By Joe Critchfield, Chairman

As you can see, I have been hiding my aging for a few years. Obviously, I'm not getting younger.
Frequently I'm asked how we started CMI and have it grow? The answer is, we hired a lot of great engineers from colleges and predominately Cal Poly, whom we could teach design build air conditioning.

As they have grown, so have we. Compared to the average of our competitors, they are the elite. The other part of the equation is our 400 plus person construction team. As a Union Company operating in several jurisdictions, we hire from various locals for the duration of the projects. Our primary focus, in the early days at least, was sheet metal. Several years ago the unions from Monterey to the Oregon border combined and became one Sheet Metal Local. Thus giving us the ability to retain and move our team of foremen and their crews from job to job. Piping and Plumbing is slightly different in that most counties have there own local which prevents us from working an individual out of his or her county. Our attitude however is that they are just as important and we treat everyone in the company the same as our best client. That is our strategy and we trust it will continue.

In the past I've mentioned the importance of long standing personal relationships between our people and our clients such as Devcon, DPR, Sunset Development, Webcor, Hensel Phelps, Rudolph and Sletten and a host of others. The trust developed over the past twenty-nine years makes all of our work much more enjoyable when solving the inevitable myriad of construction conflicts.
Part of this issue mentions a relationship that has nothing to do with business. Several years ago some friends in Hawaii, Puna Chilingworth and Don Murphy introduced me to their friends Chris Benson and John Hannegan of C.B. Hannegan's restaurant in Los Gatos. We have been helping them with a lot of stainless steel in their kitchens, (I call their restaurant the stainless steel palace.) and they help us with our various tail gates and barbecues. Plus, we've been fortunate to be able to take many of our clients to their St. Patrick's Day event. One of our key clients was invited a few years ago and joined us at noon thinking he didn't need to be away from work at all. After some libations and the incredible feast C.B. puts on he realized he did need it. He hasn't missed it since and just in case some one can extrapolate who I'm talking about, I will not mention what time he left for home.

We have known for some time that we needed a larger building for sheet metal, piping and engineering. The building we rented across the street has been a huge help, but it is still remote. Keith Eichhorn once said, "I know we are just across the street but in reality we might as well be in Omaha." For various reasons, we have not found the right place. Hopefully, we will. In some way we have compounded the problem by renting a 40,000 square foot building in Benecia for prefab and sheet metal storage for the Kaiser jobs in Vacaville and Vallejo. We are still looking.
This article is never easy for me to write, but I can tell you it is much easier when business is good, and it is.
Have a great summer!

Grandpa Joe