Every company has a story. Here are two.
1. Documentary Media contracted with me to research and write High Water Mark: General Construction Company’s First 100 Years, which will be printed in full-color, hard-cover format in the fall of 2009.
Concrete piledriving. Photo courtesy General Construction Co.
From the intro:
Heavy marine and industrial construction require special expertise few companies in the world possess. General Construction Company has been one of them since 1910. The projects it has completed—often in partnership with the highest tier of co-contractors—are icons in the history of the American West.
In its first fifty years, General Construction’s founders took part in the rapid and large-scale effort to build a modern civilization out of the Western wilderness. That meant railroad lines stretching across new frontier and irrigation canals through virgin farmland. It meant colossal dams and massive bridges, and it meant port facilities and terminals that rivaled those on the East Coast for the first time.
This is an engineering and building story as much as it is the story of a business. While certainly a few key individuals played headlining roles in General Construction’s history, the story is best told by what this company builds. Many of General’s projects represent milestones in the engineering world: Grand Coulee, Hungry Horse, and Bonneville Dams; the Oregon coastal bridges; the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Three of the world’s longest floating bridges span the waters of Puget Sound, and General functions as a resident expert on them both. General also helped build the footings for the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the only thing left standing when the superstructure collapsed in 1940. In fact, they were reused when the bridge was reconstructed in 1950. When it came time to build a companion Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 2003, General Construction was called on again to construct the massive caissons next to the original bridge it helped build sixty-five years earlier....
2. If We Don’t Deliver: A Century on the Wilcox Farm.
What began as the success story of a family-owned business that competed well in the commodity food industry has now changed. Wilcox Farms has had to scale back dramatically over the past two years, selling off the milk side of its business and focusing on the specialty egg market. The book publication is pending this transition.
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