The construction industry is foundational to our country’s growth and
development. The industry is ripe for efficiencies – the smallest incremental
change can have rippling impacts on the project budget. This is the back
story of how one small change prompted Borrow-Pit.com to come into
existence to help others make small beneficial changes on their projects too!
As an intern working for a heavy-civil construction company building a
wastewater treatment plant, the seed for Borrow-Pit.com was planted,
unbeknownst to me at the time. The wastewater treatment plant was in a
major boom, there were at least 4 major 40M+ projects going on at the same
time. My boss, we’ll call him SS, was an industry veteran with loads (pun
intended) of dirt work experience. He was an extremely observant and
calculating guy who always pushed for excellence out of all those who
worked with him. His door was always opened for the dumb question from
the intern, but he was quick to teach you to help yourself and think before
you ask questions. I learned a lot from him over the few years we worked
together, now my interns ask me dumb questions and I get to teach them to
think first, then ask!
One day SS was out driving around on the jobsite and noticed one of the
other contractors was hauling off select fill, directly through our easement.
The other contractor was a fierce competitor of the company I interned with,
putting all of that aside SS spotted a huge opportunity. SS went to the
Project Manager of the trespassing company and proposed that they supply
their select fill for our upcoming backfill operation and pay to haul all of this
fill material to our site on their dime. This would save the competing
company from having to haul off the material and pay to dump it. It would
benefit our project by not having pay to haul material in – BIG budget item!
The other Project Manager agreed – pending approval from the Owner. The
Owner, was hesitant at first, but quickly came on board when SS mentioned
the hauling trespassing would result in massive delays to our project, which
would result in a potential future claim.
By observing this detail SS was able to save our project, the other contractor
and the owner hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not Millions! I was an
intern, so the financial information wasn’t shared with me at the time.
After working in the secondary construction material industry (used steel and barrier wall) for
the past decade, I noticed there wasn’t anyone out there on a national level
promoting the horse trading that saved our project so much time and money
all those years ago. Borrow-Pit.com is our solution to help others capitalize
on communicating among their contracting neighbor to help provide cost
savings solutions for everyone involved. We hope you love it!
