Board member Larry Roof eloquently put into words the feelings of Consolidated Electric throughout the building process thusfar. This is his script from the groundbreaking held October 1, 2008.

This has been a very enjoyable process for our building committee from the beginning.Our former president Brian Newton appointed our building committee, and from his knowledge of everyone’s background it turns out that he made excellent choices.

I’d like to introduce our building committee.Please hold your applause until I have introduced everyone.

They are:

Wes Rinehardt: Financial Services Manager: Wes was also acting President during most of this planning period and he never missed a beat. He’s been a great leader. Thanks Wes.

Donna Cackler: Member Representative; Donna helped us keep things in prospective and was invaluable to our team. Thank You Dona.

Sid Pinyerd : Safety and Contract Manager: Sid’s knowledge of how this Co op works has brought much prospective our committee. Thank You Sid

Heidi Knouff: Member Services Representative: Heidi knows what it takes to serve our members she has been our very gracious hostess. Thank you Sid.

Larry Roof: Board of Trustees Representative

Now, please join me in a big round of applause for all these committee members. They’ve worked hard on this project.Our committee knew that we didn’t have an individual with the time or expertise to hands on manage this entire project.

We needed to find good people. We wrote a job description and requested applications from the field for a project manager. We received a number of applications and interviewed several well qualified applicants. We hired Doug Loudon of Priority Construction Services. Doug is the owner of the firm.

Doug, Please give us a wave. Doug helped us determine what we needed to do. He’s done a great job .Doug helped us in a similar search for an architectural firm. There were several very good entries. We heard four or five very good presentations.

We got a commitment from a partner and owner of Meacham and Apel. Dennis Meacham said, “If we get this project I’ll work with you myself” We hired Meacham and Apel.Please say hello to Denny Meacham.

Doug and Denny are very knowledgeable, very professional, and very personable.They have driven this project to keep things moving.We met every Thursday at noon for a few months. And Heidi made us eat a lot of pizza.We brought in department managers, office, warehouse, and field personnel to our meetings and asked them what they needed to do their best work. Good people who do good work know what they need. You just have to ask them. We asked.

We toured other co op facilities to see what we could learn from them. Great practical ideas flowed. Doug and Denny captured it all. Denny committed it to drawings. We changed them and messed them up every which way. Denny made sense of it all, and brought us a new set of drawings to the next week’s meeting.I can tell you that right here are a couple of very patient men! An excellent Construction Manager, and an excellent Architect!

Doug and Denny helped us determine what we needed in a property, and in a building.I’m simplifying this but;We distributed drawings to a number of general contractors and after a number of presentations, we were pleased to choose Thomas and Marker Construction.

Thomas and Marker. What a success story. This family organization has a strong reputation. Strong things can be said about their approach to business. Their president, Randal Marker stood in front of our committee and said. It’s not all about the profit in the job, Its about doing the job the right way if you’re going to put your name on it.

They brought 8 or 9 people many of them family members to our committee presentation. Each one reverberated Randy Marker’s passion toward their work.We hired these folks.

Kirk Marker has kept his company’s word. We have a great project. We are on Budget.We are on Schedule.We have a clean safe worksite.There have been very few problems for a project of this size.

This whole project has been about learning what we needed to best serve our members, Communicating that message to people who share our vision, and our work ethic, giving them our support, then getting out of the way and letting them do what they do best. What a pleasure it has been to work with this great gathering of professionals.It has been a true Cooperative Effort.

There are a few hundred other people, (too many to mention) who are contributing to this effort who deserve our appreciation.

People like Tony Eerman for site work and permits.

Jason: of Floyd Brown Group on mechanicals.

Keith Bayliss: our Site Manager.

Pat Ellis VP Thomas and Marker: has been instrumental.

Because of them, Good things are happening at Consolidated Electric Cooperative.

Thank You all Very Much!