National Waste Partners continues to grow and evolve as Bestige Holdings LLC shepherds it to greater success. In 2017, J-Mec, the premier waste and recycling equipment provider in the Midwest, joined the family and its founder, Jim Mechler, stayed on and is currently Senior Vice President of Operations for all companies.

“J-Mec has always been about customer service, innovation, and growth. The vision of Bestige and National Waste Partners was the perfect fit for us,” he said. “Leveraging the resources of Bestige, we are able to expand our wealth of knowledge and experience to other parts of the country. Our national coverage is definitely what sets us apart.”

Most recently, the company acquired GK Industrial Refuse Systems (GKI) to expand its already strong portfolio. A market leader in the Pacific Northwest and a natural fit for National Waste Partners, Tacoma-based GKI specializes in waste equipment sales, rentals, and service.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, National Waste Partners has branch locations in Chicago, Wisconsin, Alabama, and Washington, DC to provide instillation, refurbishment, and repair services. “We have coverage across the U.S.,” says Vice President of Sales, Gary Brooks. The company’s current subsidiaries – CRA, ACS, J-Mec, and GKI – boast extensive reach, but they can’t service all customers, so National Waste Partners has teamed up with other service providers to handle regions beyond the company’s geographical footprint. “We’ve got close to 200 service provider partners that we work with to cover the areas that aren’t densely populated for us,” Brooks says.

Wherever the location or whatever the situation, the team makes it a priority to give customers the individualized care they deserve. This means paying attention to what the customer is saying, rather than slapping a one-size-fits-all answer onto each problem. “One of the big things that sets us apart is we listen to what the customer needs,” Brooks says. “It’s more of a consultative approach. We don’t necessarily come in saying we have all the answers. Our first step is to listen and to see what the customer’s situation is so we can bring them a solution.”

The individualized service doesn’t stop there. “We also offer custom solutions,” says Brooks. “The applications are so unique.” The uninitiated may think all compactors are the same, but this simply is not true. Each customer has a specific need that needs a specific solution. “A compactor is not a compactor is not a compactor,” Brooks explains. “They start out the same, but how you apply them and install them is a completely different discussion. And with our in-house fabrication capability we can fabricate just about anything you can dream up to fit or work with your application.”

How does the customer know what they are getting? How can they judge the quality and reliability of a National Waste Partners’ product or service? The team recognized that customers deserve to be fully informed so they developed a system of measurement. “From my experience this is a very informal industry,” says CEO David Myles. “There’s a lot of discussion around certain things, but most of the industry relies on just talking about it and not really on a lot of numbers. So one of the first things we tried to do was say, ‘what is the uptime and what is the lifecycle of some of the equipment?’ Just to understand what the bar is.” The team has been working with manufacturers to get the answers and has “started measuring almost everything that we do,” Myles says. “And that’s been very insightful for us as an organization.”

The team measures everything, from how many times they make service visits and how often a specific model breaks down, to their service response time and whether or not the problem is resolved on the first service visit. “I think we are pioneering that effort,” Brooks says.

This is important information because reliability is crucial in the waste management industry. “When a compactor is down it’s usually down at the wrong time – like at a hotel, when they’re having a huge event,” Myles says. “Once it breaks down bad things happen as far as garbage everywhere and also odor and pest control issues.” Having clear data to back the company’s promises gives customers peace of mind. “That’s been an important distinction in growth for us as a company,” he says. “When we say something we want to be able to back it up with numbers.”

Another way the team builds trust is by readily admitting when they miss the mark during a service call. “It’s not always evident what’s broken, so people make mistakes,” Myles says. “Everybody makes mistakes.” The key is to address the error right away and focus on a speedy resolution. “You’ve got to make sure that you trust employees to admit they made a mistake. Mistakes don’t get cheaper over time; they get more expensive. So the earlier you admit a mistake the cheaper it is to resolve.” And the team is confident they can resolve whatever mistake has been made. “Everything in my mind is fixable,” says Myles.

The team is also transparent about their capabilities – they only promise what they know they can deliver. “We try not to overcommit,” Myles explains. “We aren’t all things to all people. We can’t do everything. We can’t get a compactor to Durango Colorado in twelve hours. We can’t go to remote areas and do certain things, but we can service almost anything within our service area. So the trust comes in knowing your capabilities, letting your employees tell you when something is wrong, and then, with the customers, admitting when you make a mistake.”

National Waste Partners owns its equipment, which helps the company deliver consistently reliable service. “Our approach on that is different than most in that, when we go to install a machine, we don’t send a guy and rent a forklift,” Brooks says. “There’s nothing wrong with that business model, but that’s just not us. We own our own equipment so we will show up with a semi, a forklift, the appropriate welders, supplies – everything to fabricate and install a unit. And it’s so much more efficient. We are in control. We don’t have to wait for things to be delivered; we can prefabricate things in the shop.”

This efficiency allows the team to complete more jobs in less time. “We can do in one day what it would take another company two or three days onsite, just because of the equipment and the tools we provide the team with.”

Getting the job done efficiently doesn’t just save time and money; it also cuts back on potential mishaps. “The longer that you are onsite, the more things can go wrong,” Myles says. Another way to avoid onsite complications is to do as much work in a controlled environment as possible – this also ensures a higher quality product overall. “We think we are unique in that we try to do as much offsite as we can. You are more accurate in the shop than you are out in the field.”

National Waste Partners has managed to weather the COVID-19 storm, but the team certainly felt the effects alongside the rest of the world. “It sort of threw you off the tempo,” Myles shares. “It threw our company off, it threw everybody off. It was a very sad, disturbing thing that’s happened.”

National Waste Partners took the threat seriously and immediately put safety measures in place when the pandemic hit. The team closed the offices right away. “We shut that down very quickly and had them working from home very quickly,” Myles says. The service team could not work from home of course, so the company launched new safety training for employees who work onsite. “We always stress safety, but it’s not just their own safety [now], it’s other people’s safety. We want to make sure they are distancing, washing their hands, having protective gloves and masks.” Any employee who had concerns working in the field despite these measures was encouraged to stay home and stay safe.

The waste industry was not as affected as many other industries, since people continued to produce waste throughout the quarantine. But, because National Waste Partners services commercial and industrial customers, the company did feel an impact. “All the hotels, and movie theaters, and restaurants – their waste has cut down quite a bit, especially at the start,” says Myles. “So our service went down dramatically.”

Some of this waste shifted to other areas that still needed servicing. With people staying at home and cooking at home, multifamily housing and grocery stores saw an uptick in waste. “It was an interesting experience – that sort of volume shift, which I don’t think anybody’s ever experienced,” Brooks says.

Another factor that impacted business is that customers decided to wait to make major purchases. “People’s decision model changed instantly,” Myles says. “People that were going to invest in new equipment decided to hold off until we see through this.” By mid-April the team noticed customers were starting “to make decisions again to move forward,” so the future looks optimistic.

Times remain uncertain as we adjust to the new normal, but “people still have to carry on,” Myles points out. “There’s still waste. It still makes sense to compact and bale.” And as long as there is waste to be compacted and baled, National Waste Partners is committed to providing the most efficient, reliable, and quality solutions through good times and bad.

The post A Partner You Can Count On<p class="company">National Waste Partners</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Established in 1961, the group was led by various municipal managers and supervisors in southern California who were already focused on sanitation and waste collection worker safety. Originally, it was named the Governmental Refuse Collection and Disposal Association (GRCDA) and it directed most of its attention toward training and information sharing. Today, SWANA has approximately 11,000 members in 47 chapters throughout the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Basin.

Membership in SWANA comes with a diverse range of benefits for various companies and agencies affiliated with the solid waste industry. “One of the primary benefits is being part of the large SWANA community, which provides networking and information-sharing opportunities at state and provincial chapter meetings and events, national conferences such as WASTECON, and digitally through our webinars and on-line forum,” explained Biderman.

Another advantage of SWANA membership is education through industry-leading certification programs. The organization certifies more than 500 people each year and the most popular certification is the Manager of Landfill Operations (MOLO) program.

In the United States, SWANA has recently expanded its advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C. with Congress and federal agencies. Its objective is to address a wide variety of important topics impacting solid waste employers and employees, and one of the most notable of these is safety.

SWANA’s website states that solid waste collection employees have the fifth highest fatality rate in the United States. There are numerous safety hazards associated with solid waste collection, processing, and disposal such as vehicular accidents and exposure to medical waste and dangerous materials. SWANA is committed to improving safety and has developed various programs and initiatives to protect employees in the field of solid waste collection. “SWANA believes that every solid waste worker should be able to go home at the end of his or her shift safely, and that every solid waste employer has a responsibility to provide the tools and resources to help make that happen,” said Biderman.

The national epidemic of distracted driving as a result of the widespread use of cellphones has worsened the hazardous conditions for waste collectors. Over the past several decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of times a garbage collector was hit by another vehicle and that number has continued to rise. With a substantial number of collectors on the street all over the country, there is a high risk of injury or death with distracted drivers on the road. SWANA is helping to mitigate this problem through advocacy. It is pushing for states to increase the penalties against drivers who drive into collection workers or garbage trucks, similar to the heightened penalties for accidents involving emergency responders. The initiative has been successful in much of the U.S., with 30 states giving special protection to solid waste workers. These laws are known as “Slow Down to Get Around” laws, and additional information can be found on SWANA’s website: swana.org.

Other examples of SWANA’s dedication to improving safety in the solid waste industry include: providing state-of-the-art safety training at its national conferences and through its state chapters; establishing a Safety Ambassador program several years ago that appoints a safety ambassador in each SWANA chapter as a principal resource for members at the local level; hosting Hauler Safety Outreach events at disposal facilities, beginning in 2018, which provide an opportunity to reach many front-line drivers and helpers who are not SWANA members; and asking solid waste employers to take a Safety Pledge declaring they agree not to work in an unsafe manner. As of March 1, 2020, more than 3,500 people had taken the Safety Pledge. SWANA will continue to provide valuable information and resources that help to reduce fatalities, accidents, and injuries – though this goal comes with its fair share of hurdles.

One of the principal challenges facing the solid waste collection industry is that, even though it is recognized as an essential service, it is not compensated as such. If the cost of garbage collection is compared to any other utility service including electricity, cable TV, or water, garbage collection costs significantly less. For approximately 15 to 25 dollars a month, $300,000 trucks are sent to people’s homes each week to pick up and transport their waste and recycling.

COVID-19 is the latest example demonstrating how essential solid waste collection is to the public. As people quarantined themselves, garbage collection continued because otherwise it would lead to adverse public health threats. People are accustomed to paying very little for such an important service, and hopefully one silver lining to the pandemic will be an increased appreciation for the essential service of garbage collection. The maker of Glad garbage bags teamed with SWANA to develop a “Sanitation Workers Support Fund” to recognize waste collection workers and provide money to those workers who tested positive for COVID-19 or to their family if they died.

Notwithstanding COVID-19, the solid waste industry requires collectors to work in a very unpredictable environment. They work in all types of weather conditions and have no control over what is put into the trash. This is a work setting that can be challenging on a daily basis, which makes it difficult to attract and retain workers. “Although many six-year-olds are fascinated by garbage trucks, not a lot of people grow up wanting to be in the solid waste industry, so we have difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified workers, particularly as drivers or mechanics,” shared Biderman. To overcome this challenge, SWANA supports efforts in the industry to expand the use of social media to recruit younger workers. It also encourages reaching out to veterans coming out of the military who have the technical skills to operate heavy equipment.

SWANA also recently began a Young Professionals program to recruit younger employees aged 22 to 35 into the association. The concept is to make it easier for these new generations of employees to participate in the organization and give them the opportunity to network with each other. The program has grown rather rapidly and now has nearly 1000 young professionals, also known as YPs. The YPs make up nearly ten percent of the association and they are a welcome source of energy and new ideas. SWANA has also made its membership free for any full-time college student. “We want to try to attract students into our industry because it’s a terrific industry to be part of. The people are great, it’s very recession-resistant, and there’s opportunity for professional growth and success,” explained Biderman.

The International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) connects solid waste management companies and organizations around the world to resources and to each other. SWANA is the U.S. and Canadian representative for the IWSA. Outside of North America, Australia, and Europe, solid waste management is often found to be lacking in rigorous environmental, health and safety regulation. SWANA has been working closely with other members of the ISWA to implement more effective safety standards around the world.

“It’s a long-term goal of ISWA to make safety a higher profile activity of the organization and I expect that SWANA will play a leading role in helping to make that happen,” said Biderman.

Toward this goal, in early 2019 the organization applied for and was awarded a U.S. State Department grant to conduct landfill training and capacity building in Colombia. Through this effort SWANA aims to help that region bring a strong, safe regulatory structure to solid waste management. SWANA sent a team of experts to a number of Colombian landfills to assess the current operations and met with regulatory officials from all of the agencies that regulate various aspects of landfill operations in that region. A specialist was brought on to analyze the gap between Colombian and U.S. regulatory standards, and Colombian landfill operators came to the United States in November 2019 for a tour of modern American landfills and to meet with government officials. A week-long classroom training program in Bogota was scheduled to take place in June, and that will be replaced by a virtual educational program likely to occur later this summer. SWANA expects more than one hundred participants from throughout Latin America in this program, which will be free.

In December 2020, SWANA will begin to develop a new five-year strategic plan and hopes that it will be as successful as its 2015 strategic plan, which helped the organization grow from 8,200 to more than 11,000 members over five years. “The solid waste industry is always changing and SWANA continues to change as well. We are diversifying our educational offerings to provide more digital training opportunities, and updating MOLO to incorporate the latest technological and other operational innovations,” said Biderman.

The solid waste industry is often overlooked, but it should be appreciated as a critical service that is essential to the quality of life within every community all over North America. SWANA has established itself as a leader in safety and advocacy for this critical industry. As its chapters continue to expand, and its leaders fight for its members’ interests, SWANA is helping to make solid waste collection a safer and more efficient process.

“SWANA is an essential resource for the solid waste industry. Regardless of whether you work for a governmental agency, small hauler, big company, or a company that sells to the industry, you should be an active member of SWANA.”

The post Advocating for Safety in the Solid Waste Industry<p class="company">The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA)</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Grace Instrumentation expertly handles everything from issues with flow and temperature, stainless steel tubing, field instruments, electrical systems and equipment calibration to quality turnover documentation, all the while maintaining the strict core values of a family-owned and operated business.

The company was founded in 1998 by Terry Grace, an instrumentation technologist and industrial electrician. His daughter Lisa Grace Marr was named vice-president, finance and human resources, in 2015, and her husband Scott Marr was named president, while dad Terry is now executive manager.

“We’re a different construction company,” says Lisa. “My mom and dad ran the business out of the house for the first 15 years. Then I got involved more directly, and my husband Scott, who’s an engineer, started doing some managing of instrumentation projects.”

in 2014, after 20 years of growing the business, Terry was ready to step back, but didn’t want to walk away completely, and both Lisa and Scott were fortuitously at crossroads in their own careers. They decided to make the leap into entrepreneurship, and took over officially on January 1, 2015.

Huge leap
They leapt – and had to hit the ground running. The company was known for its particular knowledge of power generation plants with a past résumé including participation in plants throughout Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Some incredibly large and complex undertakings were in process – like the SaskPower Boundary Dam Carbon Capture Sequestration Project in Estevan, Saskatchewan. “It really changed a lot about how we had to do things,” says Lisa.

The company’s work on the ground-breaking Boundary Dam project included instrumentation panel assembly, installation, calibration and start-up assistance. This was followed in 2017 and 2018 by the installation of a continuous emission-monitoring system at all three of Boundary Dam, Poplar River and Shand power stations. This included the installation of the electrical and instrumentation systems on the stacks of the three stations.

“The Boundary Dam project is the only kind like it in the world,” says Lisa. “They took some of the carbon emissions, captured them and buried them. The big issue for a lot of energy-producing customers is how they deal with their emissions, so this is the only plant in the world to have tried this technique. When they opened in 2015 they had people from all around the world looking.”

Other notable projects for the company include providing instrumentation consulting and calibration services to Covanta, a new energy-from-waste facility for the region of Durham-York in 2017, and working in conjunction with The State Group to install an additional natural-gas compressor-station on the Trans-Canada pipeline. Then in 2017 the company was awarded the instrumentation contract for the new Napanee Generating Station in Ontario – the largest project to date. “The project was just completed earlier this year and marked a major milestone,” says Lisa.

Holding to values
So as the company grew, additional employees came aboard and the management changed, but its core values did not, Lisa stresses. Grace Instrumentation acts with integrity to provide the best people for the job, she says, so customers become repeat customers.

“We have a very different company culture than the others,” she says. “A lot of other family-owned businesses in the industry might be similar to us in that they have a succession between themselves and the former generation, but I think our succession plan went very smoothly. We’re lucky that way.”

Family is important to Grace Instrumentation, so much so that former employees are still considered as such, even years after they move on.

“We still have folks who used to work with us call us and drop in all the time,” says Lisa. “Once you get involved in the company you get sucked in. Our company culture is that we really look to our employees to help us make decisions and figure out where we’re going to go. A lot of people have worked for bigger companies, so they bring a lot of great experience and expertise, and that sets us apart as well.”

Lisa says Scott’s experience as a contract administrator is extremely helpful when it comes to building business relationships based on personal contact.

“He’s really not a believer in email and text,” she says. “He’s very old school that way. Most of our customers have his cell phone and they call him. Even if it’s two in the morning on Saturday, if something major is happening, they know they can call us.”

When competing with large companies it’s important to have something you can do that they can’t do as well, says Lisa.

“We can be nimble and we can be responsive, which is definitely why we get called.”

Building ability on ability
While the company is primarily focused on instrumentation, it also performs an assortment of other technical services as well, such as electrical and mechanical work in power and process piping, third-party oversight, scheduling and project management. Grace excels at all, but the Boundary Dam project was the company’s game changer in terms of management and future plans.

“I think as a company when you get to a certain size of project, and a certain volume of business, you have to have human resources and the infrastructure to support the field work.”

The challenge, she says, is as the company continues to grow, changes must not impede quality service for the clientele or risk employee safety.

“You have to have good employees, excellent health and safety, and a refined quality program. You need a certain level of staff and a certain task flow, and a certain team that can support all of that moving forward. You now have to keep things running. You have to support all of that.”

Going nuclear
An important goal for Grace was getting the company ready to move into the nuclear industry, taking advantage of the growth in Ontario. The company has extensive knowledge of the energy industry and is both ISO 9001:2015 and COR (a health and safety program) certified. This has led to a couple of projects at the OPG Darlington nuclear power plant and has opened the door to other work in the nuclear industry.

“Making that commitment to meet those two standards was a pretty major change in the whole company culture,” Lisa says. “We were no longer just a little trade company; we were now an integrated-systems-management company offering more, and going for more of that high-value work to differentiate ourselves from other companies. We bring what we’ve learned to the market. We can also be competitive.”

What separates the company from the competition is the nature of what it does, she says, as it demands they have a more contextual view of each project. In order to understand where the instrumentation fits in, the whole project has to be in sharp focus.

“We deal with the very smallest element usually towards the end of the project, but if the instrumentation doesn’t work, the plant or the project can come to a halt.”

Always evolving
Grace Instrumentation has become more disciplined at estimating and bidding and looking at a project, says Lisa. A big piece of that is doing project execution plans in the very beginning, examining every aspect, and asking questions about the projects that will not only help inform the company, but also help clients with possible schedule problems or other issues.

“We’re evolving with our thought processes on this, and we’re continuously improving our system as we go. Of all the investments we’ve made, including equipment and building, investing in our management system has been the best investment.”

Despite its success, for a small company like Grace Instrumentation, such rapid progress in such a short time is extremely difficult to manage, Lisa says, and its biggest accomplishment has actually been managing all that growth over the years.

Countrywide recruiting
“Because our trade is very specialized, I had to recruit from across the country to get the number of instrumentation technicians and technologists that we needed for the projects, and I learned a lot about how to do that which was great. Now we have this amazing set of people that we know from B.C. to Newfoundland and everywhere in between.”

Not many go into the trades to begin with, she says, leading to a national trade deficit, so finding good people is hard. “You want apprentices, too. The young, new person and the experienced person; you want both. We were pretty lucky to attract by word of mouth.”

The company also purchased a facility last August in the Simcoe, Ontario Industrial Park, double the square footage of what it had before, with acreage behind and room for expansion. Extra space means possibly getting into more valve repair, valve assembly, and panel assembly in an effort to stand out, says Lisa, a constant concern for a company making its mark and determined to shine against the strongest competition in cities like Toronto.

People are the details, too
“The only thing we can do is make sure our people are treated well. That’s our principle,” she says. If Grace can treat its employees with respect, then they will treat the customers with respect in turn.

“People talk about this and it sounds trite but it’s not,” she continues. “When I look at the people we have hired, whether locally or from across the country, if we treat everybody fairly and if we express to them how much they contribute, it really does add value to your company,” she shares.

“I really can’t stress how important it’s been for us to have the great people we’ve had working for us the last three or four years,” she says. “They have punched above their weight in terms of where they come from – what they’ve known. They’ve taken ownership of what they do, which is so rare and we’re really lucky to have what we have.”

Nevertheless, in this business people come and go, she says. It’s the nature of construction and industrial settings. If they eventually work for somebody else, and they hear the name Grace Instrumentation, they’ll have something good to say. “It’s really kind of a small world. You never know. Your name is all you have at the end of the day.”

The post All in the Details<p class="company">Grace Instrumentation</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

The Fort McMurray project undertaken by the company in 2019 (see the May 2019 issue of Business in Focus) has reached 100 percent completion and the newly-built transmission lines are fully energized; now, Domino is in the first half of its next major project called the Ontario East-West Tie Line, which is set to run from Thunder Bay, Ontario along the lake toward Wawa.

This is a billion-dollar-plus project for former parent company Quanta Services and partner Valard Construction, with Domino supplying all necessary materials on the job (akin to its role in the Fort McMurray project). The company is also involved heavily in bidding on its next major project, “Watay,” which is another billion-dollar project for Quanta and Valard.

Domino purchased ‘All Power Products’, a tool distributor for power line businesses in Edmonton, Alberta last year as well. This move was a continuation of the company’s diversification into the high voltage testing market, as it has begun providing gloves, blankets, tools, and safety material for linemen, as well as a one of a kind tool and specialized equipment rentals.

Grant Lockhart, president of Domino, sees this as a “good normalizer for cash flow throughout the year” and the diversification has been a big boost to business due to a sizable need for these products and services in Canada. The company has invested well over a million dollars into its own equipment to keep up with clients’ requirements and keep turn-around times as low as possible.

Now privately held
Lockhart proudly reveals that Locsaun Investments Inc. & Locsaun America LLC has acquired the entire Domino group of companies from Quanta Services Financial Inc., the parent company, at the end of January 2020, after the former president of Quanta Canada stepped down.

Lockhart affirms that “it was a great experience and opportunity being a part of Quanta,” as it allowed Domino’s business to grow across North America and globally as well.

Domino is now a privately held Canadian-owned company with a head office in downtown Vancouver, a new operations centre in Edmonton (along with All Power Products and a test lab), an office and test lab in Ontario, and a new spot upcoming in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Halifax location will be an opportunity to take advantage of the pro-business eastern Canadian market, ensuring the company is “literally coast-to-coast.”

Domino has also seen expansion in its American territories from Washington into the California area along with further moves in Puerto Rico and Europe.

Over the past couple of years, Domino has also opened and commissioned two high-voltage dielectric testing facilities: One dielectric testing lab has been opened next to the Mississauga, Ontario office and has been operating for over a year, with an identical lab opened in the company’s Edmonton operational centre.

Leading in innovation
“We’re the leaders in an industry that is itself evolving and is still quite young,” Lockhart underlines.

Along with its recent growth, the company continues to innovate in its approach to the power line sector. Domino is the owner of a company called FRP Transmissions Innovations Inc. (or simply T.I.), an outfit founded about a decade ago to introduce new technologies into the power line industry.

Lockhart explains that utilities in the industry use wood (both creosote and penta-soaked) dug into the ground, which unfortunately allows these chemicals to go back into natural sources like earth and even ground water. Utilities across North America use this treatment as well as galvanized steel (also not environmentally friendly).

When BC Hydro/BCTC contacted Lockhart for a product that satisfied the provincial and federal Environmental Clean Energy Acts and could be an alternative to wood and steel, Domino and T.I., along with BC Hydro/BCTC, developed a cross-arm C-channel product that replaces the cross-arm on a transmission or distribution structure, and which has now become a flagship product.

The company also now boasts composite poles, smaller cross-arms, braces, and major transmission arms which are generally environmentally friendly and don’t leech into adjacent areas, so they can be utilized in more environmentally sensitive areas.

Lockhart calls this a big win for places like California which are vulnerable to wildfire, as the company’s products are self-extinguishing and have an elastic memory to reduce catastrophic failure. The products are 100 percent dielectrically safe, lighter, UV-resistant, and with a lifespan extending for an as-yet unquantifiable time (estimated to be at least 75 years).

Raising the materials bar
Besides ensuring safety and environmental sustainability, there’s a drive amongst the entire workforce at Domino to ensure that clients never run into construction delays for reasons related to materials, and this spurs the company into constant innovations in its operations.

Domino introduced its ‘global quality program’ around five years ago, an initiative to clearly establish both the origin and the crucial relative quality of its global manufacturers’ materials. Lockhart is firm that Domino wants “100 percent accountability on every piece and part being made for us,” so that upon arrival on the job site, the quality of those parts can be vouched for.

The program has generated sizable savings for Domino clients and has contributed to the company providing consistently effective and reliable products, justifiably backed with great confidence.

Domino has also begun to use the contractor tool ComplyWorks, a system that ensures that every sub-contractor on a job conforms to the requirements of the general contractor. Lockhart says that Domino was able to (with the ComplyWorks team) reverse-engineer the tool to create a list of requirements for the company’s supplier-manufacturers to ensure accountability – and a suitably high level of quality – so that Domino could vouch for them in turn.

A consistent challenge for Domino now is getting out information on the services it provides both in North America and around the world.

Face to face
The power-line industry is one that Lockhart describes as “young but old,” with power line contractors being both very busy due to high client demand and not necessarily savvy about online communication. There is no single medium that everyone sees, and a difficulty in advertising through modern – read ‘online’ and ‘social media’ – channels, leading to the necessity of talking to these clients in person.

These in-person communications often require many interactions for the company to get to grips with the full scope of a potential client’s business. Domino’s answer to the challenge is farsighted – promoting promising people within Domino across the country to upper management and executive positions. This way, the company frees up Lockhart and Domino COO Jesse Saunders to engage with clients and promote services at high levels across a larger audience.

Pushing quality
Today, the Domino team is pushing hard into the quality side of the product they’re manufacturing and delivering. Lockhart says that there are so many global manufacturers now, and so much outsourcing from local manufacturing, that it can mean a loss of quality during this “price race to the bottom.” The result is that if a company in the industry doesn’t have a distributor it can rely on, clients may end up with a product that doesn’t meet their requirements.

Domino has always been predominantly a private sector company, with the public sector being the focus of its competitors. However, Lockhart mentions that Domino’s two primary competitors have come together recently (one purchasing the other), so the company will be focusing on more of the public market space thanks to its large private sector contract success and its physical locations around North America. Procurement and distribution will also be a continued focus, with the distributor business taking a deep dive into major suppliers, key partners, the overall product line, and where the holes and overlaps might be, remedying these if necessary to streamline procurement.

Domino will also continue to invest in its proprietary global inventory-management system, described by Lockhart as the “backbone of operations and success [in] all divisions.” Thanks to the hiring of a new Director of IT, Domino can step up on a global scale to keep the focus on customer service, visibility, and ease.

The Amazon of power lines
As far as the system is concerned, Lockhart wants Domino to be like “Amazon in the power line market space globally.” Over 15 years of growth and development, Lockhart and Domino have learned that “if you stop growing and stop learning, you’re done.”

Considering the growth experienced by the company in the last year alone and the valuable lessons learned across a decade and a half, the only “done” thing about Domino Highvoltage Supply is that it will be serving the power line industry better than ever.

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The history of nuclear power is well known and, frankly, a lot of it isn’t pretty. But while people can be quick to jump to seeing its ominous power as a weapon, there have been all manner of benefits that are the result of nuclear science – not only power for our communities, but the ability to help treat different forms of cancer.

The perception of nuclear power has a lot of myths connected to it, but how much do we really know about what goes into it? The best place to start a discussion about nuclear power may be a crash course in how it works.

There are currently 96 commercial reactors in the United States, according to the Office of Nuclear Energy. The amount of power produced by these in a year depends on the size of the plant and how many hours it runs.

To provide an example, let’s take the R.E. Gina Nuclear Power Plant located in New York. This is actually the smallest plant operation in the country right now and it produces just under 14,000 megawatts worth of power in 24 hours. This translates to about 14 gigawatts worth of energy.

For scale, one gigawatt of power is approximately enough energy to light up 100 million LED bulbs. In fact, these nuclear reactors are producing 20 percent of the country’s current electricity, and nuclear power has played a role in providing power to the U.S. for 60 years.

So how does nuclear power work? In a nutshell, it is a chain reaction that produces a very large amount of heat. The term for this process is called fission, where a larger atom is split into two or more smaller atoms. This is achieved by literally slamming a neutron into a larger atom to break it up and cause a chain reaction.

The process releases a vast amount of energy. Elements like uranium and plutonium are used to control this process because they tend to be fairly stable.

Once the heat is released from this reaction, it is converted to steam which turns a turbine to create electricity. This part of the process is similar to a number of other power generating processes. The big advantage of nuclear power over other forms of energy is that that while it is complicated, it does not release carbon into the atmosphere so it is actually one of the cleaner ways to keep the lights on.

That’s the basic explanation of nuclear power and there are myriad other engineering components that go into making reactors work. Some people might also say that this was the Pollyanna version of nuclear energy and that there are potentially dangerous and damaging impacts from using nuclear power.

Names like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima represent those nightmare scenarios of meltdowns at nuclear reactors. A meltdown is literally when the core of a nuclear reactor melts. In the case of Fukushima in 2011, the cooling systems failed because of damage from a massive tsunami and the fuel rod component of the reactor became exposed to the air and rapidly heated up, cracked and released radioactive gasses.

This is the greatest fear about the nuclear industry – and it should be. The potential damage from a meltdown scenario can be catastrophic. And this is precisely why nuclear power plants have a number of safety systems to minimize the risk.

These systems include multiple barriers such as canned fuel, pressure valves and containment to protect from the release of gasses. Other safety systems include redundancies whereby there are multiple points that will shut down the reactor as well as constant monitoring of the machinery and systems the make the nuclear process work.

Put another way, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only major incidents that have occurred in what is 17,000 cumulative reactor years of generating power in 33 countries around the world.

But even if nuclear reactors are working well, they also produce waste. Throughout the stages of generating power, quantities of radioactive materials are produced. The high-level nuclear waste is especially concerning as it remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years. The safe containment of these materials has been the source of debate throughout the history of the nuclear power industry.

“Vertical boreholes up to 5,000 meters deep have been proposed, and this option is said by some scientists to be promising,” The Guardian reports. “But there have been doubts, because it is likely to be nearly impossible to retrieve waste from vertical boreholes.”

Another solution on the table is a new generation of power plants that would actually run on depleted uranium. Bill Gates famously founded TerraPower back in 2011. The concept is called a traveling-wave reactor which, according to Popular Mechanics, “… is appealing on several levels – not only would its small design lower the currently rising price of nuclear energy, it would actually consume the trash pumped out by today’s modern reactors.”

Gates has made his pro-nuclear stance clear: “Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day,” he said in a public letter released at the end of 2019. Human ingenuity is what’s required next. “Problems with today’s reactors such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation,” he said.

It’s also worth mentioning that the total amount of waste produced by nuclear plants is not nearly as much as you might expect. Since the 1950s, the U.S. has produced about 83,000 metric tons of used fuel. And yes, that sounds like a lot, but that amount can also fit into a single football field that is buried to a depth under 10 yards. And while there are challenges that come with this nuclear energy, its enormous potential to meet our energy needs without polluting our environment with carbons makes it so appealing to many countries.

About 63 percent of America’s energy comes from fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, petroleum and other gases. This pumps 1,619 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is roughly 32 percent of total energy-related CO₂ emissions. Scientists report that carbon dioxide levels are at a record high, contributing globally to respiratory disease from smog and air pollution and creating extreme weather, causing food supply disruptions, and damaging wildlife habitat. Clean, green power is the key we need to unlock a sustainable future.

Remember how that plant in New York produces 14 gigawatts of power in 24 hours?

It would take 3.125 million solar panels or 431 utility scale wind turbines to produce a gigawatt of power. And as Bill Gates says, nuclear power provides a reliable energy source that is available 24 hours a day. So when nuclear is used in conjunction with wind and solar power sources, we can create new energy grids that produce power while leaving next to no carbon footprint.

Plus, the advancements being made to how power plants are designed are opening up even more efficient energy production potential. According to Scientific American, “The world demand for energy is projected to rise by about 50 percent by 2030 and to nearly double by 2050.”

To meet this growing demand, the Generation IV project is a nine country coalition that is collaborating to develop reactors that include modular reactor processes, gas-cooled reactors and next generation fast-spectrum reactors.

Small modular reactors are particularly promising because of their size. They fit into an average-sized gymnasium, and have the additional benefits of being able to provide power to remote communities as well as uses for water desalination. These reactors are also considered to be safer thanks to their compact size compared to full-sized plants. In Canada, three provinces have pledged to work together to develop these reactors to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, shut its coal plants in 2014. Since then the province has experienced only one smog day. In contrast, in 2005 alone, residents of the Greater Toronto Area suffered through 53 smog days while coal, with its toxic emissions, provided 19 percent of Ontario’s power.

While no form of energy production is perfect, nuclear power does offer a lot of potential – especially as we continue to improve the design and manage the risks and waste produced. The biggest barrier to its advancement may be public perception of the myths around it. There has been a 30-year period where virtually no reactors have been built in the U.S. But, after 2020, two new reactors are expected to come online.

Meeting the power demands of the future while trying to reduce our carbon emissions is a tough challenge, and it will only become increasingly difficult to not seriously consider nuclear power as a main source of power generation going forward.

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For decades we have heard about the danger of deforestation to the planet from experts, activists, environmental groups and celebrities. Worldwide, actors and musicians including Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Vanessa Hudgens harness their powerful social media status, reaching millions of followers and boosting awareness about the risks to forests, wildlife, water supplies, and Indigenous persons. Musician and actor Sting has championed the world’s rainforests for over 30 years through the Rainforest Fund. Founded by the former Police band member, his wife Trudie Styler, and Dr. Franca Sciuto in 1989, the Rainforest Fund has expanded its initial focus on the Amazon to encompass Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Papua New Guinea and other countries facing deforestation.

Along with protecting the rights of Indigenous persons and safeguarding land “against the destructiveness of resource exploitation,” the Rainforest Fund has backed over 300 projects on issues ranging from land rights to environmental monitoring and clean water, issues affecting forests not only in Brazil, but worldwide.

The roots of forest sustainability
Globally, sustainable forest practices are growing thanks to initiatives from responsible and forward-thinking forestry companies, governments, and environmental associations. It has been almost three decades since Forest Principles were adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Known as the Earth Summit, the 1992 event saw the release of Forest Principles addressing key sustainability issues “in a holistic and balanced manner,” and managing these areas “to meet the social, economic, ecological, cultural and spiritual needs of present and future generations.”

Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) – also known as sustainable forestry – is about balancing environmental concerns and the need for forest-related products used to create lumber for construction, fuel, medicine and more. Home to countless plants and wildlife, forests serve as an oasis of tranquility for hikers and campers, and provide a valuable source of employment for lumber companies.

Covered in 347 million hectares (ha) of forest, Canada comes in third worldwide after Russia and Brazil for most forests by area, but leads the way in third-party forest certification. According to the Canada Council of Forest Ministers, the nation is an SFM pioneer not only at home but also globally, benefitting other nations by increasing their forest knowledge and bringing in improved practices.

In Canada, there are multiple systems governing sustainable forestry. These include the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the Forest Stewardship Council Standards (FSC) and the Canadian Standards Association’s Sustainable Forest Management Standards (CSA). Standards set forth by the CSA and SFI are internationally recognized by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the PEFC is a leading global alliance of over 70 members ranging from businesses and trade associations to individuals, labour unions, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As of the beginning of 2018, Canada has about 170 million hectares certified by at least one of these bodies, the FSC, the CSA, or the SFI.

Putting practices into place
On a worldwide scale, Sustainable Forest Management is on the rise because of concerns over dwindling resources. Much like systems used to manage the world’s oceans, policies governing SFM are changing and evolving, depending on the location and type of forest – tropical, temperate, or boreal.

A precisely managed system, sustainable forestry requires felled trees to be replaced with new trees (seedlings). After allowing these seedlings to mature, the new trees are then harvested and the cycle of planting and growth continues. The decisions we make today to protect forests and working forests from over-foresting, fire, and climate change will have environment, economic, and social implications in the future.

Much more than just replacing harvested trees, forestry practices require considerable planning, taking not only the forest and types of timber into consideration, but also an assessment of wildlife, watersheds, and more before a single tree is cut down. In some cases – depending on location – sections of forests are deliberately burned to foster regeneration. Until the 1970s, many believed it was important to always put out forest fires, which is not necessarily the case. According to Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), the benefits of controlled fires enable the release of nutrients into the forest floor, and allow for more sunlight and growth.

Fires also afford certain trees like Jack pine (Pinus banksiana) and Lodgepole (Pinus contorta) the ability to reproduce. While trees are destroyed by fire, they are also reborn – specifically, the Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine. Like other pine trees, seeds are contained within their cones; however, these cones are serotinous. Coated with a strong resin, intense heat – like that from a forest fire – is needed to melt the resin, allowing the cones to open. Once the cones open, powerful winds disperse them across the forest floor, allowing new trees to germinate and grow.

Balancing needs
Sustainable Forestry Management is not new, but it is growing. Canada in particular has taken a sensible approach to SFM, one that works for the environment and business alike. Contributing almost $20 billion annually to Canada’s real gross domestic product (GDP), forests and forestry continue to provide many social, economic and environmental benefits. NRCAN says the three industry subsectors include solid wood product manufacturing, pulp and paper product manufacturing, and forestry and logging, all significant contributors to Canada’s economic growth.

Employing approximately 210,600 men and women nationwide (including almost 12,000 Indigenous persons), “the forest industry represents a smaller percentage of Canada’s economy than other resource sectors, but it creates more jobs and contributes more to the balance of trade for every dollar of value added than do other major sectors.” This is especially the case in the forest-rich provinces of British Columbia and New Brunswick, which account for about 2.9 percent of the provincial GDP and approximately 4.5 percent of the provincial GDP respectively.

With forests disappearing for reasons including atmospheric change, desertification and others, Sustainable Forest Management is now more important than ever. One of the greatest factors remains the planet’s growing numbers. With a current population of 7.574 billion (as of 2018), numbers are expected to reach about 10.9 billion by the year 2050, according to data from the United Nations’ 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects https://population.un.org/wpp/. With more people and decreasing resources, we have no option except to maintain our existing forests for future generations.

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