Built on McCarthy Building Companies’ Expertise for Projects with Big Challenges
McCarthy Building Companies has completed the conversion of a decades old building complex into a state-of-the-art headquarters and manufacturing facility for the family-owned Elliott Equipment Company.
Today, the 220,000 sq.-ft. brick and concrete manufacturing facility is a showplace for the company. Located on 16 acres in southeast Omaha, it includes a 26,000-sq.-ft., two story office building originally built in 1982 and a 194,000 sq.-ft., warehouse built in 1977. Elliott chose the facility to consolidate manufacturing operations that had been spread out across five buildings in different locations across Omaha.
“McCarthy was excited to work on this project because of its unique challenges,” said Ryan Sawall, vice president, Central Region for McCarthy Building Companies in Omaha. “Although we could not have anticipated some of the unique construction and permitting issues we encountered, we maintained a close relationship with the Glazer brothers with regular weekly meetings and worked hard to resolve every issue, including suggesting some valuable cost-saving solutions. The result was a quality facility that everyone is proud of.”
Founded in Omaha in 1948, Elliott Equipment Company specializes in designing and manufacturing telescoping aerial work platforms, cranes and digger derricks. Elliott products are used by industry leaders in electrical and utilities construction, signage and lighting, public works, ports, mining and more.
Elliott’s customers are located across North and South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Although the project officially broke ground in December 2018, various design and city permitting challenges delayed the active start of construction work until late summer 2019. Construction wrapped up in April 2020.
“Throughout construction, regular communications with McCarthy were key to the project’s success,” said Jim Glazer, president and CEO of the company he founded with his brother John Glazer of Elliott Equipment. “In addition to being straightforward, McCarthy also was resourceful in providing cost-effective solutions including an innovative solution to a mechanical system problem, which ended up saving significant costs.”
For McCarthy, which has had a local office in Omaha for nearly 20 years and is one of the largest builders in the U.S., the project was an opportunity to collaborate with a locally-owned company on a complicated project in a blighted area that would create more manufacturing job opportunities for Omaha workers.
The project, completed with zero safety incidents, included installing underground utilities and structural elements such as footings for cranes and structural steel without affecting existing underground utilities that lacked locations/documentation on previous as built drawings; creating seven new overhead door openings in existing post tension precast panels, including five at 16’ tall x 24’ wide, and two at 16’ tall x 16’wide; drilling core access holes in the existing post tension precast panels to fully grout each panel; and tying in new utilities into existing utilities that had exceeded their life span.
The extensively renovated space has created large open work areas conducive to manufacturing, assembling and testing Elliott’s products. Modern office space features extensive video conferencing capabilities, providing an ideal space to work with the company’s dealers and customers. The new manufacturing facility not only consolidates and streamlines Elliott’s operations, it features better lighting and air filtration and other employee amenities.
The new company headquarters proudly reflects Elliott’s brand image and supports the company’s plans to grow its business and create new jobs , including engineers, painters, welders, assembly workers and others over the next several years.
McCarthy Building Companies – Omaha
Since 2001, the Omaha team has completed more than $1-billion in construction across Nebraska by pairing intelligent solutions with built-in know-how to build the most complex facilities across a wide variety of market sectors. McCarthy’s current local project work includes an $86-million, 57,000-sq-ft. Omaha VA Ambulatory Care Center (scheduled to open in 2020) and a $70 million new high school under development for Omaha Public Schools. The firm is also completing a $10 million Emergency Department renovation for Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, NE and a $38 million cancer center and surgery addition at St. Francis Medical Center in Grand Island, NE.
About McCarthy Building Companies
McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is the oldest privately held national construction company in the country – with more than 150 years spent collaborating with partners to solve complex building challenges on behalf of its clients. With an unrelenting focus on safety and a comprehensive quality program that spans all phases of every project, McCarthy utilizes industry-leading design phase and construction techniques combined with value-add technology to maximize outcomes. Repeatedly honored as a Best Place to Work and Healthiest Employer, McCarthy is ranked the 12th largest domestic building contractor (Engineering News-Record, May 2019). With approximately 5,000 salaried employees and craft professionals, the firm has offices in St. Louis, Atlanta; Collinsville, Ill.; Portage, Ind.; Kansas City, Kan.; Omaha, Neb.; Phoenix; Las Vegas; Denver; Dallas, Houston; and San Diego, Newport Beach, San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento, Calif. McCarthy is 100 percent employee owned. More information about the company is available online at www.mccarthy.com or by following the company on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.