Getting the Job Done

KMJ Industrial Contractors
Written by Claire Suttles

KMJ Industrial Contractors installs, relocates, restructures, and moves machinery anywhere in North America. In addition to machinery moving, the team and their industry partners specializes in electrical, mechanical and fabrication services as well as specialized transport, project management, and machinery storage.

“We’re very diversified with what we do,” explains Associate Partner John Crease. “Every little market out there we try to jump into.” This diversity allows the team to serve a variety of industries, including automotive, manufacturing, heavy industry, plastics, machine tooling, energy and power, healthcare, food and beverage, and industrial construction.

The team prides itself in taking on unique and challenging projects throughout Canada as well as the rest of the continent. “We’ll travel anywhere in the U.S. and Mexico,” Crease says. Based in Windsor, Ontario, the company has additional offices in Toronto and Michigan to increase its hands-on presence throughout the region.

KMJ offers turnkey services, including complete plant relocation. Moving a manufacturing facility can be daunting, so the company walks customers through the entire process, starting with engineering, design and transportation all the way through civil, electrical, mechanical, and sheet metal work, as well as startup and troubleshooting. The team has successfully handled multiple seven-figure plant relocations since the company’s founding in 2002.

To get the job done, KMJ boasts forklifts with a capacity of up to 100,000 lbs., hydraulic gantry systems ranging from 200 tons to 800 tons, mobile and industrial cranes that lift as much as 850 tons, and a fleet of vehicles, from single axle trucks to modular float systems that can haul loads weighing up to 600,000 lbs. This fleet allows the team to specialize in standard, heavy, oversized, and over-dimensional loads. Virtually no job is off limits, including projects involving delicate laboratory or electronic equipment. “We are very aggressive in what we do,” Crease says. “We go after quite a bit of work.”

The company ships by rail and sea as well as by road. Whether by land or sea, across the continent, or just across town, KMJ handles every stage of the moving process, from planning, freight/customs brokerage and freight shipping to forwarding and tracking, and past projects include transporting wind energy components, electrical controls, transformers, robotics, plastic presses, stamping presses, and medical equipment. A team of engineers, machinery movers, and transportation specialists work collaboratively to ensure a feasible plan that is both timely and cost-effective for the client. If a customer needs to delay a shipment, the company offers short- and long-term warehouse storage.

KMJ also offers a complete package of contracting and maintenance services. From mechanical engineering, electrical services, and rigging to millwrighting and fabrication, the team handles it all. The company’s experienced fabricators design and construct the specialized equipment clients need to bring a project to life and continue supporting the client until the project’s end.

In addition to meeting a client’s unique onsite needs, custom fabrication allows specialized machinery to be installed according to code under complex circumstances or in challenging locations.

Of course, project management is included with all of KMJ’s industrial contracting services, a single source solution that lowers costs and improves project completion times. A team of dedicated project managers use their in-house capabilities as well as strategic partnerships to coordinate projects in the most efficient way, with the goal of bringing the project to completion on time and on budget in the most seamless way possible.

KMJ’s project managers have over a century of combined project management experience across a wide range of industries. These experienced project managers understand the impact a major project has on a production schedule and work closely with the client to minimize that impact. They keep in close contact with clients throughout the project to keep all parties up to date on the progress.

Naturally, customer service is a top priority on every project. “We’ve been lucky enough to have key foremen and personnel in place,” Crease says. “They really take pride in what they do for us. They take pride in doing a good job, keeping a customer happy. This helps make our job easy as owners here, because they are doing everything to make the customer happy.”

The feedback from clients has been excellent, and includes all employees, not just those in a position of leadership. “We get a number of calls on all our guys that do work for our customers, saying how great a job they did, how fast they were, how professional they were.” Crease credits these dedicated employees with KMJ’s overall success. “[They] make us look really good.”

The company’s positive track record helps secure additional work through word of mouth. “With our success, as people get to know us and [we’re] keeping them happy, we are able to go and venture into different markets and keep busy,” Crease says. “We are constantly getting call backs from our customers and then references from other customers.”

In addition to service, safety is another top company priority. KMJ maintains a zero tolerance safety culture that actively works to identify and control any potential hazards – before they can cause an injury. The company employs a dedicated safety officer to ensure compliance across every project. “We send him frequently for training,” says Crease. But the company doesn’t stop there; leadership expects all employees to stay on top of safety, regardless of their job title, and gives them the education they need to do so. “We make sure guys have all the newest training,” including information on OHSA rules and regulations so that every employee understands what is expected of him or her. In addition, each project is carefully tested and inspected to ensure every aspect complies with code standards and requirements. And the team keeps clients involved throughout the lifecycle of the project when it comes to safety.

Indeed, the company’s safety culture has impacted the entire team. “All our manpower knows what safety means,” Crease says. “And everyone’s contributed to making sure everyone goes home safe. We have seen enough of the industry where stuff has happened, and everyone here wants to make sure all [the employees] go home [to] their families.”

To be sure, KMJ has been busy with a variety of projects, including the complete, turnkey installation of a line for a major automotive manufacturer. This type of project is a common occurrence for the company, which has a history of working closely with the tier 1 and tier 2 automotive markets. KMJ has also been busy installing MRIs as often as once a week for hospitals throughout the region. And, despite a wealth of high profile projects, the team is prepared to take on even more work and is currently considering increasing KMJ’s presence in the United States. “There’s a lot of opportunity over there,” Crease says.

KMJ has already enjoyed impressive growth in the last five years and opened its Toronto office. Now, with several years of successful expansion under its belt, the team is ready to push the company’s growth to the next level.

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