Covering the Industry’s News
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Houston
CONSTRUCTION
th of July
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The Industry’s Newspaper
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www.constructionnews.net H (210) 308-5800 H Volume 16 H Number 7 H JULY 2018
Called to masonry
Clean machine
Jason and Teri Mueller, owners of Mueller Masonry
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very once in a while, Jason Mueller’s phone will ring – and it isn’t a customer. “I get phone calls from my peers in the industry who want to know what I think it’s going to be like this year,” the owner and president of Mueller Masonry says. “’Do I think the industry is doing well or do I see it slowing down?’ ‘When’s the next downturn?’ I think, without a shadow of a doubt, Houston is a growing city. Just look at all of the traffic everywhere because of all the roads; they’re turning two-lane highways into four- or five-lane highways and it’s all because of the projected growth of the city. With that comes neighborhoods and shopping centers. Shopping centers and office parks – that’s our niche.”
Abdi Rezaei, owner of Sharp Cleaning
Mueller is experienced in observing the markets in which he works. He grew up in a construction family that did everything from masonry to plumbing, and worked on job sites for his dad for “summer money.” While he enjoyed the work, he decided to pursue other interests as an adult. “I actually steered off and went into a totally different direction,” Mueller explains. “I worked in the oil and gas business and I owned my own internet company back when the internet was just getting started.” Boredom began to creep up on Mueller, however, just as those markets began to turn. “At the same time technology and oil continued on Page 14
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hen life handed him lemons, Abdi Rezaei made lemon cleaner. After the business he started with a friend didn’t pan out as he had hoped, Rezaei took the lessons he learned and established a completely different business, Sharp Cleaning, in 2011. Although starting and running the business was initially difficult, Rezaei wasn’t afraid of putting in the effort. After moving to the United States from Iran in 2001, Rezaei worked in several Houston restaurants, and along the way met many of the people he would recruit to work for Sharp Cleaning. “It takes a while,” Rezaei admits. “I tell everyone it’s not as easy as you think it is. Every person who wants to see what
kind of human they are or how capable of things they are should own their own business. It was pretty hard. Now eight years later, although it hasn’t been easy, we have made it through our obstacles.” Working in Rezaei’s favor is his predilection for problem solving. “I like challenges,” he says. “My biggest challenge is that I’m dealing with 15 to 20 employees per day and also our customers. I do a lot of commercial postconstruction cleaning including banks, Chick–fil-A, medical clinics, clothing stores like Adidas, a North Face in The Galleria and Victoria’s Secret in The Woodlands Mall. After Hurricane Harvey, we’ve done a lot of post-construction residential as well. I have many clients continued on Page 14
Flood prevention with style
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few years before Hurricane Harvey struck, Clear Lake City decided to implement an out-of-the-box, yet simple solution – retrofitting golf courses for storm water detention. And it helped them prevent flooding of more than 150 houses from Harvey’s devastation. In May 2011, the Clear Lake City Water Authority (CLCWA) acquired 178 acres of land that previously served as a golf course. Called ‘Exploration Green,’ the project’s goal was to drain the streets in the community, which experienced problems previously with drainage and flooding during extreme storm events. The idea for this project came directly from the community’s grassroots efforts. The five-phase project features a series of engineered detention ponds designed to withstand a 100-year storm event. The detention ponds will hold the water, slow it down, and allow more time for the water to get back out into a series
of bayous, culminating in the Gulf of Mexico. The first phase of the project began in Nov. 2015 and was completed in April 2018, months after Harvey’s devastating blow at a cost of $4.7 million dollars. Once the entire project is completed in 2021, it will hold half a billion gallons of water (yes billion with a B), the equivalent of 750 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Overall construction of the Phase 1 detention pond required 350,000cy of excavation on a 37.8-acre site that was formally a golf course. Over one mile of hike and bike trails were installed. The new construction provides approximately 114 acre-ft of storm water detention volume which will provide detention for an area that previously did not have anything to reduce the devastation of flooding. LECON Inc., founded by Daniel D. Lloyd in 1988, is a general contractor Exploration Green aerial view
continued on Page 14