It was just a day after the levees broke that phone calls began trickling into the tidy, board-and-batten cottage with rec-room-panelled walls on Hamilton's bay front.
U.S companies were calling Bermingham Construction Ltd.'s head office, inquiring about pile-driving equipment to repair damage caused by hurricane Katrina.
"There's only a limited number of these big pile drivers around and people are phoning to try to tie them up," Peter Smith, general manager and vice-president of Bermingham, said of firms that called from Florida and Houston.
He wasn't surprised that calls arrived. This $40-million-a-year company has built a worldwide reputation in foundation and marine construction -- indeed, one of its innovations in this field has literally been earth-shaking.
Unless you read trade journals, such as European Foundations or the Engineering News Record, you likely haven't heard of the 108-year-old family-controlled company, although if you're in a Toronto condo or office high-rise, crossing a bridge or railway trestle or mooring a boat, there's a chance you're on terra firma by its handiwork.
From its Hamilton base, Bermingham has supplied equipment or expertise for a Peruvian copper mine's loading dock, for testing the integrity of piles for the world's tallest building in Taipei, for Boston's Big Dig tunnel and for laying the groundwork for the Vancouver convention centre cruise ship dock -- among scores of other works.
Days after Katrina wrecked New Orleans's levees and knocked out bridges and Gulf of Mexico oil rigs, company president Patrick Bermingham was off to the Beaufort Sea to oversee Bermingham's equipment installing 24-inch-wide steel casings 200 metres beneath the seabed for the Devon Energy Corp. natural gas project.
Bermingham does foundation and marine construction work itself, mainly in Ontario and the Maritimes, but it has diversified into manufacturing and claims to be the only firm in North America that makes pile-driving equipment.
It has applied its experience from construction into the products, and uses that connection to market them at trade shows and by word of mouth in the industry.
"We had refined a system in our construction company that became part of the product. Our success has not been the lowest price but our methodology," Mr. Bermingham said. "Our equipment works better,"
It has caught the eye of the U.S. Army, which awarded a $20-million, four-year contract for 120 portable pile-driving machines, a couple of which are believed to be in Iraq, Mr. Smith said. They come packaged, ready to assemble, in large steel boxes, which can be parachuted into the field.
"We're shipping these in green and desert tan," Mr. Smith said, adding he plans to market them to other military organizations as well as for commercial applications.
The company has been involved in foundation and marine construction since 1897, when William Bermingham established the firm in Kingston, Ont., and scored a contract from Canadian Pacific Railway for railway bedding at the Crow's Nest Pass. Through the 20th century, it was on the ground floor of Canada's infrastructure boom, while remaining in Bermingham family hands, although that is changing as the company shifts to a management-ownership structure.
Today, Bermingham is among the largest of about 50 companies in Canada dedicated to foundation construction, which Mr. Smith estimates to be worth upward of $750-million a year in Canada. The company's 150-member work force is evenly split between construction and manufacturing.
What helped set it apart has been how it has furthered the art and science of foundation and shoring.
Chief among these has been a patented device called the Statnamic.
To understand its impact, you must first appreciate the importance of a sturdy foundation; traditionally, it involves pushing steel, timber or concrete beams into the ground until they hit bedrock forming a solid base. It's a building technique that goes back two millennia -- although it was apparently overlooked by the builders of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. "Believe it or not, there are piles that were sunk by the Romans that are still in use today," Mr. Smith said.
Today, depending on the size and design, a high-rise could have 80 to 500 piles, usually beneath the lower floor of the underground parking garage. But tests have to been done on a representative sample of these to ensure their integrity; traditionally, that has involved the time-consuming task of stacking several hundred tons of weight on the pile, leaving it there for a day, then unpiling the weight.
"The industry was crying out for something that was much faster -- to test a pile every day rather than every three weeks," Mr. Smith said.
The Statnamic was dreamed up by Patrick Bermingham in the mid-1990s while, he said, he had time to kill overseeing one of those days-long static tests. "I thought if we could use the inertia of the job rather than the mass . . ."
From the drawing board, the company joined with a division of the Dutch national research council, which helped open doors around the world, notably in the Far East, to sell the device.
The Statnamic, roughly the size of a phone booth, employs a smaller weight, a controlled explosion, Newton's second and third laws of motion and a battery of sensors to simulate a very high load on a pile. It also has tested bridge piers on the Mississippi to see if they can withstand a barge impact, and it can be used to simulate earthquakes.
"The idea was conceived here, the testing was done here, the engineering and the devices themselves are built here and sold around the world," Mr. Smith said, in an interview at the Hamilton office. "It's used all over the world, particularly on the Pacific Rim where all these high-rises are going. Everyday, someone in the world is using a Statnamic test."
It adds about a $1-million a year to company coffers and equipment sales now accounts for about $15-million of Bermingham's $40-million annual revenue.
A key to Bermingham's longevity has been not to get too carried away with itself -- spreading itself thin or biting off more than it can chew -- and remaining satisfied with an 8.5-per-cent growth rate.
"Our success has been not trying to be a contractor in areas where we don't have expertise," Mr. Bermingham said.
The company hasn't always enjoyed success. In fact, it went out of business during the Second World War when John Bermingham (Patrick's grandfather) served overseas. In 1947, he went out on a limb financially and decided to restart the company in Hamilton -- a gamble that paid off with government contracts during the postwar boom.
In the mid-1960s, Patrick's dad, William, frustrated that he couldn't persuade suppliers to provide equipment he needed, decided to make his own. That launched a division, now known as Berminghammer, that Mr. Smith said competes mostly with Chinese companies for the pile-driving supply market.
Now, the company is about to enter a new phase in its history -- away from family control and into a management ownership structure.
"The statistical odds of a family owned company going to a fifth generation are lower than a thousand to one, because of the attrition along the way," said Mr. Bermingham, who took over in 1996 on a handshake with his dad and the understanding that he would sink or swim on his own. "I wanted to broaden the reward and responsibility of running the company as it grows to $50-million.
"All my life I've been steered toward this job. Let's just say I resented the fact that I couldn't look at other opportunities or careers," said Mr. Bermingham, who has also achieved success as a sculptor.
As the company continues to bring innovation to the pile-driving business -- it has incorporated green technology from overseas, such as smokeless drivers now being used on a bridge in the Potomac River, and tubing wrapped around piles for heating and cooling a museum being built in Hamilton -- it will keep its ear to the ground for new opportunities while not overextending itself.
"Ninety-five per cent of construction companies go out of business because they have too much work . . . You fail because you can't execute it," Mr. Bermingham said. "The key is to be realistic of what you can do and how you can do it."
