Apple co-founder Steve Jobs probably would have been right when he said, “Don’t strive to do everything. Do one thing well. For some Alaskan entrepreneurs, the key to good fortune is doing more. This is evident in the trades. ” of construction. That is precisely what marketing specialists do: in a specialty. Their mastery of a single hyper-express box makes them an essential professional for very specific needs.
Windows? No thanks. Entry points?Not even. For Nick Shkolnik, Alaska Door’s assignments manager, installing and maintaining Alaska-quality garage doors provides more than enough paint to keep the business busy.
Alaska Door has been in business for 3 years; It all started with two guys installing and maintaining garage doors. This year, the company has approximately twenty-five workers who are dedicated throughout the year to installing doors in Alaska. Alaska Door started with a location in Wasilla, but opened a location in Fairbanks and plans to add a location in Kenai soon.
According to Shkolnik, part of the reason for this immediate expansion is that the doors installed by Alaska Door are designed to withstand the Alaskan weather. Alaska Door’s stock, while built overseas, is manufactured in company-specific components.
“They are five centimeters thick and are completely insulated with polyurethane. We don’t have hollow doors; We don’t believe that there are hollow doors in Alaska,” he says.
The company also makes traditional three-inch doors, Shkolnik says.
“If you have a very large door or doors, other people tend to use them,” he says.
The company’s catalog also includes insulated glass panels, various styles of windows in panel doors, and tension doors in garage doors.
The other feature of Alaska Door’s immediate expansion is its commitment to responding to consumers in a timely manner.
“Someone called us; his wife drove his car through a garage door,” Shkolnik says. The visitor called the same day of the incident and two days later, the door was installed. “Sometimes we can respond the same day. ” “The explanation why other people like us is that we react quickly. “
No doors; doors built for Alaska.
Advanced Bblasting Services supplies everything many civil projects desire, yet is rarely available: rock.
“Maybe a creusable rock source is rarely found locally, or maybe rock transport is rarely very cost-effective,” says Kevin Gill, CEO of Advanced Busing.
This is not unusual in western Alaska, where gently excavated rocks can be difficult to find. Simple road repair jobs may require rock to be brought in from another community, especially from expansion loads. In such cases, it would possibly be more effective to paint the local rock with Advanced Blast in construction curtains of the specified size.
Rock stabilization is one facet of Advanced Busing’s work. Gill says the company is recently contracting on a task to fix the Denali National Park road through Polychrome Pass, where the Pretty Rocks landslide at Mile 45. 4 closed it in 2021.
“Basically, we’re looking to stabilize that domain as productively as we can by blowing up banks on the slope. . . and installing anchor bolts to stabilize the formations, as well as stabilizing the floor on both sides of the slip zone for the new bridge. that is being installed,” Gill says.
He notes that Denali’s task aims to maintain the area’s natural good appearance, which involves using the same color grout that blends with the local geology to cover the anchor bolts.
While one of their goals is to preserve the good appearance of the grasses, his team also works hard to control the unpredictable geology of the area, adding stabilization measures and intertwining where imaginable to prevent prolonged landslides.
Another ongoing task for Advanced Bblasting will be replacing the façade – on a limited basis – of Prince William Sound. In Cordova, a Turnagain Marine/GMC Contracting joint venture is building an oil spill reaction facility at Shepard Point, about five miles from Cordova. Bblasting is a contractor hired to help pave the way.
The 18-foot-wide road requires a significant amount of blasting, Gill says, so minimizing the environmental impact is a big deal.
“We need to minimize the effect on local flora and fauna, staying out of tidal spaces and minimizing the overall footprint of the road,” he says, noting that the narrowness of the road is a nod to efforts to minimize the impact on local flora and fauna. effects.
Gill says the road task was introduced in the middle of the 5-mile corridor, at the Cordova power plant. Advanced blasting groups design any of the tactics to carry it out.
While about 95 percent of Advanced Durable’s paints are rocks, Gill says the company does some as-a-appear structure demolitions every few years. Even if the demolition plans aren’t as dramatic as the videos showing implosions of high-rise buildings, he says the paintings are still impressive.
“We’ve taken down some towers in the state, but. . . we don’t have many very tall structures in Alaska. Even the tricks are weird,” she states.
Communication or navigation towers are smart candidates for blasting, as their remote location makes them incredibly difficult to dismantle by crane.
Typically, Gill says, advanced blasting is used to demolish structures if demolition with explosives is the only or most cost-effective way to demolish them.
Epoxy-impregnated coatings can be inserted into old pipes, giving them a new life if you want to break the pipes.
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By placing the “narrow” in a specific area, Nu Flow Alaska rehabilitates the inside of water pipes with a variety of field-cured epoxy solutions.
Cast iron pipes have an estimated lifespan of about fifty years, says Joe Jaime, president of Nu Flow. To prevent deterioration and extend the life of the system, Nu Flow Alaska can line pipes with a removable structural liner, used in main lines, horizontal laterals, vertical chimneys, sanitary systems, rainwater or roof drains, ventilation systems. and process, commercial and chemical piping, or a blown epoxy coating, ideal for rehabilitating tensioned pipes. The company can repair drinking water discharge lines between 0. 75 inches and 12 inches in diameter, as well as non-pressurized lines from 1. 5 inches to 24 inches in diameter.
The procedure is simple, as Jaime explains. With the removable liner, the pipe is first cleaned, then the liner is rolled up and expanded with a bladder. When the bladder is removed, only a hardened epoxy tube remains inside the original tube. Blown epoxy coating is similar; The pipe is cleaned very well, dried with hot air, then the epoxy coating is injected with filtered air until the pipe is completely covered, creating a barrier between the broken pipe and the pressurized water it contains.
Nu Flow has been operating since 2011, primarily with federal customers. Nu Flow has worked at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Jaime says, as well as several hospitals.
It was through the hospital paintings that Jaime became familiar with Nu Flow technology. While working as an assignment manager at a hospital facility in Los Angeles, he says, a complication arose: an unforeseen pipe repair was necessary, at an estimated cost of $500,000. A Nu Flow contractor came out and did the repair for about $15,000. Jaime took note and saw a potential market in Alaska, where water and sewer infrastructure is aging and, in some cases, failing.
“I was born and raised in Alaska. I had the idea that it would be a smart procedure to introduce it to Alaska, and it was quite successful,” he says.
Jaime says the company recently completed a project for the city of Galena, lining 3,000 feet of pipe in 6- to 8-inch wood staves. Replacing that pipe would have cost about $5 million, Jaime says. Nu Flow did the job for about $1 million. Paved, the pipes have been smart for fifty years.
Jaime says there is room to grow; Potential consumers will be even more informed about the generation of Nu Flow and how it can be applied.
A team breaks a new path through the desert, reaching an oil spill reaction tank under a structure near Córdoba.
Crews use explosives to reshape slopes before adding bolts and beams to hold rocks in place and prevent further damage to Denali Park Road Polychrome Pass.
One of Alaska’s newest specialty contractors is Temporary Wall Systems (TWS) Anchorage, a company that supplies transient walls for framing projects that consumers want access to.
Owned by husbands Peter and Ena Laliberte, the company was officially unveiled on May 1. Peter has a background in oil and gas business development, while Ena has worked with domestic and foreign non-profit organizations. The couple says they wanted to get started their business to invest in Alaska, providing a service that would bring price to the community.
Looking for a small business opportunity that fit Laliberte’s low-waste lifestyle, for example, the couple discovered TWS was a franchise opportunity. These are residues of transitional walls erected on sites of structures, such as those that were once used and discarded. drywall, plastic sheeting, or disposable ZipWall dust barriers.
Instead, TWS offers prefabricated modular walls, with a galvanized metal look and an aluminum look coated with a foam core to block out noise. There are also parts that can be added as windows, Ena says.
“They are all compatible with each other, so there is no need to screw them to the wall,” he notes. “Removing drywall creates a lot of dust. Our walls resist dust, noise and smoke and are faster to install.
The wall pieces can be adjusted to the length and it is easy to install doors.
“They adapt very well to the hospital structure,” says Ena, noting that the panels have levels of assessment of the threat of infection. The score is used in the healthcare structure to indicate the precautions that deserve to be taken by a structure team; For example, Ena says modular wall systems are airtight and come with vents with scrubbers, so the open air passes into the structure’s outdoor space.
TWS rents the walls and provides a complete service by delivery, installation, and the walls once the task is completed.
Following education at TWS headquarters and additional remote education modules, the company presented at the Alaska Society of Healthcare Engineers and Managers convention on May 1 and 2. He prepared for his first project later that month.
For consumers who need this quick solution, there is a specialist contractor who will pay full attention to this work.
Prefabricated, modular, and reusable walls waste less than disposable structural barriers. The newly opened TWS in Anchorage joins a network of franchises in more than thirty states and Canada.
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