Monthly Archives: March 2015
M&H Valve Veterans Have Over 520 Years of Combined Experience
L to R: Tommy “Mr. Clean” Fielder, Terry Christjohn, James Hubbard, James Butterworth, Harry Christian, Dennis Turner, Larry Parker, Harold Westbrooks, Andy Higgins, Larry Joe “Chopper Joe” Mays, and Wilbur (Peter) Price. Not pictured are Glen Key and Jack Williams.
In the recent issue of quarterly newsletter “The Valve Stem,” M&H Valve featured 13 team members that each had 40+ years of service for a combined experience of over 520 years! M&H observed that as time goes on, names and faces change and processes and developments continue to move forward to meet the ever changing and demanding times in which we live. Despite this, they did not want to forget the veteran team members with 40+ years of service that have contributed to the overall process and successful growth M&H now enjoys and will continue to experience in the future.
Over the years, the M&H team has gained a wealth of knowledge from team members that started work in the 1960s and 1970s while also experiencing some growing pains together. They all gained a great deal of experience which they are happy to share with the future generations joining the company in the future.
Individual Years of Service:
- Tommy “Mr. Clean” Fielder (10/2/72) – 42 years
- Terry Christjohn (11/15/73) – 41 years
- James Hubbard (11/27/72) – 42 years
- James Butterworth (5/24/72) – 42 years
- Harry Christian (1/25/72) – 43 years
- Dennis Turner (10/11/71) – 43 years
- Larry Parker (8/21/72) – 42 years
- Harold Westbrooks (5/30/73) – 41 years
- Andy Higgins (7/10/73) – 41 years
- Larry Joe “Chopper Joe” Mays (7/13/71) – 41 years
- Wilbur (Peter) Price (11/27/72) – 42 years
- Glen Key (9/12/69) – 45 years
- Jack Williams (4/25/71) – 43 years
A great big THANK YOU to these seasoned veterans for their many years of service!
Meet McWane: Krystal Hansen, McWane Ductile-Utah
![Krystal Hansen [Scaled]](https://mcwaneinc.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/krystal-hansen-scaled.jpg)
We are pleased to announce that Krystal Hansen has joined the McWane Ductile-Utah team as the new HR Manager. Krystal has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Political Science from the University of Utah. She has extensive HR experience, most recently as a Human Resources Business Partner. Prior to that, she was the HR Manager for Unicity International.
Krystal owns two horses named Joe Joe & Annabelle and she enjoys riding, being outdoors and camping.
Please join us in welcoming Krystal to the team!
Meet McWane: Leroy Sistrunk, Tyler Union
Tyler Union team member Leroy Sistrunk retired on March 1st, 2015. Leroy began his career at Tyler Union on March 22nd, 2000, in the Disa Millroom. Leroy’s friends and co-workers knew him as a serious “down-to-business” man, rarely joking until his favorite day of the week rolled around…Wednesday.
If you’re thinking Hump Day, middle of the week, halfway to the weekend, you’re wrong. Wednesday was payday and Leroy always did a two-step dance when he got his check. Dale Garrett, Leroy’s supervisor, said this made Wednesday his favorite day of the week also because he always looked forward to watching Leroy do the “payday dance.”
According to Dale, Leroy had one request on his last day and that was to know how it felt to instruct the crew. Dale obliged and under his close supervision, Leroy got his wish. He even let Leroy wear his hard hat for a while!
Leroy, we wish you a happy and relaxing retirement – and we will certainly think of you and your “payday dance” on Wednesdays!
Team Tyler Pipe Shows Up Big at the 2nd Annual Fresh 15 Run
On Saturday, March 7th, over 30 Tyler Pipe & Tyler Union team members joined together on a very chilly morning to support the local community by participating in the second annual Fresh 15 Fun Run benefiting the Bethesda Health Clinic and The American Heart Association. Last year they had approximately 15 Tyler Pipe team members to register, so they were overjoyed to see that the numbers of those willing to participate had doubled.
Tyler Pipe encourages participation by paying the registration fees for each team member and one guest. This year over $80,000 was raised to support a handful of charitable organizations that provide care and health services to residents in Smith County and surrounding counties.
This year a couple of Tyler Pipe team members hit the mark with their participation. Ross Caldwell, Stationary Machines Supervisor, won 1st place in his age bracket. Running partner David Puckett, Electrical Maintenance Supervisor, won 2nd place in his age bracket, missing 1st place by only 3 seconds. As David said, “I would have pushed a little harder if I would have known I was that close.”
All in all it was a great experience and Tyler Pipe and Tyler Union were glad to be a part of over 3,000 people that participated that day.
Congratulations, Team Tyler Pipe, and many thanks to each of you that participated! A special congrats to Ross and David for their race performances!
Nighthawk Launches Consumer Engagement Utility Portal
Nighthawk announced last week that they are launching a Consumer Engagement Platform that will utilize the award winning “Cloud” based service. It is a full engagement and communications platform that delivers messaging and real time usage data in a variety of easy to understand graphs as well as opportunities and tips for customers to reduce their monthly costs and usage. The multi-tenant platform enables electric, water and gas utilities for a complete approach to resource optimization. All customers would like to save money on their utilities. The Consumer Engagement Portal equips them to meet this goal.
This engagement directly meets the demands of customers to better understand utility usage, become better stewards of the environment and most importantly lower utility costs. Customers become directly engaged with the utility and are more receptive to communications delivered through the platform.
Nighthawk’s Consumer Engagement Portal is a game changing platform with analytical features and customized comparisons of similarly sized homes without requiring the homeowner to complete long surveys or enter extensive information. The portal allows utilities to provide customers with the granular data they are requesting about daily usage and how they compare to similar neighbors. Powered by Nighthawk’s “cloud” based WebConnect™ platform the new portal offering is both more robust and more affordable than others available.
The portal also offers easy to understand graphs including the display of weather and how it relates to utility usage. Previous periods can be selected and compared to the currently selected period. Alerts for cost and usage thresholds can be configured to text or email notifications when they are exceeded. Comparison data displays usage by similar homes in the zip code broken out to highlight savings enjoyed by the most efficient neighbors. Utilities gain the opportunity to send temperature and weather related messaging in addition to suggestions for conservation.
Nighthawk’s Consumer Engagement Portal takes advantage of the fact that when people are given the ability to understand usage patterns and shown the savings enjoyed by neighbors they are much more likely to adopt those savings habits themselves.
These savings and the increased communication between utility and customer equate to a virtual demand response program requiring no additional equipment or maintenance. It is the most cost effective form of demand response. Nighthawk’s Consumer Engagement Portal can be configured to work with your existing billing and meter systems. Nighthawk utilizes cellular communication combined with ERT reading technology to collect data from new or legacy systems. Their flexible database and open API solution allows for quick implementation and is offered as a fully hosted turnkey solution for utilities of any size.
We’re excited about this new platform and know that our customers will be as well.
McWane, Inc. 