Tilt-Up Awards > TCA Contractor of the Year

Recipient of the esteemed TCA Contractor of the Year Award, Venegas Engineering Management & Construction (VEMAC) stands as a pinnacle of tilt-up construction excellence. Led by President and Concrete Ninja, David Venegas, VEMAC’s legacy of unparalleled craftsmanship, dedication to safety, and exceptional customer service is deeply rooted. David’s influence extends beyond the physical realm, as he is an online influencer who has significantly contributed to the advancement of tilt-up knowledge through digital platforms. VEMAC’s commitment to knowledge dissemination is further exemplified by their contributions to Tilt-Up Today Magazine, as well as their active participation in sharing expertise at the Tilt-Up Convention and Expo in Tampa. This multifaceted commitment to excellence, from hands-on craftsmanship to thought leadership, sets VEMAC apart as an industry trailblazer, inspiring others to follow suit and shaping the future of tilt-up construction.

Arch-Con® Corporation is a national commercial general contractor founded in 2000 by Michael G. Scheurich with offices in Houston, Dallas, Austin and Denver. Arch-Con’s award-winning team simplifies the construction process using the latest cost-efficient technologies to stay on the cutting edge of the industry.

We are a company based on the design-build philosophy which is a combination of architecture and construction. We firmly believe that the earlier we can partner in the design and development process, the more successful the project. We have a deep respect for designers and a passion for the design process. Well-designed buildings should be well-built buildings. It is that simple. Therefore, we promote an atmosphere of teamwork with the entire design and development team.

Construction is hard. There are inherent problems that need solutions every day. Our Arch-Con team understands this and anticipates the problems before they happen. With experts in the office, industrial, cold storage, retail, hospitality, corporate interiors, healthcare, multifamily and community markets, we make construction easy.

Citadel Contractors is the 2021 TCA Contractor of the Year. Citadel is one of the most decorated companies in the industry with more than 40 Tilt-Up Achievement Awards including 11 in just the past three years. Their founder, Glenn Doncaster, won the Murray Parker Memorial Award from the TCA back in 2004 and was president of the association in 2012 and 2013. The company has won multiple safety awards from the TCA and was one of the first to achieve status as a certified tilt-up company. The definition of sustaining, they’ve maintained their membership since 1997, donated significantly to TCA’s new foundation, Tilt Lab, and most recently supported the formation of TCA’s Tilt-Up Industry Leaders of Tomorrow where one of their rising stars, Michael Frew, serves as the inaugural president.

In 2021, Martin Concrete Construction, Inc., will celebrate decades as a leading national concrete contractor and its 30th year in business. Martin Concrete’s mission is based on two goals: to provide unequaled positive experiences for their customers and a highly desirable work environment for their employees.

The leadership at Martin Concrete realized early on that a key to providing an unparalleled experience was to offer a wide range of services under one umbrella. With offices in Atlanta and Nashville, Martin Concrete Construction, Inc., offers a business model that is unusually diverse and robust. Delivering more than typical concrete construction services, they own and operate cranes, employ and maintain finishing crews and equipment, produce concrete on-site through their own portable Ready-Mix division, and staff a safety department of over 30 people, ensuring that every site has dedicated safety personnel.

As important as that is, the Martin experience includes much more than resources. Quality, responsiveness, and relationships keep customers returning to Martin Concrete when the mission is the most critical and the demands are the most difficult. Martin goes beyond solving problems to anticipate their clients’ needs.

This experience would not be possible without the inimitable team of professionals at Martin Concrete.

The second component of Martin Concrete’s mission is to provide their personnel with an environment where they can envision and achieve unlimited success in their professional and personal lives. Because of the company-wide dedication to this goal, they enjoy an average employee service time of 14 years, and employ many second- and third-generation family members in roles throughout the company.

Anchored by their core values of safety, integrity, customer focus, quality, people development, continuous improvement, and family, Martin Concrete looks forward to more exciting developments in the future. The best at Martin Concrete Construction is yet to come.

Since 1980, T.A.S has earned a reputation as being one of the area’s most recognizable and reputable concrete contractors. Our success has been achieved by maintaining a focus on our clients and ad­dressing their problems. Working in partnership and listening to clients’ needs enables us to respond with a level of service that forges long-lasting relationships. Whether the project calls for turnkey con­struction, pour and finish, pumping or rebar placement, T.A.S has completed thousands successful projects — both simple and complex — in the Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin/San Antonio areas.

Each year, our employees work more than 2 million man hours and pour more than 20 million square feet of concrete. Our large portfolio of completed projects consistently ranks us in Engineering News-Record’s “Top 20 firms in Concrete” since 1995.

T.A.S’ reputation stems from providing clients with quality concrete services and peace of mind. Our ap­proach to business is simple — we sit down, roll up our sleeves and work with our clients to determine their needs. We provide innovative solutions that ultimately help our clients better serve their custom­ers. These resolutions contribute to our high rate of repeat clients, which is the result of working as a team to accomplish a common goal.

Tilt Wall Ontario is a subcontractor committed to bringing tilt-up to the Ontario construction industry since 2001. Originally founded as a company in 2002, Tilt Wall Ontario had a tough uphill battle pushing a “new” method of construction in a market that hates change and had seen very few tilt-up buildings. With very little progress having been made in the first few years, the original owners wanted out and Dave Overbeek bought into the company. With his and Len’s passion for tilt-up they were slowly able to gain acceptance as a way of building.

Tilt Wall’s mission statement rings very true with our organization and has been the key to our success. “It is our objective to build lasting relationships, and impact the lives of those around us in a positive way, by training staff to become leaders, providing quality products and service to customers that exceed expectations. Creativity has also played a key role in a market where tilt-up was relatively unknown. Realizing this meant that no project was ever too small, our building sizes range from 480 to 200,000 square feet. The flexibility of tilt-up has allowed us to create some very unique structures including a house for Len. Having used thin brick, stone, custom rubber moldings, form liners, colored concrete, stamps, stains and polished concrete has allowed us to build virtually all types of projects. Over the years we have been recognized by the Ontario concrete industry for outstanding work with awards on 5 of our projects. Versatility has allowed us to work on a large variety of buildings ranging from; schools, offices, warehouses, sport facilities, food storage and handling facilities, houses, livestock buildings and more. The size of our panels has ranged from 21 to 1,700 square feet with our heaviest weighing in at 166,000 pounds.

Promoting the use of tilt-up in our market has been a very big part of our success. We stay very active promoting lunch and learns to many members of the design community. Participating in our Canadian Construction shows has also brought awareness to the Ontario market. Now no longer perceived as a fad or even an alternate we are finding more and more projects coming out to tender designed as tilt-up. Our four current projects along with numerous projects that are in the design stage testify to the growing acceptance of tilt-up as a way of building.

Unsurpassed by all of the above is being a member of the TCA since 2002! Attending the conventions year after year has kept the optimism up. The support of the organization and peers in the tilt-up industry has helped us become what we are today! The 4 Achievement Awards that we have won prior to this year are highlights in our careers. We are proud to be a certified member of the TCA.

Barclay Gebel is Vice President of Operations at Concrete Strategies LLC and the inaugural recipient of the Tilt-Up Contractor of the Year Award. Growing up around construction, Gebel worked on his first tilt-up project at 16 years old while still attending high school. Barclay’s father worked as a superintendent for Clayco. In the summer of 1986, Clayco constructed their first tilt-up project in Fenton, Missouri and during that summer, Gebel went to work with for his dad. After high-school graduation, Gebel joined the St. Louis Carpenter Apprenticeship Program and went to work for Clayco as an Apprentice Carpenter.

In the early 1990s, Clayco was one of the first construction companies that realized the benefits of tilt-up construction and quickly incorporated it into their design-build approach to sell and deliver construction projects in St. Louis and around the country. Shortly after, Clayco branded a subsidiary, Clayco TiltUp, to handle the construction of the tilt-up panels on all Clayco projects. Gebel worked the majority of his carpenter apprenticeship with Clayco TiltUp, which is where he learned everything from layout and forming to the pouring and erection of tilt-up panels. Gebel served as a project superintendent at Clayco from 1994 to 1998 and as a General Foreman for Clayco TiltUp from 1988 to 1994. Gebel quickly made a name for himself in the industry and was named Vice President of Operations for Clayco TiltUp in 1998. The Clayco TiltUp brand continued to grow through the 1990s and was re-branded as Concrete Strategies in 2005. Today, Concrete Strategies employs over 550 field personnel and completes over $200 million in revenue annually from its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri and a newly opened office in Kansas City, Kansas. Concrete Strategies has an unparalleled track record in architectural site-cast concrete, structural concrete, flatwork, tilt-up and all types of self-perform concrete construction for commercial and industrial projects.

Since 2005, Gebel has continued as Vice President of Operations at Concrete Strategies;. Gebel has generously shared his tilt-up tips and tricks as a regular speaker at the TCA Tilt-Up Convention and has coauthored many articles for Tilt-Up Today. Gebel is a past member of the Board of Directors for the TCA and a past chair of the TCA safety Committee.

Personally, Gebel and his family are founders of The Snow Foundation, which is a voice for rare diseases. The foundation works towards finding a cure for Wolfram Syndrome and developing novel therapies for diabetes, vision loss, hearing loss and neurodegeneration.