Safety, Quality, Productivity

Ceco earned its reputation as a premier concrete formwork and frame contractor by focusing its business on three core tenets: Safety, Quality and Productivity. The “SQP” mantra has driven our offices for years, from our early days as a concrete formwork contractor to our current business as both a concrete formwork and a concrete frame contractor.

SAFETY

As a prolific concrete formwork and frame contractor, safety is critical—but safety is more than a catchphrase for Ceco, it’s a core value deeply rooted in everything we do. We are committed to sending our people home safely after every shift, and we have designed a safety program that is maintained by every employee, from the President to our most recently hired laborer, to make sure that we do so.

Each shift starts with a morning Flex and Stretch session and a review of the tasks at hand. Every employee reviews what they will build and how they will do it in the safest possible manner. These “A.M. Huddles” can be supplemented with 24/7 access to training on the safest way to build each and every Ceco concrete formwork system via our extensive collection of online BuildSafe training modules.

Ceco has long been an industry leader in safety. While most companies only track lost-time accidents, Ceco actively tracks near-hit incidents to gain a better perspective on how to prevent similar situations in the future. We developed the Ceco Fall Arrest System (CFAS), which was adopted industrywide and is now marketed as the FallSafe system. At any given moment, the President of our company may show up for one of his frequent, unannounced safety inspections. At Ceco, safety is much more than a catchphrase—it’s who we are.

To stay in the concrete formwork and frame construction business for more than 100 years, one must hold a high-quality standard from concept to completion. Ceco is committed to building the highest-quality structures and develops project-specific quality control plans for each and every project we build that monitor our quality from pre-con to punch-out.

Our crews practice a Plan-Do-Check-Act workflow, constantly monitoring their work and continuously implementing means of improvement. We also perform frequent pre-pour and post-pour assessments to ensure the quality of our concrete formwork. One of the benefits of working with Ceco is the unmatched resource we have in our long-term employees who have “seen it all” over their careers and can help the younger crew members work through situations that don’t come up often.

Our companywide quality control program encompasses the entire construction process, from selling the project to walking off the jobsite and conducting post-completion assessments. At Ceco, quality isn’t just about the end product, it’s about the entire experience of working with us. We are committed to making it a quality experience for everyone involved.

When it comes to concrete formwork and frame construction, production is key—and efficient production starts with great planning and design. Ceco actively hires design professionals. Our Project Managers and Project Executives work with you from concept to completion, providing a smooth handoff between preconstruction and construction phases. This not only ensures the accurate implementation of design standards but also increases production rates and performance.

Every great project starts with thorough planning, and at Ceco that requires Building Information Modeling (BIM). Ceco is an industry leader with regard to the delivery of preconstruction services, having adopted BIM long before many contractors. Our experience creating and augmenting structural models to improve collaborative constructability and value engineering processes consistently results in greater efficiency in the field.

Onsite, each shift starts with an “A.M. Huddle” to discuss the specific tasks for the day, with an end goal in mind. Our teams review the challenges of the day’s work so they can hit the ground running and avoid any pitfalls as they get rolling. To help our newer employees get up to speed, Ceco invested in CecoNet, an extensive series of online training modules with step-by-step direction on the most efficient and safest way to build every concrete formwork and structural system we construct. Employees have 24/7 access to this tool and can consult it from the field anytime, anywhere.

Finding qualified employees is always difficult, but it has become more challenging as a result of the Great Recession and subsequently increasing workload. To help decrease the training period of new hires, Ceco developed and implemented C-Craft training. This allowed us to increase our skilled staff during a difficult time and maintain our high level of productivity.

Ceco actively employs technology in the field to increase productivity, providing our teams real-time access to plans and project documentation via Box, CecoNet, Bluebeam and mobile computing. Using notebook computers in the field, our people can access three-dimensional BIM plans with real-time changes, keeping abreast of design modifications and reducing the chance for error.

If you’re looking for a structural concrete formwork and frame contractor with unmatched focus on Safety, Quality and Productivity, look no further than Ceco.