by Mark Stevens & Sean Harrison

The Tilt-Up Concrete Association is proud to announce the public launch of a new young professionals’ collaborative. TILT, an acronym for Tilt-Up Industry Leaders of Tomorrow, is a group aimed at those leaders in the industry aged 40 years and under. The group is a product of the TCA Board of Directors’ initiative to establish a young professionals’ collaborative that would have access to the cross-disciplinary resources of the TCA. The board’s hope is that this initiative fosters the growth of the organization’s future leaders.

The board encouraged TCA members to nominate high-potential leaders from their organizations to participate in a formation event in Las Vegas during World of Concrete 2019. The group met formally again during the Tilt-Up Convention and Expo in Atlanta, where twenty young professionals from all across North America came together with the goal of bringing a new, younger perspective to the tilt-up industry. At WOC, a general framework for TILT was explored in answering questions like: What can we, a new generation, bring to tilt-up? How can we promote our field? Who can we talk to when we have questions or have advice to give? Am I really the only young person that works in tilt-up? Surely there must be another… Seriously, I need (new) friends!

With a basic framework intact, TILT kicked things off in Atlanta with a meet-and-greet meant to give space to catch up and renew old relationships from the initial meeting in Vegas. With the bourbon flowing, it quickly became evident that there was a desire and passion among young professionals within the tilt-up industry to have a group we can call our own. We all were looking forward to getting this group launched. Although it was meant to be a closed event, it did not take long for other young professional to pop by to see what this TILT thing was all about, further demonstrating the potential for a successful YP group.

The following day TILT met for lunch and a follow-up meeting with facilitator Beth Malicki to discuss the progress made over the last nine months, to help strengthen the focus of the group and to set measurable and achievable goals for the upcoming year. Beth was instrumental (and remarkably successful – thanks, Beth!) in guiding the group to understand our individual passions within the industry and establish our four main Categories of Engagement (COE). The mission and guiding principles of each COE are outlined below.

TECHNICAL

Share industry knowledge and expertise from the TCA and its members with those seeking to learn more about tilt-up design and construction.

Katt Price – Chair: Katt Price is a structural engineer at Schaefer, a structural engineering firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati and has been involved in the tilt-up community since 2009.

Travis Jennings – Vice Chair: Travis Jennings, P.E. is a project manager and structural engineer at BSE Structural Engineers. Travis graduated from Kansas State University in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering with an emphasis in structural engineering. With over seven years of experience, Travis has an extensive background designing a variety of tilt-up structures for commercial and industrial projects. Several of these projects have been large-scale structures with complicated tilt-up configurations, connections and architectural requirements.

DELIVERY

Unify the method by which design information for tilt-up construction is passed from the design team to the construction team.

Chad Marshall – Co-Chair: Chad Marshall is a project manager in the Charlotte, North Carolina area who has been involved with the TCA since 2018. Chad has been heavily involved in tilt-up concrete construction project management over the past five years and has managed projects ranging from 90,000 sq. ft. to 400,000 sq. ft. A strong believer in technology and how it can be used in the construction industry, Chad is always looking for ways to not only better the industry but also to help produce quality projects for his owners and company across the board. Chad has a degree in landscape architecture, and he has been a founding and active member of the Delivery Pillar of TILT since its beginning at the World of Concrete in January of 2019.

Dylan James – Co-Chair: Dylan began his career in tilt-up construction as a certified welder and steel erector in 2006. In September 2012, he returned to school to pursue a career in structural engineering. After graduating from the British Columbia Institute of Technology in 2017 with his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, he joined Krahn Engineering Ltd. in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he now specializes in tilt-up and structural steel design. Dylan has been a founding and active member of the Delivery COE of TILT since its inception at the World of Concrete in 2019.

NETWORKING

Build relationships through networking opportunities, including mentorships, small groups, and social events.

Mark Stevens – Chair: Mark Stevens is a professional engineer and project manager with B.D. Stevens Limited, located in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is responsible for managing all aspects of the building-design process – dealing with the owners, discussing design, interpreting and checking design drawings, and onsite management. Mark has over eight years of experience in the tilt-up industry, with B.D. Stevens being a lead innovator for tilt-up in the Maritime Provinces. He has worked on many projects, such as commercial warehouses and office buildings, car dealerships, freezers and cold storage buildings. Mark has also been directly involved in using tilt-up for water treatment tank design and assessing the feasibility of those designs. Mark has been a trusted project manager who has dealt with many clients over the years, and he has proven himself to be skilled in handling both large and small budget projects with great professionalism.

Nick Heinz – Vice Chair: Nick Heinz, a project manager at E.E. Reed Construction, has 10 years of experience in the construction industry. As project manager, Nick Heinz oversees and facilitates all phases of the construction process, including processing submittals and requests for information, scheduling, and meeting coordination; he also serves as the overall day-to-day contact for our clients. Nick’s project experience includes heavy civil construction in refineries, bridges, restaurants, wind farms, hotels, higher education buildings, Class A office interiors, an executive jet center, and laboratories.

Michael Frew – Vice Chair: Michael Frew, an architect for Citadel Contractors Inc, has been working in the tilt-up industry for over seven years. As a part of Citadel’s design-build team, Michael leads the tilt-up design department. His responsibilities include initial building design, structural documentation, and panel detailing. He has experience with many different building types, including multi-story office buildings, schools, theaters, and medical office buildings. Throughout his time at Citadel, Michael has expanded their use of BIM as a powerful tool for collaboration and coordination.

MARKET/WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Introduce and promote tilt-up to the current and future workforce and public through social media engagement, presentations and interactive events.

Sean Harrison – Chair: Sean is a registered professional engineer in Nova Scotia, managing B.D. Stevens Limited’s Tilt-up Construction Division. Sean started with B.D. Stevens Limited in 2010 in QC/QA of panel construction while building a prison in a cold, snowy forest in New Brunswick, Canada… After that, he was hooked! He is responsible for overseeing panel book delivery, lift sequence design, design review, and subcontractor coordination. Sean works directly with the B.D. design team to produce foundation and panel plans and details for all B.D. projects. As a general contractor for B.D., he has managed several projects from start to finish. He oversees the B.D. equipment portfolio and was instrumental in B.D. Stevens becoming the first TCA-certified tilt-up contractor in Canada. Sean is excited to participate in the TCA’s young professionals initiative TILT as part of the workforce/market development team.

Chelsea Serrano-Piche – Vice Chair: Chelsea Serrano-Piche has been with Powers Brown Architecture since 2012. She began in the company headquarters office in Houston, where she mostly worked on industrial shell, industrial build-to-suit, and office buildings, most of which were built with tilt-up construction. Within her first three years at the company, she completed over 24 million square feet of concrete tilt-up and precast projects, not including the 4.5 million-square-foot, build-to-suit project for Daiken Headquarters where she was a project team member. Since relocating to Powers Brown Architecture’s Washington, D.C. office (as a project team leader), she has managed projects and has assisted in growing the industrial and office knowledge for the company’s tilt-up work completed in the region and across the eastern United States.

TILT is excited to show our value to the TCA and the tilt-up industry, and we are now looking for new young professionals to join us. If you missed us in Atlanta, have a passion for tilt-up, and want to get involved, please contact Mitch Bloomquist at mbloomquist@tilt-up.org. And be sure to come out and say “hi” if you are in Las Vegas for the World of Concrete, as TILT hosts TCA’s Winter Tilt-Up Jubilee on Wednesday, February 5th.