Learning to Juggle

Greetings Customers & Friends,

I know how to juggle. I have been doing it for decades, but not with balls or bowling pins. Rather with construction deadlines and schedules.

Nothing ever goes quite as planned. We have a busy summer ahead of us here at Parkerville. More so in our architectural millwork department. One of our larger projects at Marist College has had significant construction setbacks in the field which has caused a pause in our production. The original completion date for us was this month. Now our completion date has been pushed back until August. Our scope includes the interior of a large lecture hall and auditorium that we are custom making quarter sawn red oak panels and trim, which coordinate with large acoustical wall panels. We use a company in central Pennsylvania to custom press these panels based on our specifications and shop drawings, which ensures that the panels are sequenced matched throughout the large space. This process requires that we establish very close field measurements prior to ordering the raw panel material. Once those dimensions are obtained, we order each panel in the entire project slightly oversized, generally an inch or two. That allows us to cut each panel to a precise size and then edge band all the edges with the same veneer. They are then custom finished and installed on Z-Clips to the wall. The delay was because other trades in front of us could not get the room ready for us because of other priorities. We are negotiating with the contractor to compensate us for working overtime. It will be more like the guy that has a dozen poles stuck in the ground with spinning plates going on top of them all. He runs around trying his best not to let any of the plates hit the ground and smash.

Because of the slippage on this project our production staff has not been near capacity for the past few months. Now this project has slid back and is impacting other projects that were scheduled in this time slot. We have a dedicated crew so we will work a little harder and do our best to juggle things around and stay ahead of the various projects. We have some very nice projects in the works at Yale, Harvard, Franklin Templeton, Travelers, UMASS Worchester, and others.

Recently we completed a modern interior common workspace for a large financial institution in Stamford. Part of the project was to build a large meeting surface that was referred to as the Innovation Station. It had a clear acrylic tube, 20” diameter, that went from the floor, through a large work surface / countertop, and up to the ceiling. They supplied us with garbage bags full of shredded credit cards and we filled the clear tube with them. Something unique almost every day.

This month we should have some interesting material coming in from two different private wood collections. Keep your eyes on our Facebook and Instagram for current information. 

As always, thank you for supporting our team. I hope to see you at the shop.

Sincerely,

David Harris, President

Parkerville Wood Products, Inc.