Business View Magazine | July 2019

34 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 was completed on time, on budget, to spec, with not a single incident – not one scratched finger. The point is: the design of the duct required very careful, finite element analysis; everything had to fit together absolutely perfectly. And it had to be able to withstand the stress that’s going to be put on it. All of those complicated factors required a lot of innovative effort to get that done. I think it’s remarkable that a company that started out with one little pickup truck and a couple of guys on the back of it would end up doing that for the biggest southern power company.” Other advantages that Harte mentions includes being one of only three companies that can set up major fabrication facilities at a job site. “You couldn’t build some of those things at your plant,” he states. “We can load up all the trucks and all the materials and ship them. We ship everything we need; we put up big tents or metal buildings. We’ll just load those up, build them, and then, take them down. We also have a tremendous warehouse supply on-hand of the materials we need – the glass, the resin. For example, if you contact some of the manufacturers that do what we do, they will say that the first thing they have to do is get the materials in. That’s not our problem. And one of the other things that sets us apart is the loyalty of our workers. We’ve actually got a couple of guys from the first years of operation, and we now have third generation people working for us.” Most important to the success of Augusta Fiberglass, though, according to Harte, has been what he calls “the incredible entrepreneurship of John Boyd. That is a true American industry story,” he declares. “The foresight that was his to bring in top engineers into a company that was just making cans and spraying fiberglass. Those engineers shared his dream of making fiberglass the number one product in certain industries. They had the ability to take those dreams and make them into something.” PREFERRED VENDOR n Hokes Bluff Welding & Fab dougt@hbwf.org Hokes Bluff Welding & Fab contributes its success for over 50 years to the employees who take pride in fabricating a quality product to meet or exceed customer expectations with timely delivery. Follow us on Facebook @ Hokes Bluff Welding & Fab Contact Email: dougt@hbwf.org