Category: Blog

There isn’t a “typical” day in Midwest Mole’s shop. There’s always a lot going on, and everything can change at a moment’s notice. We have to remain fluid. The most common tasks we have in our shop are performing scheduled maintenance, along with fixing hydraulic and electrical systems.

That said, we take care of some complex jobs here as well. We recently worked on completely revamping a small diameter tunneling machine for a job out in Arizona. That included rebuilding components, updating the wiring, and bringing old parts of the machine up to current code and current safety specs. We replumbed the whole thing and rewired the entire machine.

Often, there’s a job somewhere that we thought we had ready and prepared to go, but for environmental reasons or other unforeseen circumstances, all of a sudden, there are changes needed. In that situation, we might take some guys off of routine maintenance duty to work on something specific to get that job back on track.

For example, we were recently tunneling under a railroad. We hammered a pipe through an existing culvert, but we didn’t have the right size adapter for the pipe hammer, which is a violent piece of equipment. It was going to take five or six weeks to get a new one made from the manufacturer, but we made one ourselves in a couple of days. We took a situation that went from “we can’t do this, and we can’t buy one soon enough,” to make a success out of it ourselves.

In that same timeframe, we still had to service excavators and trucks, build some new storage and trailers, etc. When we have those bigger, trickier tasks come up, it becomes more challenging to juggle our routine maintenance. Thankfully, for some of the simpler jobs, we can sub work out to our partners.

That might include sending pickups to the Ford dealer or a local mechanic or sending excavators to the dealer. We try to do as much as we can in-house, but as the craziness level ratchets up, that’s sometimes not possible. We can’t rely on anyone else with our specialized equipment like tunneling machines, but we can sub some of those simpler repairs out when necessary.

We currently have 20 employees working between the shop and the yard. We have a great team, and everybody thinks a little bit differently. That allows us to blend a lot of different ideas and come up with the right solution for just about any problem. We’re responsive when situations on the job change, and when something we’ve planned for months doesn’t work. We put our heads together and figure out another way to get to the other side.

We take a lot of pride in the fact that we don’t ever give up. We do everything we can to build what we need to complete a job. Finally, we try to make every piece of equipment better than it was initially, whether that’s safer, faster, or more efficient. It’s not enough for us to restore a piece of equipment to its original state.

When walking through the Midwest Mole office, you might find it surprising when you come across our on-premise fitness center. We have an expansive selection of weight lifting equipment, as well as several options for cardio machines and stretching space. Physical health is a major component of our organizational values. For our crews to do their best work, we believe they need to take care of themselves physically and mentally.

Just like any athlete, you need to prepare yourself for the game. If you go into the game out of shape, and you don’t stretch beforehand, you won’t perform the way you need to. It’s the same with this industry. You have to prepare yourself every day for the physical demands of the job. At Midwest Mole, that means encouraging our moles to develop and maintain good fitness habits.

We have a stretching program that Travelers Insurance originally developed for our people. Recently, Athletico Physical Therapy updated the program. We can’t exactly force anyone to participate in the stretching program, but we highly recommend it. We do it before work in the morning and again after lunch. We actively promote that on every project. In the same vein as our stretching program, we have a weekly yoga session in our gym. We believe it is equally important to have office staff get moving as remaining stationary can cause long term physical issues as well.

We also have a preventive care program. At the first sign of any back pain, shoulder pain, or anything like that, we will set them up with a chiropractor or physical therapist. This way, we can eradicate anything before it becomes an actual injury. We do that at no cost to the person.

The preventive care program has been very successful so far. We’ve been doing it for about six years now, and we probably spend from $10,000 to $12,000 per year on it to treat eight or nine people. It’s been highly effective, and it’s part of the reason we’ve been able to go five years without any recordable accident. That’s the proof in the pudding. All of our people are valuable contributors to this business, and we can’t afford to lose any of them for a significant amount of time. 

There are ancillary benefits to these programs as well. One of the most obvious ones is that our people can see that we care about them, and that goes a long way. By integrating these programs into the fabric of Midwest Mole, we’ve demonstrated that we will go above and beyond to keep somebody healthy and take care of everyone.

Tunneling can be a physically demanding job; there’s no doubt about that. As an employer in this industry, we take it upon ourselves to make sure we set our people up for success in every possible way.

In any construction field, safety is of the utmost importance, and that’s even more true for a trenchless tunneling company like Midwest Mole. If you’re going to spend the majority of your workday underground, you need to know that the tunnel you’re working in is safe, and that your co-workers have all the knowledge and expertise necessary to stay out of harm’s way.

That’s why Midwest Mole has a comprehensive safety program that ensures our people are working in the safest conditions possible at all times. Our approach to safety is that it really comes down to the individual ― every single person on our crews functions as a safety inspector on our job sites. We recognize that our safety director can’t be everywhere all the time, so our focus is on teaching our people the best methods they can use to not only protect themselves, but also to keep an eye on everyone around them.

This all starts with our orientation process, which is a day-long session for every new Midwest Mole employee. Even if someone has experience working on road crews ― a type of construction that does have some overlap with what we do ― the trenchless tunneling industry is still a whole new world in many ways. Whether we’re discussing rigging, fall protection, confined space methods, or even just teaching them where to put their hands, we need to get everyone up to speed before we ever consider sending them down into a tunnel.

Another important aspect of our safety program is recognizing the people who make an effort to make our job sites as safe as possible on a daily basis. That’s why we make such a big deal out of our annual safety awards. Every year, we present these awards at our company banquet. We hand out awards for individuals who helped us achieve no injuries, no accidents, and no property damage, and we also have specific safety awards for our foremen.

Our people take these awards seriously ― partially because we all want to work in the safest possible environment, but also because our crew members love to compete. The sense of pride the winners have when they receive these awards is truly inspiring. For example, one of our experienced foremen, Oscar, has all his safety award plaques hanging on the wall in his house.

Overall, our approach to safety has evolved over the years to the point where we’re entirely confident in every employee’s ability to avoid accidents and injuries. Instead of just checking a box and handing our guys some meaningless test at the end of a safety meeting, we make sure that they really learn something every time they participate in a safety training session. Safety directly impacts all of us, so we need everyone to be on the same page ― every site, every day.

We readily admit that the work we do at Midwest Mole is not for everyone. Our work is challenging, and it goes without saying that you’ll likely get more than just your hands dirty. But at the same time, we believe that work should be rewarding and enjoyable, instead of being something you dread when you wake up every morning. So, what makes a good Midwest Mole employee?

For us, the biggest thing is work ethic. If you’re not willing to roll up your sleeves and work hard, you will not be a good fit for Midwest Mole. In addition, trenchless tunneling is work that often requires travel, which means we need people who are willing to sacrifice some of their time at home for nights in hotels.

Another major piece of the puzzle for us is that our employees need to be passionate about what they do on a daily basis. You’re not just pushing pipe in the ground ― you’re encountering new and exciting challenges every day. If you don’t take pride in your work, and you don’t truly enjoy your job, you won’t fit in with our team of dedicated people.

There’s another aspect of the Midwest Mole life where you either have it or you don’t, and that’s whether you’re claustrophobic. We will never judge or make fun of you for being afraid of tight spaces, but the fact of the matter is, our people spend a significant amount of time underground, crawling around in rather narrow pipes. Our team is full of supportive, friendly people, but we need to know what your skillset is, and whether we’ll be able to send you underground without worrying that you’ll freak out down there!

Who doesn’t fit in with the Midwest Mole family? If you’re the type of person that needs to have a consistent schedule, working similar hours and days every week, it’s probably not going to work out. In our industry, change is a constant, and we need to be able to adapt to any curveballs thrown our way. Beyond that, we need people who own their work, and don’t make excuses. If you’re selfish, or if all you care about is your paycheck, Midwest Mole isn’t an environment where you’ll thrive.

If none of this information scared you off yet, and if you’re still reading this post, why not head over to our Careers page and submit your resume today? We’re always looking for talented, hard-working people to join the Midwest Mole family!

In our industry, you never know when you’ll meet a new client, or forge a valuable new relationship. Several years ago, we were at a trade organization convention in Phoenix, Arizona, and a contractor stopped by our booth to see if we could provide a pricing quote for a large project in Washington, D.C. We ended up going in together on that job, and as a result, we met several different key players in the D.C. market.

From there, we’ll fast-forward a few years, to when Midwest Mole President Jason Miller and rail division manager David Howell were heading to the airport after wrapping up a project in the D.C. area. Moments after Jason and David dropped off their rental car, David got a call from a contractor who said that a sewer had failed just one block away from the White House, and a sinkhole had opened up in the street as a result.

There’s probably quite a few companies out there that would say, “It’s too late, we’re already at the airport to head home,” but Midwest Mole is definitely not one of those companies. Instead, we rented another car, drove from the airport back into D.C., and helped repair the sewer and fill the sinkhole.

Because this was on Memorial Day weekend, we had to pull some strings to even get materials to do the job. We ended up calling one of our contacts in Virginia, who loaded a truck with pipe and delivered it to the job site around 11pm that night. We worked around the clock all weekend long to rehab that sewer, and the city was able to re-open the street shortly after Memorial Day.

When you’re a relatively small company located in Indiana, and you’re getting calls to do a bunch of work on a holiday weekend in the heart of the nation’s capitol, it’s incredibly rewarding to be the company people come to when an emergency pops up. It requires a lot of travel and even more hard work, but moments like this one remind us of why we put in all the hours.

That’s why we say that our industry ultimately comes down to relationships ― with contractors, with our materials suppliers, and with utility companies across the country. Sometimes there’s no advance warning when opportunity is about to come knocking, which is why Midwest Mole is ready to answer the call day or night, all year round.