Keeping Each Other Safe Pays Off

The employees of Yoder Concrete Construction, LLC, were honored with a safety award from the Ohio Bureau of Worker’s Compensation at the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce's Safety Council meeting on Wednesday, April 18, 2012. Roberta Yoder, CEO, received the award for the employees. The award was given for two different categories: 100% Award for having zero injuries or illnesses resulting in a day or more away from work in the previous calendar year and also the Group Award for the lowest incident rate in our group. This is the second of such awards received in recent years. In 2008, the employees of Yoder Concrete received the 100% safety award and also the Achievement award for 25-percent reduction in incident rate from the previous year. The employees are committed to watching out for each other and keeping each other safe. Congratulations to everyone!

ACI Certification Finisher Training

To continue our commitment to training and excellence in the concrete construction industry, our crews and office staff spent an entire day last week in the conference room learning about the standards set forth by the American Concrete Institute for a Concrete Flatwork Finisher. 

Jeff Yoder, ACI Certified Flatwork Finisher (#00151548) and President of Yoder Concrete Construction, LLC, conducted the training. By using ACI Certification craftsman workbooks and real life examples, Jeff discussed each chapter and reviewed sample exam questions with the attendees. They discussed planning and preparing the site for placing a concrete slab on ground, concrete materials, mixes and admixtures, floor flatness and levelness, concrete equipment and tools, finishing, jointing, curing and the protection of the concrete, and finally concrete finishing problems and possible solutions to ensure a quality project. Everyone was very receptive to the training, and there was much discussion and learning.

On Friday, February 3rd, two of our guys traveled to Columbus for the exam. The test was held at the Ohio Ready Mixed Concrete Association headquarters. The exam consisted of 50 multiple choice and true/false questions and lasted approximately two hours. 

Achieving certification from the American Concrete Institute as a Concrete Flatwork Finisher involves meeting the following requirements: One year (1500 hours) of work experience in finishing concrete flatwork, a passing grade on the written examination, and successful completion of a performance evaluation consisting of either a performance exam or an alternative evaluation based on signed affidavits verifying abilities and additional work experience. If you have enough experience, you may qualify to have the performance exam requirement waived. This alternative evaluation involves proving that you have an additional two years of applicable work experience (a total of 4500+ hours) and are able to correctly perform all procedures covered by the performance exam.  I am happy to report that both of our guys satisfied the experience requirement, and the performance exam was waived. Now we will wait on the results of the written examinations.

Why did we spend the time and money for this training and certification process? As stated by ACI in the workbook, "Being certified by ACI means being recognized by an independent organization of experts in the concrete field. ACI standards for design and construction are recognized and followed around the world..." We, at Yoder Concrete Construction, LLC, want to be the premier provider of concrete construction and be considered experts in our field of construction. Continued training is a must to ensure that our employees are following these standards so we may provide our customers with the best possible results on their projects.

I will report back when we have the results of the exam, although I am sure that both of the guys passed. Next year we plan to send another group for the exam to continue our quest for excellence.

Are you certified in your field? You should be. You should always strive to be the best you can be and learn something new every day. You may consider yourself an expert, but there is ALWAYS something new and exciting to learn.
Best wishes to you!

Our Latest Residential Testimonial

We recently completed a driveway in Urbana, Ohio for a very nice lady. Here is what she had to say after the project was completed.

"My driveway turned out beautifully! The crew was extremely professional & courteous, which I appreciate so much. Thank you...I would recommend your work to anyone, in fact I already have.  Donna"

Here are a couple of photos of the guys cutting the control joints in the concrete and cleaning up the area for her.  We appreciate ALL of our employees for quality work and customer service from beginning to end.

And a special THANK YOU to Donna, for her business and referrals. It is much appreciated.

What is a QR code anyway?

I excitedly posted this on our Yoder Concrete Construction, LLC Facebook fan page and waited for responses of how cool it was. I got nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. My husband suggested that I explain what it is and what to do with it because he really wasn't sure how to get whatever it was. I thought he was the only non-techy one looking at the post. However, after reading Why the QR code is failing, it made me realize that maybe only a small percentage of the population know what to do with this. And when you consider our target audience, many being the construction type, that percentage might drop even more. Or even if you know what it is, you may not have the technology to do anything with it. With it being posted on Facebook, you might want to click on it to see what happens. (Nothing. You need a smart phone.) I can see where this could be confusing.

For those of you who don't know, this is a QR code, or quick response code. If you have a smart phone, you can download an app that will read this code like a scanner reads a bar code. The first one I created takes your smart phone right to our website. (How cool is that!) My initial intent was to place the code on all of the work trucks and any new promotional literature. But I have struggled with this for the same reason as the writer of the blog stated. Why would you have it go to your website when you most likely have the URL spelled out in the same place anyway. Then I received a catalog of one of our suppliers, and on the back of the catalog was a QR code. It said to scan the code to download their contact information. (Way more cool!) So now, easy at that, I have that company's contact information in my Droid. That is much handier than sending me to a website that I don't have time to look at anyway. 

So now I am trying to decide if the QR code would be useful to our business. Am I too far ahead of my target audience? Or is the QR code even going to catch on as a good marketing tool? When it comes to concrete construction, what is a good use for the QR code?  If I owned a bed and breakfast, I could use it  to download my recipe for blueberry crunch muffins. If I had a restaurant, it could be a coupon for a free appetizer. Concrete? not so sure. 

Do you have any suggestions for me? I want to be on the cutting edge of marketing technology, but maybe that doesn't make sense in the construction industry. (I am looking for some encouragement here.) What do you think?