High Mark family-oriented company By DYLAN WOOLF HARRIS Mining Quarterly
ELKO — High Mark Construction rooted itself to the Elko area last September when it moved locations to company-owned land. But being rooted to Elko could also be a metaphor for the kind of company High Mark has been since its beginning. “The one thing that we do ... we are very family oriented,” said Richard Katsma, owner and president of High Mark Construction. “We are not a union contractor. A lot of the people we have working for us have worked here for years and years and years. They got family, kids here, houses here.” Katsma said he once was a contracted employee for a construction company where he saw workers stay for the length of the contract and then move on to another job in another city. He decided to make High Mark something more stable. High Mark found success in the area and began to grow. “We enjoy working in Elko, we enjoy
supporting Elko, we keep our business virtually in town,” he said. And that business commitment seems to have paid off, but Katsma is quick to credit his crew to the success his company has seen. “We got where we did from our employees and our supervision,” Katsma said. “I’m not the person who got us here — we got us here. Extremely good people. We couldn’t do it without the core group of people, by far.” It wasn’t long ago when Katsma began High Mark with only a pair of employees with zero pieces of owned equipment. In 1998, after spending time working construction in the area, associates suggested to Katsma that he open his own mine construction business. Katsma took the suggestion seriously and soon opened High Mark. “There was only two of us at the time,” Katsma said. High Mark tried to find its niche as a local business that provided top notch work. “There were real large contractors and
High Mark Construction President Richard Katsma sits at his office desk at 3755 Manzanita Lane. Dylan Woolf Harris Mining Quarterly
real small ones, (when he began),” he said. He was told the large contractors cost too much particularly for the medium to small jobs, and very the small contractors did not have high enough quality.
His goal was for High Mark to hit the best of both sides with affordable prices and quality work, despite starting small. High Mark employees kept working hard See HIGH MARK, 80
SPRING 2012 ELKO DAILY FREE PRESS, Elko, Nevada 79