce_MayJune_2015_ENG.PDF