Team Spirit

Wenzler, Miron build contractor a new home

By Sean Ryan
Daily Reporter Staff

Miron Construction Company Inc. began work on its new headquarters with exploding bombs, but the remainder of the project was a friendly affair grounded in teamwork.

"We had to blast right away to loosen up the rock in order to excavate," said Dennis Neumann, project manager for Neenah-based Miron. "Instead of digging right away we had to be blasting, which sounds more like you're destroying something rather than building it."

Miron called on William Wenzler and Associates Architects, which has collaborated with Miron on design/build projects for almost 13 years, to design the $5.6 million office building.

Wenzler President Edward Wenzler said Miron probably picked his firm instead of some of Miron's larger architectural collaborators because the two companies have a solid working relationship.

"These guys are good friends of ours, so we wanted to make sure that we did it right," he said. "That's an interesting question: Why did they pick us? Miron has a philosophy that we share, which is that any good working partnership is based on good relationships."

Wenzler said Miron was more involved and dedicated than most owners he's worked with. He said it was strange working with a client who asked him to expand on his initial designs rather than cut corners to trim costs.

"I didn't feel like the weight of the success of the project was on my shoulders," Wenzler said. "It was a team project. It made our job a lot easier because (Miron Secretary/Treasurer) David Voss was so emotionally and mentally involved in it. He would always be pushing us for more."

Wide-open spaces

Wenzler said he designed the new headquarters with teamwork on his mind, and he tried to keep the office areas as open and interconnected as possible so employees had easy access to each other.

Neumann said the open-design concept was a new idea that was based on an office project Miron worked on for an employee-owned company in New Berlin.

"Initially, I think a lot of people are skeptical of the open concept, but it's a neat place to go to work," he said. "When you come in the front door you can see the two levels of the building and the atrium. You can see all over."

The design is meant to put everyone in the office on equal footing and encourage a sense of teamwork among employees, Wenzler said.

"The New Berlin company was based around the concept that there is no hierarchy," he said. "Miron, although it is not employee-owned, embodies the very similar concept that everyone is equal. There is a real association that occurs there where you can see everybody and say, 'Hey, I need to talk to you.'"

Neumann said that although he was building a workplace for himself and his co-workers in this project, he didn't think it was much more important than any other job.

"We'd like to say not, with a little chuckle," he said. "We take care in what we do. We like to be open with everybody in how we do business, and I think that's reflected in our office."

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