Courage is What Counts - The Story of Hall Contracting Corporation

The Story of Hall Contracting Corporation

Courageis what

CounTS

Ken Hal las told to Jeanne S. archer

Courageis what

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copyrighted material

The Story ofHall Contracting Corporation

Courageis what

Counts


A book project by:

Copyright © 2009 by Ken HallAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording without permission of the publisher.

Courage is What Counts reflects the opinions, feelings, and memories of Ken and Irene Hall. The stories and conclusions are matters of personal opinion, not necessarily fact, and are in no way intended to be hurtful to any individual or group.

Tell Studios Inc. has not made any attempt to verify the accuracy of any of the information in this book. The opinions expressed within these pages do not necessarily reflect those of Tell Studios Inc.

All photographs and illustrations, unless indicated otherwise, are courtesy of the Hall family or Hall Contracting.

Cover and Book Design by Nikki Ward, Morrison Alley Design.

Printed in Canada.

Produced by Tell Studios Inc.www.SaveYourHistory.com


Contents

Preface iIntroduction iii

One: Developing a Man of Integrity – Ken Hall’s Early Years 1There Was Always Enough 2

Earl and Molly Hall 3

Becoming a Good Person 5

Learning and Earning 7

Ken’s First Digging Equipment: Jeff, the Mule 8

High School Teachers Model Honesty and Integrity 9

Courting Irene 11

Studying and Practicing Industrial Arts 13

One Job Is Not Enough 15

Two: It All Started With a Trencher 17Putting Pipe in the Ditch 20

Dixie Construction 23

Moving to Grade Lane 24

Building a Business by Building Relationships 24

Pouring Concrete for Foundations 29

Three: Good, Solid People 31The Benefits of a Merit Shop 32

Union Trouble 33

A Gentle Guy . . . With a Machete 37

Being Part of the Hall Contracting Family 39

Four: We Don’t Know What We Can’t Do 45No Lack of Jobs to Bid 46

We Do It All At Hall 49


Arkansas-Missouri Power and Pipelines Across Rivers – 1963-1965 50

Henry County Water District - 1968 52

Emergency Construction After Natural Disasters – 1974 and 1978 53

Bowling Green Wastewater Treatment Plant – 1975 54

First Sliplining Job – Fort Knox, Kentucky – 1978 54

Killen Generating Station – 1978-1980 56

Horse Racing Tracks – early 1980’s 57

Military Training Complexes – 1986-2000 58

St.Petersburg Beach Water Irrigation System - 1993 63

Carolina Panthers Football Stadium - 1994 63

Ups and Downs 64

Five: Corporate Expansion 65Subsidiaries and Acquisitions 66

Establishing the Charlotte Office 68

Six: Ingredients for Success 73Just Satisfy the Clients: On Time and On Budget 74

Control As Much of the Process As Possible 75

Invest in Employees 76

Maintain an Unparalleled Safety Record 78

Reward Everyone Fairly and Plow Profits Back Into the Business 79

Invest in Excellent Equipment and the Latest Technology 81

When Times Are Tough . . . Diversify 82

Be Grateful and Happy Wherever You Are 83

Success is Never Final. Failure is Never Fatal. Courage is What Counts. 83

Seven: The Hall Legacy 85Employee Stock Ownership Plan 86

Community Impact 91

Ken’s Message to Hall’s Employees 95

Next time you turn a faucet handle and watch the water stream out, take a minute to think about the awesome infrastructure that brings you that water: the pipes in your house, connected to pipes under your yard, connected to pipes under your street, connected to a water reservoir that is probably miles away from where you live. Another such infrastructure brings the natural gas that you may be using right now to heat your home. And yet another infrastructure takes away waste through the sewer system.

We know these pipelines are there, but we rarely pay them any mind. They are expertly hidden under our city streets, through our fields, below the water of our rivers, making our lives run smoothly, so we don’t have to think about how it all works.

But somebody put those pipelines there. And if you live in the southeastern United States, there’s a fairly good chance that the people of Hall Contracting had something to do with those pipes. Under the leadership of founder Kenneth E. Hall, Hall Contracting has been digging trenches, laying pipe, and maintaining pipelines for more than 50 years. They never stop thinking about the underground system that makes our cities work.

As Hall Contracting became an established leader in industrial construction, the company went beyond pipe-laying to electric and cable installation, power plant and wastewater treatment plant construction, and specialized heavy construction of military training ranges, horseracing tracks, and factories. They provide the kinds of construction services that utility companies and the Army Corps of Engineers cannot do without. And neither can we, even if we never considered it before.

This book is meant to correct that oversight. By telling the story of Ken Hall and his company, this book pays tribute to the unsung heroes of industrial construction. And it is an opportunity for Hall Contracting’s employees to pay tribute to their leader and friend, who retired in 2003.

iii

I n t r o d u c t i o n .


When Ken Hall was only seven or eight years old, he started following his dad to work in the summer months. Earl Hall was a carpenter who built houses

and additions. Ken remembered, “I liked nothing better than when Mom packed me a lunch in a brown paper bag and off to work with him I’d go.” Ken’s dad took time to involve his young son in his work. “He was an excellent teacher, and I really enjoyed being out on the job with him. I would carry two-by-fours or do whatever I was asked to do. That’s where I learned how to build and build correctly.”

1Developing a Man of Integrity–

Ken Hall’s Early Years

Ken was the starting quarterback during his junior and senior years at Okolona High School in Okolona, KY.


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C o u r a g e i s W h a t C o u n t s

Ken remembered his father trying to teach him how to use a hammer, patiently instructing him to hold the handle farther back for better leverage. But little Ken was having trouble following the instructions. “I was up on a roof, driving nails in the sheeting, just hammering away. Dad took a look at me and said, ‘Throw me that hammer.’ Well, I did, and he cut about four inches off the end of the handle. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘You’re not using it.’ I learned the lesson.”

Honest work, and the lessons learned from work, make up the foundation of Ken’s childhood years. His parents created a stable home life that enabled Ken and his siblings to nurture their talents and strike out on their own with confidence.

There Was Always EnoughKen was born on March 31, 1930, in a house built by his dad on Maplewood

Avenue in Okolona, Kentucky, just south of Louisville. When he was 10, the family moved to an eight-acre farm in Okolona. Ken’s mother, Molly Hobbic Hall, was kept busy looking after her six children — Robert, Vera, Ken, Rebecca, David, and Willie — as well as chickens, pigs, a couple of cows, a large garden, and a big, old farmhouse. The house had a screened porch across the front and bedrooms built by Ken’s father across the back. The boys shared a bedroom (and a bed), and the girls did the same.

With no indoor plumbing, they used a two-hole outhouse, and they bathed in the kitchen in a “Number 2” size wash tub. “When we were little, we could get into it,” said Ken. But as he grew, he had to sit on a chair on the side of the tub. Water was heated on the stove and dumped into the yard between bathers. In the summer, they bathed outdoors, using the sun to heat the water; nobody was around to see. “When I was playing sports in school,” Ken remembered, “I could not wait to get in the shower at school after practice.”

Canned goods and meat were stored in a large, outside “cool house.” Ken remembered, “It had hollow walls with sawdust in them. The building cooled down at night and stayed cool most of the day. It was surprising.”

The cows lived in a barn out back with four acres of pasture. There was a chicken house and a little chicken yard for the hens, and a separate hog lot for a couple of pigs. “The big sow had little ones there every so often,” said Ken. “Dad fattened one


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D e v e l o p i n g a M a n o f I n t e g r i t y – K e n H a l l ’ s E a r l y Ye a r s .

or two of those, and that’s what we used for meat. We were so poor we had to use every part of the pig except the oink. Dad sold the other hogs.” The cows were used only for milk, not meat, and their calves were sold.

Ken remembered hog butchering that had to be done in cool weather, and the sugar cured, salt cured, and smoked meats that later hung in the cool house. “We hung the sides of the bacon up from hooks, and they stayed there until we were ready to use them. They didn’t spoil.”

Every harvest, Ken’s mother canned 250-300 quarts of vegetables out of the family’s garden. “Of course that helped,” Ken pointed out. “There were 16 legs under the table, so that was a pretty good bunch to feed.”

Molly knew how to stretch a dollar for her family, and she always put her community first. “There was never very much money,” said Ken, “but there was always enough.” The first ten percent of whatever Earl brought in was put into an envelope for the church. “Mom and Dad were very strict about that.” Molly also put some money aside for the future, hiding it somewhere in the house where she could get it if she needed it. These examples of giving, saving, and budgeting wisely were making an impression on young Ken.

Earl and Molly HallKen’s father, Earl

Hall, was reared in a large family near Bardstown, Kentucky, about 30 miles south of Louisville. Ken’s mother, Molly Hobbic Hall, was the daughter of a German immigrant father and a Scottish immigrant mother, and was reared near Clermont, Kentucky. “She came up the hardscrabble way,” said Ken. “They were very poor folks, but they all knew how to work, and they taught us the work ethic as we came along.”

Ken’s parents: Earl and Molly Hobbic Hall.


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Earl was five years older than Molly. He served in World War I, and when he came home, he learned carpentry. “He was highly respected in the community as a good carpenter,” Ken remembered. “Everybody wanted Mr. Earl to do their house addition or build their new house. He worked out of the carpenters’ union for years, and when he was between jobs, he would pick up a remodeling job or something else down at the union hall. He always found something to do.” During World War II, Earl worked at Fort Knox building barracks.

Ken remembered his father as a good man and a disciplinarian. “He didn’t tolerate a lot of bad behavior, and I was on the business end of his razor strap or belt a number of times. Maybe more than any of the others. My mother used to say I was the toughest one to raise but the most fun. I had some mischief in me.”

For some reason, Ken’s father nicknamed him “Mike,” and everyone in the family called Ken “Mike” as did many of his friends. He is still known as “Mike” to many people today, including his wife, Irene, and most of his former employees.

Irene remembered Ken’s father as stern but tenderhearted. She saw him get teary-eyed over emotional television programs. He loved playing with his grandchildren, and Ken’s daughter, Patty, remembered him hiding and jumping out to surprise her. He was planning to build her a playhouse; he had the plans drawn up before he died. “It was even going to have a sink in it with running water,” Irene remembered, “though I told him we don’t need water in it.” Earl Hall died one month shy of his 66th birthday.

Molly Hall “was a great mother and a super cook,” said Ken. “She looked after us with very good care. She was not a strict disciplinarian; you could get by with things with Mom that you couldn’t with Dad. I never heard her fuss a lot about anything.” However, both parents expected their children to know right from wrong and behave accordingly. The whole family attended Sunday school and church every week at the Baptist church.

Molly always cooked a big Sunday dinner. Irene remembered that, when she was dating Ken, Molly had the meal on the table within 45 minutes of coming home from church. She alternated each week between fried chicken and roast beef and between banana croquets (a banana rolled in crushed peanuts on a bed of lettuce) or banana pudding.


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D e v e l o p i n g a M a n o f I n t e g r i t y – K e n H a l l ’ s E a r l y Ye a r s .

Molly got down on the floor to play with her grandchildren, teaching them to play tiddlywinks and reading them books. Later, she taught Patty to embroider.

Looking back decades later, Ken described his childhood as “fairly normal.” He didn’t remember many family arguments; everybody was independent, but they helped each other when help was needed. He did remember his mother complaining if his father stopped for a beer after work, but Earl didn’t do that often. Earl had a brother who died an alcoholic, and that also made an impression on Ken. “I watched that, and it was in my mind: be very careful, drinking is dangerous. I never put a drink of alcohol to my lips that it didn’t cross my mind to be careful.”

Becoming a Good PersonKen walked less than a half mile from his home to the public school. All students,

from grade one through twelve, attended class in a single building, but each class had its own room.

One day in second grade, Ken was “talking smart aleck” to some girls on the playground and they reported him to the teacher, Jessie B. Crady. She told Ken to stay after school. He was worried about being in trouble, but a couple of his buddies said, “Oh, she’ll forget. Just get up and walk out with us.” So when classes ended for the day, Ken tried to leave.

“About the time my foot hit the blacktop road in front of the school, Miss Crady had me by the nape of the neck,” he remembered. “She spun me around, marched me by all the other kids, took me back to the classroom, and sat me down by her desk. Here I was — a second grader — thinking, ‘What’s going to happen?’ She took a pocketknife out of her desk. It seemed two feet long, though I’m sure it was a regular pocketknife. She went outside and cut a switch, which I thought was four feet long. She brought it back in, and switched me good.”

Miss Crady then took out her notepad and an envelope and wrote Ken’s father a note. “Now you give this to Mr. Earl tonight,” she said. In it, she explained what had happened and why she’d given Ken a switching.

“Mom had placed the note on Dad’s dinner plate, and when he got home, why of course he read that before he ever sat down at the table.” In fact, Earl didn’t sit down at all. He gave Ken another switching, then put him in the truck and drove


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to the teacher’s house so that Ken could apologize. “Of course, I cried all the way over and all the way back. It was one of those stories that straightens the wrinkles out of a smart-aleck little kid. And I learned to watch what I said in front of any of the girls at school.”

Amazingly, in the 1990s, Ken and Irene ran into Jessie B. Crady at an ice cream shop in Florida. Irene had approached the table to say hello to another woman, and that woman said, “Do you know my cousin, Jessie Crady?” Irene remembered, “I about fell over because I knew the story.”

Then Ken walked over and said, “Hi, Miss Crady.”She said, “Hi, Kenny. We had a little problem, didn’t we?”

I said, “Well, it may have been little to you. It was big to me.”

Young Ken continued his education in good behavior when he joined the Boy Scouts at age eleven for a couple of years, earning the Star rank. He never forgot the twelve Scout Laws and could still quote them without hesitation at age 78: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. “If you can carry those away with you and keep them, you’re going to be a pretty good person,” said Ken. “I think that’s the big thing that scouting does for boys who listen, who pay attention, and work on some of those merit badges and polish their skills.” As a scout, Ken also learned to work with others and to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Said Ken, “I enjoyed it, and I

When he was 11 years old, Ken joined the Boy Scouts and never forgot the twelve Scout Laws.


Ken was in his third year of teaching in the spring of 1954 when he had a conversation that would change the course of his life. His long-time friend Bill

Neblett, who was an engineer with Louisville Gas and Electric, had a proposition for Ken: “We’re renting trenchers,” said Bill. “And my boss said that since we hire those by the hour and it’s not competitive bidding, I can own a trencher myself. Would you want to go in with me?”

Ken said, “Bill, I don’t have two nickels to rub together. How can I do that?”

2It All Started With A Trencher

In 1956, Ken and Irene moved the business out of their kitchenand into this office on Grade Lane in Louisville.


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But Bill was persistent. He knew Louisville Gas and Electric needed to dig a lot of trenches. LG&E had been providing gas-fueled street lighting from its own coal plant since the 1830s, but in the 1950s they were expanding their network of pipelines throughout the city to take advantage of natural gas coming from Texas and Louisiana. It was part of a nationwide pipe-laying effort made possible by improvements in metals, welding techniques, and pipe-making methods developed during World War II. By laying more pipe leading to individual households, LG&E was expanding its customer base greatly. However, the massive pipe-laying project required someone to dig trenches, and since LG&E didn’t own their own digging equipment — a tractor with a trencher attached — they were contracting with independent companies to do the digging.

Bill wanted Ken to join him in taking advantage of this opportunity. “Mom will lend us the money,” Bill claimed.

Ken and Irene knew Bill’s mother well; in fact, they were renting a little house from her next door to Bill on Blue Lick Road in Okolona. “She was a sweet, nice lady,” Ken remembered, “and she loaned us $2,000.” But that wasn’t enough for a tractor and trencher.

“So I took that two thousand to Bullitt County Bank, in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, where we had our personal account,” said Ken. “I had financed our first car there, and I knew Mr. Harry Combs, the president of the bank. The bank loaned us the rest of the money we needed.”

Mr. Combs told Ken afterward, “I had the darnedest time getting those women on the board to approve money for a tractor and trencher. I told them that they would lend money all day for cars for people to use for pleasure, but this was a piece of equipment that would be used to earn a living. They finally agreed.”

Ken and Bill purchased a Ford tractor from Summers Hermann in Louisville, and the Everett trencher came through a Danville, Kentucky, distributor. “We chose the Everett,” said Ken, “because it was a ladder type trencher, which had a conveyor belt that delivered the dirt to one side. This was much better than the trenchers I’d noticed my competitor was using which had a long ‘stinger’ type digger.” It was Ken’s first of many wise decisions to purchase the best, state-of-the-art equipment. He also bought a three quarter-ton pickup truck to tow the trencher to the dig sites.


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I t A l l S t a r t e d W i t h A Tr e n c h e r .

Starting in April 1954, LG&E paid Ken and Bill $8.50 an hour to dig trenches. “We dug the trench,” said Ken, “and the LG&E crews welded the pipe and placed it in our trench, and then we would backfill with the dozer blade on the front of our tractor.” Ken ran the trencher from May to August, before he went back to teach at Male High School that fall. He hired an operator, Kenny Dodson, for $4.00 an hour to run the trencher during the school day. Dodson was the fledgling company’s first employee. Ken and Bill called their business Hall Trenching Company.

Meanwhile, Ken found another purpose for the trencher. “There were so many slab-type homes being built in Louisville at that time,” Ken remembered. “In a slab-type home you just dig a footer, pour it, and then pour a concrete slab for the floor. There were literally hundreds of these houses going up, so we started digging those house footings, with each house footing leading out to the street for the plumbing.”

It was a good time to get into the home construction industry in Louisville. The post-war building boom was still going strong in the mid-1950s. GIs were

Ken is at the controls of the company’s first trencher as he digs the footers in 1954 for the home of George Hauss (at right) and his wife, Marcella.


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finishing their educations, getting married, starting families, and looking for places to live. Suburbia was taking shape all over America, and housing developments were popping up all around Louisville. This meant not only home construction but the infrastructure to support these new communities.

“Ken happened to be in Louisville at the right time for that,” Irene remembered. “All this home building required the expansion of utilities — sewers and water and gas. And not just in Louisville, but in the counties and cities surrounding. He happened to be in the right place at the right time for the development of the company.”

During the 1954-55 school year, Ken taught until late afternoon while Kenny Dodson was running the trencher. Then Ken went home, changed his clothes, and dug ditches until late into the evening. He hung lights on the pickup truck to shine onto the worksite, so he could keep working after dark.

“The next thing I knew I had to get a second trencher,” he said. “A 1,200-house subdivision, known as Valley Village, was going up on lower Dixie Highway in Louisville. I got the first three sections with three hundred houses each. We were so busy.”

By the time summer came around again, Ken knew he wasn’t going back to teaching in the fall. While he enjoyed teaching, his first love had always been construction, so the choice was easy to make. Besides, he made almost twice as much money trenching part time as he made teaching full time. He had found his career.

Putting Pipe in the DitchKen had little hesitation about the new kinds of work he found himself doing.

His years of varied building experiences made most of the tasks seem “just natural” for him to do, and when he encountered something he’d never done before, he knew he could learn.

That was his attitude about going from trenching to pipe-laying. “When I bought the second trencher,” said Ken, “I decided I ought to be thinking about putting something in that trench, because I could see that whoever was filling the trench with either concrete or pipe was doing a lot better than I was.”


“I can’t think of any company that we wanted to pattern our company after,” said Ken. “I think we maybe set the mold for perfection.” If Ken saw the need for

Hall to do something better, he simply took action to make it happen.Irene agreed. “There was just such a strong motivation in the company, from

within, that they would be the best. They never gave thought to trying to emulate another company in that industry, because I believe they did think they could do it as well as anyone did.”

6Ingredients for Success

Even years after Ken left the classroom, he never lost his passion for teachingand inspiring bright, young minds.


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In 1992 Hall Contracting in Louisville was ranked the area’s largest general contracting firm, according to Business First, the business journal for Louisville. Hall had reported 57 contracts awarded in the previous year and over $75 million in contract value. In the years since, it has continued to be one of the biggest and best in its industry. Starting with just one trencher in 1954, the company has grown significantly in the succeeding years. In 2008 combined revenues for the two Hall companies topped $70 million, with 300 employees on the payroll. “I never dreamed that we’d build a company that would do that well,” said Ken.

Countless ingredients come together to make a successful company — vision, leadership, planning, excellent employees, superior project management, quality work, and many other factors. And Hall has all of those ingredients. But a particular set of commitments, held by Ken from the beginning and carried on by Hall’s leaders today, account for Hall’s phenomenal success.

Just Satisfy the Clients: On Time and On BudgetWhen Ken looked back on more than 50 years of work at Hall Contracting, he

was modest about the ongoing relationships he built with clients along the way: “We were able to get hold of them and just satisfy them and stay with them, by and large.”

Just satisfying clients meant doing quality work and completing it on time and on budget. It’s a phrase that is easily spoken but not so commonly demonstrated in the construction industry. However, Hall’s projects are often completed ahead of schedule. For example, they completed the underground piping for a coal-fired power plant in half the scheduled time, allowing an early start on the next phase of the project. “That certainly is a competitive advantage,” said Ken, “because the owners get the use of the project well in advance of what they expected. And if they’re going to be turning a profit from it, then they get a profit sooner then they had expected.”

Such results put Hall Contracting high on clients’ lists for the next project. “In many cases, they looked for something else for us to do,” Ken added. “They’d call us back because they liked working with the people who did the job.”

This often led to lasting friendships. “So many people became our best friends and still are,” said Irene about Hall’s clients. “Some have just been business friends.


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I n g r e d i e n t s F o r S u c c e s s .

But a lot of them have become personal friends. We still see these people, have dinner with them, enjoy being with them.”

Brian Loher, a long-time Hall employee, recognized Ken’s personal connection with clients. Ken cared about the personal lives of his team, wrote Brian, but “this caring spirit was not just reserved for his employees; he was also very much involved with and many times became personal friends with customers and vendors.”

Indeed, Ken went the extra mile for customers, just as he did for employees. Hall employee Marvin Howerton remembered when he was asked to help clean out a pony stall on a Saturday for one of Ken’s friends from Louisville Gas & Electric. “I will always remember Mr. Hall putting on his boots and getting in there with us and working as hard or harder than we did,” wrote Marvin.

“Take care of the customers and they will take care of you.” That is a phrase Jonathan McLean remembered Mr. Hall saying to him often. “As employees we were always challenged to do our very best and to provide outstanding customer service” said Jonathan. “Fostering good working relationships with our customers has allowed the company to grow.”

Control As Much of the Process As Possible A key factor in coming in on time (or ahead of schedule) is Hall’s investment in

controlling the process. In a mid-1980s company brochure, Ken talks of “performing more with our own forces” by ensuring that Hall’s own employees can handle mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, building, foundation, site work, and utility construction. With these capabilities, Ken wrote, “Hall controls your project better and can adapt to changes immediately. You do not — and we do not — have to continually negotiate with . . . subcontractors and labor unions to accomplish what you need done. We just do it ourselves.” He sums up this strength with the words, “Maximum control and complete flexibility.”

Hall’s merit shop enhances this control, eliminating rules that get in the way of flexibility and efficiency, and a workforce with wide ranging skills reduces the number of subcontractors required. “Because Hall performs more with our own forces, we can accelerate construction, coordinate and rearrange schedules, and reassign craftsmen to achieve a rapid completion of your project,” said a corporate brochure.


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Controlling the delivery of materials is also critical to an efficient construction project, and Hall created relationships with suppliers that led to better service. Volume purchasing, fair treatment, prompt payment, and streamlined procedures encouraged suppliers to prioritize Hall’s needs. In addition, Hall’s in-house fabrication capabilities ensure that piping materials are available when needed. And Hall’s own delivery trucks make sure supplies get to the job site as quickly as possible.

“In short, Hall Contracting puts more capabilities and resources in the field than practically anybody, creating a similarity to an army corps,” said a brochure produced in the early 1990s. “We’re self-contained and we attack every project as an opportunity to prove ourselves.”

Invest in EmployeesK. Michael Hall knows that Hall Contracting would not have a reputation for

“quality work on time” if not for its people. At times, Hall has had more than five hundred employees, counting both the Louisville and Charlotte offices. “And to hire and retain good people,” Mike said, “you must treat them with respect and dignity. The culture at Hall promotes treating employees with respect, through competitive wages, benefits, and training.” The stories that employees share about their years at Hall point directly to this commitment.

Jesse Walters believes that Hall “built the best construction personnel team in Kentucky” by hiring the best people and rewarding them for extra contributions. He would know better than most about Hall’s investment in its employees. Jesse started at Hall as a field office manager in 1964, but he had limitless opportunities to advance: “Later I became a pipe layer, straw boss, foreman, superintendent, safety director, estimator, vice president, VP/general manager, executive vice president, president, and CEO. In other words, Mr. Hall gave me the chance to work my way up.” Jesse retired in 2002.

When Ken invited John VanDyke to take the position of safety director in 1977, John had little experience for the job. “I was provided training in this new field,” he wrote in a recent letter, “and found it interesting and challenging.”


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I n g r e d i e n t s F o r S u c c e s s .

“Hall Contracting is a good place to advance if you work hard,” wrote Marvin Howerton, who started as a laborer and worked up to a superintendent during his 40-year career.

Sherry Wilcoxon started at Hall in 1992 and plans to stay until retirement. She started as a parts runner, was trained to be a receptionist/clerk, and is now an administrative assistant in the pipeline division. “Mr. Hall told me that I was a good person and that good things come to good people,” Sherry wrote. “I am very appreciative of Mr. Hall and thankful for all he has done to provide me employment in a family-like work environment with a decent wage that allows me to have a good and happy life.”

Paul Lamarre started working at Hall as a welder after high school. After one year of work, he headed to college but was welcomed back to Hall every summer.

Ken explains a Hall revenue chart to a student in the junior achievement program, a partnership between the business community, educators, and volunteers that teaches key concepts of business.


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Ken wanted and needed college students as labor in the busy summer months, but he wouldn’t let them leave college to work for Hall full time. If they decided not to return to college, he told them to look for another job. “I encouraged them to get their college degrees,” said Ken, “even though I knew we had to replace them at the end of the summer.”

Paul returned to Hall after he graduated, and he felt he was getting another education. He wrote that Mr. Hall acted like a “teacher sharing his knowledge to his students to make the very best construction firm . . . Mr. Hall gave numerous 18-year-old laborers, like me, an opportunity to go to college, establish a career in construction, and raise a family.”

Hall’s employees responded to this respect and opportunity by staying with the company. Low turnover surely contributed to the company’s success. “The construction business is known to be a revolving door for management and craft employees alike,” wrote Vic Elstone. “So many of us that left once for ‘greener pastures’ were grateful to return, and never left again. As I write this, I know of not one salaried person at Hall looking to leave.”

K. Michael Hall prizes “the dedication of the longer term employees and the word they spread to the newer employees about what a great place this is to work . . .Without the commitment of Hall’s management to ‘hire the best and treat them right,’ we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Maintain an Unparalleled Safety RecordNothing was more important to Ken and the rest of Hall’s superintendents

than keeping their employees safe on the job site. Avoiding accidents keeps projects on schedule, a good safety record brings down insurance costs, and high safety standards improve morale and efficiency among laborers. But, of course, the main motivation for a safe job site is to make sure everyone goes home to his family at the end of the day.

Ken created a position of Safety Director, who was charged with training employees in safe practices, setting standards to maintain a safe environment, and inspecting job sites. “Every accident was studied and discussed,” said Ken, “as to what


Courage is What Counts - The Story of Hall Contracting Corporation

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