PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
2020 WAS QUITE THE YEAR
Pandemic • COVID-19, as I write this article, 52.3 million cases worldwide with 1.29 million deaths Rioting throughout the Nation • Race relations • De-fund the police Presidential Election • Republican incumbent succumbs to his Democratic challenger I recently thought back to when I was a kid and realized that as much as things seem to change, history has a way of repeating itself.
1968 WAS ALSO QUITE A YEAR.
Pandemic • H3N2 Virus National Rioting • Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. • Vietnam War Presidential Election • Republican former Vice President Richard Nixon defeated Democratic incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Much like our national history, Ajax has a storied history. When I began with Ajax in 2002, Ajax was on a path to lead the Florida Paving Industry in being the number one contractor when it came to quality. How did we do? 2003 was a year that I was quite proud of. We began to hire and build a solid group of Field Quality Control Technicians. On, April 3, 2003, I hired Mark Slomski, who remains the only original member of the Field QC Team. What a solid hire for Ajax. State Construction Engineer for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) at a District Quarterly Contractor’s Meeting in Ft. Myers made the following statement, “I am tired of listening to all of you Contractor’s say that you cannot figure this QC 2000 thing out. If you want to see how it is done, go spend a day with Ajax.” I am more proud of that statement made by the State Construction Engineer than I am about anything
6
else that has ever happened in my career. He was correct in stating that we had figured it out. In my opinion, we had quickly become the best paving and quality contractor in the State of Florida. There is an old saying that getting to the top is easier than staying at the top. What an accurate statement. While we remain one of the top-paving contractors in the State, we must be honest with ourselves and admit that we are not at the top of our game. Therefore, what do we do, we repeat history. 2021 is the year for the rebirth of our quality and paving operations.
“I am tired of listening to all of you Contractor’s say that you cannot figure this QC 2000 thing out. If you want to see how it is done, go spend a day with Ajax.” In 2020, we hired a consultant to train our managers from the foreman level up to be leaders. We brought in an outside consultant to evaluate our paving crews and provide training. Our Quality Control Unit worked diligently in the field to train our operators on smoothness and density. The Maintenance Division progressed through another year of increasing the level of preventive maintenance to have the equipment ready to go when it was go time. We are now rewriting job descriptions to better define roles and responsibilities for our personnel. We as a company, like our nation, must learn from our past mistakes, unite and move forward. I can promise you that the leaders at Ajax stand together and are united in agreeing that we want to be as strong and proud as we were in 2003.
AJAX ANNUAL MAGAZINE • 2020
