I wrote this for a client, the Minnesota Utility Contractors Association, as the group celebrates its 30th anniversary. It will be published in the group's magazine this summer, and was also distributed to newspapers in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.
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Vital Contractors Association Turns 30, Earned Respect From All
by Michael Klein
Few would argue that clean drinking water and a sanitary sewage system are among the most important public health advances in modern times. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control identified “clean water and improved sanitation” as one of the top ten public health advances ever. A 2004 report from Harvard University, “The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The 20th Century United States,” concurred: “[c]lean water technologies are likely the most important public health intervention of the 20th Century…responsible for nearly half of the total mortality reduction in major cities, three-quarters of the infant mortality reduction, and nearly two-thirds of the child mortality reduction.”
Underground contractors are vital in making this contribution, and yet the role they play is often taken for granted.
“When you have no water and sewer service at your home, it becomes a crisis, but you really don’t think about it until that happens,” said Bruce Lillehei, President of the Minnesota Utility Contractors Association (MUCA) and Risk Manager for Collisys in New Hope. “Once you restore the top [of a job site]…and there is a new road, or a sidewalk, or new seed and sod has taken, [people] quickly forget what is in place under the ground,” explained Lillehei. “That’s part of the challenge we face, we are a very quiet infrastructure, until there is a failure, then all of a sudden we are a big infrastructure.”
Indeed, utility contractors keep our communities healthy and vibrant, ensuring we all have clean and safe drinking water whenever we need it, and that we continue to be safely and efficiently served by other utilities as well. Keeping up with growth, emergency repairs, and regularly scheduled maintenance can be a twenty-four hour a day job.
Groups like MUCA exist to make sure our underground infrastructure doesn’t suffer from an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. MUCA uses education and consensus building to encourage local government to keep up with infrastructure repairs and replacement – trying to avoid catastrophic failures that will be more costly to fix and more disruptive to citizens.
MUCA will soon celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, and while the organization has been a boon for contractors, citizens, and communities, the group was originally borne out of conflict.
Utility contractors have always had a complex relationship with engineers. The two professions are distinct, but co-dependent: engineers design public projects, and then ask the contracting community to bid on the work and eventually execute the plans. For the most part, the engineering community and the contracting community get along just fine and we have the vital public services we need and depend on. But that wasn’t always the case.
“We decided to organize some contractors to address the irresponsibility of some of the engineers in the way they wrote specs,” remembered Tom Schany, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Past President of Northdale Construction of Rogers and one of the founding officers of MUCA. “The jobs ended up being impossible to do or guarantee. A group of us contractors got to talking and we all found we had the same complaints. But we couldn’t get the engineers to listen, we were like voices crying out in the wilderness.”
Until they joined forces to speak with one voice.
Initially consisting of about eight sewer and water contracting companies and with a part-time executive director, MUCA was born. And while some in the engineering community weren’t pleased at first, the group quickly earned the respect of the contracting and engineering community through common sense approaches to issues, a dedication to fair and honest bidding, and continuing education and training.
The group has grown now to encompass more than 140 members consisting of electrical, sewer and water, and tunneling contractors, and other professionals that service the industry and is one of the most active state chapters of the National Utility Contractors Association, based outside Washington, DC.
And the notion that there is strength in numbers holds as true today as it did thirty years ago. "Our industry has changed tremendously over the last three decades,” said Executive Director DeAnn Stish. “New technologies have come on board that have greatly expanded the number of companies that would benefit from becoming a MUCA member, but these technologies have, in some cases, complicated the legislative and regulatory playing field. I’m trying to help grow our membership to include these new technologies so MUCA can be even more effective as the leading voice for the contracting community.”
As with any trade association, MUCA puts members first, but given the crucial role the members play in our communities, Ms. Stish believes literally everyone benefits from her group’s efforts.
“Our main goal as an association today is to ensure a vibrant industry,” said Stish. “To achieve this we need a strong, educated workforce, but also projects. The downturn in the housing market has had a negative impact on the trench side of the industry, and gas prices and onerous regulations are squeezing everybody. We try to encourage Federal and State investment in infrastructure because it helps our industry, but at the end of the day, these are critical services for our communities.”
Another focus of the group, and a major success is safety training. “It’s not enough to ensure there is work to be done,” added Stish. “You want the work to be done right and safely. Safe for the community and safe for the workers.”
MUCA’s safety training programs were a key to the group gaining the respect and admiration of legislators, regulators, and the engineering community, and more than 1,200 contractors have gone through the programs.
“The training programs definitely contribute to our credibility,” said Mike Robertson, MUCA’s chief lobbyist for more than a decade. “I think also being able to work with people you sometimes disagree with and being able to come forward with descriptions of problems is important. You need to try to understand what the other stakeholders’ point of view is and come forward with solutions to try to resolve problems—that’s how MUCA does things, and that’s why we have credibility in the system.”
Solving problems before they become a crisis. It’s a goal of the men and women of MUCA. As you walk out of your home, or drive to your office, try to remember all the complex and vital infrastructure that’s just below your feet, that you maybe can’t see, but if you stopped to think about it, you wouldn’t want to live without. And remember the groups like MUCA that work with the Federal and State governments to ensure repairs and maintenance to this infrastructure are done on time, safely, and efficiently.
For more information on the Minnesota Utility Contractors Association visit them on the web at www.muca.org.
1,123 words
Few would argue that clean drinking water and a sanitary sewage system are among the most important public health advances in modern times. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control identified “clean water and improved sanitation” as one of the top ten public health advances ever. A 2004 report from Harvard University, “The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The 20th Century United States,” concurred: “[c]lean water technologies are likely the most important public health intervention of the 20th Century…responsible for nearly half of the total mortality reduction in major cities, three-quarters of the infant mortality reduction, and nearly two-thirds of the child mortality reduction.”
Underground contractors are vital in making this contribution, and yet the role they play is often taken for granted.
“When you have no water and sewer service at your home, it becomes a crisis, but you really don’t think about it until that happens,” said Bruce Lillehei, President of the Minnesota Utility Contractors Association (MUCA) and Risk Manager for Collisys in New Hope. “Once you restore the top [of a job site]…and there is a new road, or a sidewalk, or new seed and sod has taken, [people] quickly forget what is in place under the ground,” explained Lillehei. “That’s part of the challenge we face, we are a very quiet infrastructure, until there is a failure, then all of a sudden we are a big infrastructure.”
Indeed, utility contractors keep our communities healthy and vibrant, ensuring we all have clean and safe drinking water whenever we need it, and that we continue to be safely and efficiently served by other utilities as well. Keeping up with growth, emergency repairs, and regularly scheduled maintenance can be a twenty-four hour a day job.
Groups like MUCA exist to make sure our underground infrastructure doesn’t suffer from an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. MUCA uses education and consensus building to encourage local government to keep up with infrastructure repairs and replacement – trying to avoid catastrophic failures that will be more costly to fix and more disruptive to citizens.
MUCA will soon celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, and while the organization has been a boon for contractors, citizens, and communities, the group was originally borne out of conflict.
Utility contractors have always had a complex relationship with engineers. The two professions are distinct, but co-dependent: engineers design public projects, and then ask the contracting community to bid on the work and eventually execute the plans. For the most part, the engineering community and the contracting community get along just fine and we have the vital public services we need and depend on. But that wasn’t always the case.
“We decided to organize some contractors to address the irresponsibility of some of the engineers in the way they wrote specs,” remembered Tom Schany, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Past President of Northdale Construction of Rogers and one of the founding officers of MUCA. “The jobs ended up being impossible to do or guarantee. A group of us contractors got to talking and we all found we had the same complaints. But we couldn’t get the engineers to listen, we were like voices crying out in the wilderness.”
Until they joined forces to speak with one voice.
Initially consisting of about eight sewer and water contracting companies and with a part-time executive director, MUCA was born. And while some in the engineering community weren’t pleased at first, the group quickly earned the respect of the contracting and engineering community through common sense approaches to issues, a dedication to fair and honest bidding, and continuing education and training.
The group has grown now to encompass more than 140 members consisting of electrical, sewer and water, and tunneling contractors, and other professionals that service the industry and is one of the most active state chapters of the National Utility Contractors Association, based outside Washington, DC.
And the notion that there is strength in numbers holds as true today as it did thirty years ago. "Our industry has changed tremendously over the last three decades,” said Executive Director DeAnn Stish. “New technologies have come on board that have greatly expanded the number of companies that would benefit from becoming a MUCA member, but these technologies have, in some cases, complicated the legislative and regulatory playing field. I’m trying to help grow our membership to include these new technologies so MUCA can be even more effective as the leading voice for the contracting community.”
As with any trade association, MUCA puts members first, but given the crucial role the members play in our communities, Ms. Stish believes literally everyone benefits from her group’s efforts.
“Our main goal as an association today is to ensure a vibrant industry,” said Stish. “To achieve this we need a strong, educated workforce, but also projects. The downturn in the housing market has had a negative impact on the trench side of the industry, and gas prices and onerous regulations are squeezing everybody. We try to encourage Federal and State investment in infrastructure because it helps our industry, but at the end of the day, these are critical services for our communities.”
Another focus of the group, and a major success is safety training. “It’s not enough to ensure there is work to be done,” added Stish. “You want the work to be done right and safely. Safe for the community and safe for the workers.”
MUCA’s safety training programs were a key to the group gaining the respect and admiration of legislators, regulators, and the engineering community, and more than 1,200 contractors have gone through the programs.
“The training programs definitely contribute to our credibility,” said Mike Robertson, MUCA’s chief lobbyist for more than a decade. “I think also being able to work with people you sometimes disagree with and being able to come forward with descriptions of problems is important. You need to try to understand what the other stakeholders’ point of view is and come forward with solutions to try to resolve problems—that’s how MUCA does things, and that’s why we have credibility in the system.”
Solving problems before they become a crisis. It’s a goal of the men and women of MUCA. As you walk out of your home, or drive to your office, try to remember all the complex and vital infrastructure that’s just below your feet, that you maybe can’t see, but if you stopped to think about it, you wouldn’t want to live without. And remember the groups like MUCA that work with the Federal and State governments to ensure repairs and maintenance to this infrastructure are done on time, safely, and efficiently.
For more information on the Minnesota Utility Contractors Association visit them on the web at www.muca.org.
1,123 words
1 comment:
Growing up in the business, It is great to see an article that explains all the unknowns!
Susan Schany-Lesnar
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