Burschville Operator Tom Krampitz is working
with a new Komatsu PC300LC-7 excavator from RMS on a job near the Twin
Cities. 'It's a nice machine and has a lot of power," said Rick Schendel.
"It's fast and smooth."
"The majority of our people have been with us for 15 years or longer," Jim observed. "We also have a handful who have joined us within the last five years. Once they come, if they're good, they stick around. We've been pretty fortunate in keeping our guys."
Concentrates on underground work
Burschville Construction concentrates on underground utility work - sewer, water and storm sewer - in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. "We've worked as far away as Crookston, Grand Marais and Northfield in Minnesota and also in Wisconsin, but not for several years," said Jim.
"Since I've taken over, I haven't left the metro area and I don't want to," he continued. "You can't live in two places and do justice to home and family. So we work for communities in the metro area, within 80 miles of home."
Burschville Construction handles strictly underground utilities. "It seems to work better for us," Jim commented. "We've talked about going into the curb business, but we're better off to hire somebody else to do the streets, curbs and blacktopping. We do a little if we have to on small jobs, but it works better to do underground, which is what we do best."
The firm's customers are mostly cities and counties. "We do a few private jobs for developers," noted Cindy and Rick. The split is about 70 percent public projects and 30 percent private.
Most of Burschville's underground work is installing utilities for subdivisions. "Probably 20 percent of it is reconstruction, and the other 80 percent is new developments," said Rick.
Some sleepless nights
Jim Schendel remembers an underground project his company tackled in 1999 as the most interesting - and toughest - job he has encountered. "It was a 44- foot-deep lift station in Lino Lakes," he explained. "We thought it was going to be easy, but it gave us a lot of sleepless nights. We encountered water and a lot of it!"
"At first it was dry," he continued. "If we would have had an hour, we would have had everything done and set, but the wall opened up and the water came running in."
"It was a mess," agreed Rick. "There was a 45-foot hole with about 35 feet of water standing in it in a matter of about an hour. And it just kept running."
The Burschville crew had to use two eight-inch pumps and one 10-inch pump to de-water the site. "When we set the manhole we were in about waistdeep water," said Rick. "It took us about a week and a half to finally get it in and set. That was a challenge."
The city of Woodbury, Minnesota, has been a steady customer of Burschville Construction. "We started working for them in 1986-'87 and we've been out there every year since," said Jim. "We've done probably eight different developments for them, with a couple hundred houses in each project. They're good people to work with."
The 2002 construction season saw Burschville's three pipe crews installing sewer, water and storm sewer in the communities of Maple Grove, Cottage Grove, Inver Grove Heights and Forest Lake, as well as in Woodbury. Crews faced 50-foot-deep cuts on the Cottage Grove project, a residential development.