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Industrial size
Hahn fits Cullen’s mold
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Hahn |
If Milwaukee truly is the machine shop to the world, then David Hahn shouldn’t have trouble keeping busy at his new job.
“Really, it is,” said Hahn, who joined J.P. Cullen & Sons Inc.’s Milwaukee office as a project manager on April 30. “There are more machinists per capita here than any other part of the world.”
Hahn, whose first job with Cullen is on the Northwestern Mutual Life parking structure in Milwaukee, has a good reason for his statistical knowledge of machinists in the Milwaukee area. After all, many of those same people might one day be Hahn’s clients.
“My interest has always been in industrial work,” he said. “My goal is to build up the industrial division at J.P. Cullen. I think this company is poised to do that. They’ve got the resources, the people, the equipment.”
And, with Hahn, Cullen has an employee who’s ready to tackle the challenges that his area of expertise presents.
“Industrial work is quicker,” he said. “You meet a lot of different people. It’s very dynamic. The returns are generally better than on the single, larger projects.
“You’re out on the site a lot. You’re in their offices. You get to see a lot of different operations — automotive assembly lines, manufacturing machine shops, foundries, melting hot steel. It’s always a neat experience.”
Hahn’s construction experience began when he was attending the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and working summers on paving crews for Northeast Asphalt Inc., Green Bay.
“I really enjoyed that and made a lot of money doing it,” he said. “I enjoyed building things and working with my hands.”
Age: 39 Home: Merton Family: Married with three children Hobbies: Boating, snowmobiling or hunting at his Okauchee Lake home, but “not as much as we’d like. There’s just not enough time.” Getting the band back together: In high school and college, Hahn was a drummer for a few garage bands, but he sold his drums. He recently purchased a new set. “If I can find someone to play with me, that would be great.” On studying at UW-Madison: “It’s pretty liberal. That’s not me. I lived on Mifflin Street. It was pretty crazy.” Brookfield Central High School sports: Hahn played running back and cornerback for the football team, and he was a sprinter for the track team. |
Eventually, he transferred from Whitewater to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study construction administration, which, at the time, was offered through the university’s School of Agricultural Engineering.
“We learned about all kinds of farm stuff, a lot of things that had no relation to engineering,” he said.
Hahn graduated with a bachelor’s degree in construction administration in 1991 and took a full-time job with Northeast Asphalt.
“It all funneled from working in the summers,” he said. “I went around and did a lot of marketing in Door County, Manitowoc, the whole northeast part of the state.”
After a while, though, Hahn wanted to get back to Milwaukee, so, in 1994, he took a job with Brookfield-based Hunzinger Construction Company. The new job took him south of Green Bay, but he overshot his mark, spending his first year with Hunzinger building a Briggs & Stratton manufacturing facility in Statesboro, Ga.
“The only time I really traveled away from home was that one year I was down in Georgia,” he said. “It was crazy. The work ethic down there is totally different. ‘We’ll get to it when we get to it’ kind of thing. ‘Don’t push us, we’re going fishing.’”
Hahn stayed with Hunzinger for 13 years before making the switch to Cullen.
And, new guy in the office or not, he said he expects his new job will keep him hopping.
“Sometimes I’ll handle up to 15 jobs at a time,” he said. “There are a lot of opportunities for our type of work out there.
“You always need to be learning new things along the way. Sure as heck, if you don’t, someone else will be standing in line, and they will.”
— Sheila Llanas