The Concrete Promotional Group (CPG) held their annual Sporting Clay event on September 13, 2023. The event was held at Powder Creek Shooting Park in Lenexa KS. Eleven employees of the Needham DBS Kansas City Office participated. It was a great opportunity to spend time together outside the office environment as well as networking with other companies.
It was our pleasure to welcome Dakota Payne to our team for a summer internship. We all really enjoyed his great attitude, passion for learning, and willingness to dig into all aspects of what we do here at Needham DBS. It’s a wide array, often with many hats to wear, and he was up for the challenge!
We had some great opportunities both in the office and on jobsites. Dakota played a major role in inventory and QC for steel deliveries on some of our large projects in central Virginia this summer. He gained some valuable knowledge about steel construction, tilt-up construction, structural engineering, steel detailing and project management.
The Tilt-Up Concrete Association (TCA)—the global authority for the tilt-up concrete construction industry—announced Karen S. Hand, PE, as the newest president of the TCA Board of Directors.
Karen has served on the TCA Board of Directors since 2018 and the Executive Committee since 2020. For each of the past four years, she was named a “Top 20 Influencer in the Tilt-Up Industry” by the TCA and was the 2022 recipient of the David L. Kelly Distinguished Engineer Award.
Jeremy Stech, P.E., has been promoted to Engineering Manager of the Lenexa KS office. Stech has 20 years of experience with Needham DBS. He holds an Associates of Applied Science Degree in Architectural Engineering Technology from Southeast Community College in Milford, Nebraska in December 2002. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from University of Kansas in December 2015. He graduated with honors and was recognized by the civil engineering department staff, receiving the “Outstanding Graduating Senior in Civil Engineering” award.
Jeremy has demonstrated his leadership skills, consistently gaining trust with internal and external clients. He brings experience with his project management, structural engineering and steel detailing background giving him a unique approach to economical and efficient building design and strengthens our Concurrent Design and Detailing approach to steel deliveries. We are thrilled to have him lead the next generation of engineers.
Needham DBS and T&T Construction wins a Tilt-up Achievement Award for Lilly RTP.
The project is a $474 million development spanning over 750,000 SF across 11 integrated buildings. Features of the development include a 240,000 SF three-story manufacturing facility, a 200,000 SF two-story medical device and packaging facility, a 105,000 SF two-story administration and laboratory building, a 95,000 SF refrigerated Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) warehouse, and a fully functioning central utility plant. This project is a complex of buildings that are interconnected by a common corridor, which is 22 feet by 750 feet. There are six buildings adjoining the corridor from both the north and south, totaling a 324,847 SF building footprint with 688,392 SF of floor area. The project is a multi-level pharmaceutical production facility with floor level changes and pass-throughs between buildings. The Owner was committed to building a facility that was state-of-the-art and would carry their needs well into the future.
Needham DBS has delivered steel for the new 251,100 square foot building for Russell Davenport Industrial Park. The steel is part of a design-build package that was engineered, detailed and fabricated by Needham DBS. All the conventional steel products arrived mid-January and about half of the girders, joists and deck arrived the last week of January. The remainder of the steel is scheduled to arrive on site by mid-February. The project is the first building in the 95-Acre industrial park. Additional buildings for the industrial park are already in the works and will soon follow.
Needham DBS delivered the remaining structural steel to Crystal Distribution in Waterloo Iowa. The project is an expansion to the existing facility and consists of six building sections: an office, east dock/defrost section, operations section, west dock, freezer/cooler section and an engine room. The final shipment of steel, 140 tons, arrived via eight trucks to the site January 25, 2022.
Needham DBS' Fort Wayne Office celebrated the success of 2021 with a year end Christmas Dinner. The dinner was held in the Boardroom at Ruth's Chris Steak House in downtown Fort Wayne on December 11, 2021.
Needham DBS hosted one, two, THREE summer interns for 2021. Chelsea Lewis returned for a second summer as the seasoned intern, she is pursuing her Master's in Architectural Engineeing at K-State. Blake Walker is a student at University of Kansas seeking a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. Alexanderia Birlingmair joined us from Iowa State University, also seeking a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. It was a pleasure to work with these three interns collaborating on projects. During the summer we visited Insteel Wire Products in St. Joseph, MO and visited project sites.
Needham DBS designed and supplied the structural steel test frames for full scale composite insulated wall panel testing. Needham DBS, a charter member of the TCA, worked closely with the University of Nebraska Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction's Marc Maguire, PhD. The researchers, contractors, engineers and vendors worked out the loading requirements and the functionality of the test frames to perform the panel testing. Needham DBS was also responsible for the foundation design to anchor the test frames as well as communicating the panel design and detailing requirements for the panel contractor to build the panels.
Design Build Steel, the "DBS" arm of Needham DBS, supplies structural steel products for all project types. It was a pleasure to work on a unique project and donate the materials for the advancement of the tilt-up industry.
Needham DBS is a proud sponsor and exhibitor of the 2020 Tilt-Up Concrete Association Virtual Convention.
Due to meeting restrictions, the TCA chose to hold a virtual convention for 2020. Using Virbela as the platform, the TCA created "The Aggregate" where convention attendees created avatars of themselves bringing a human element to the virtual world. The avatar concept allowed for real time interaction with other attendees. Needham DBS team members had a lot of fun particpating in games, attending technical sessions, visiting exhibitors and networking with others in the industry. Needham DBS is looking forward to seeing everyone LIVE next year in St. Louis!
Employees relocated to home stations on Monday, March 23, 2020 ahead of the Kansas City metro stay-at-home orders. In a rare sighting, two masked bandits were found colluding in the Needham DBS conference room. CFO, Susan Fox Sherry and President, Karen Hand, geared up with makeshift personal protection equipment, met with Chairman Jeff Needham for a debriefing and critical planning meeting.
The Kansas City Metro counties on both the Missouri and Kansas side of the state line have issued a "Stay At Home" order effective March 24, 2020. All employees in the Lenexa KS office are being transitioned to home based operations immediately. All employees are most easily accessible through email.
Needham DBS anticipates the Fort Wayne office will quickly follow and several employees are already home-based in preparation for that order.
Needham DBS is currently operating in a mostly “business as usual” manner during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have taken precautions to help protect our employees and offered remote access to work from home through VPN connections should it be necessary to do so. With locations in Fort Wayne, IN and Lenexa, KS the less densely populated areas have resulted in just a few cases regionally and we hope that remains the case throughout the coming weeks.
Both office locations will be closed to all visitors. We are available by phone, video conference and email.
Needham DBS has donated $10,000 to the inaugural campaign, raising seed money needed to establish Tilt Lab.
As a philanthropic partner of the Tilt-Up Concrete Association, Tilt Lab’s mission is to cultivate emerging techniques, technologies and ideas with promising applicability for the tilt-up concrete construction industry. With a focus on disruptive and transformative innovation, Tilt Lab will seek to embrace change, further exploiting the already established benefits of the tilt-up system and facilitate collaboration to deliver game-changing innovation related to tilt-up concrete construction.
Karen Hand, President at Needham DBS, and Barclay Gebel, VP Operations at Concrete Strategies, teamed up to present the Case Study for Project Dylan to a packed house at the 2019 Tilt-Up Convention and Expo held in Atlanta.
The composite panel industry is on the frontier of emerging design technologies; the innovation is ripe and ready to propel our industry into the future. Project Dylan is a new prototype fulfillment center, and this seminar will use it as a case study to better understand today’s composite panel industry. The warehouse building’s slab-on-grade footprint is approximately 700,000 square feet, and it has an additional 1.95 million square feet of elevated deck. The exterior is clad with 330,000 square feet of insulated tilt-up panels.
