Winter 2016

Conewago Helps Miller Chemical Rebuild Campus in One Year After Catastrophic Fire

In the early morning hours of June 8, 2015, a massive fire broke out at the Miller Chemical & Fertilizer, LLC manufac-turing facility in Hanover, PA. Explosions from the fire could be heard from several miles away and massive plumes of smoke billowed into the sky as the sun rose. By 8 a.m., the fire was the lead story on major news outlets around the country.

The extreme heat from the blaze caused the steel to yield and concrete to crack. The fire continued to burn for more than 12 hours. Hotspots were still being extinguished by firefighters for three days after the fire began.

The ultimate cause of the fire was never determined, but in-vestigators believe it was sparked by an electrical malfunc-tion. Fortunately, there were no injuries to Miller employees or nearby residents. Damage from the fire was estimated at $20 million and local emergency officials declared it one of the largest disasters ever in south central Pennsylvania.

A week after the fire, Miller Chemical president Charles H. Svec surveyed the damage with a representative from his insurance company. The representative remarked, “You won’t be back in business here for three to five years.”

Svec responded, “we have to be back in business in a year!”

“What that insurance adjuster didn’t know was that we had two things working in our favor,” said Svec. “One was a

Conewago Township ordinance that would allow us to re-build on the same footprint without a lot of time spent in the approval or permitting process, and two was the fact that we had a top notch general contractor that we would be working with right around the corner.”

Miller’s campus is located about a mile from Conewago En-terprises, Inc.’s headquarters and CEI has a long history of providing construction services to Miller. Hoffheins Bros., a construction company that is now a part of Conewago, built the original precast building at Miller in the 1950’s and CEI has been active on the site since the early 1990’s, complet-ing several additions and upgrades.

Conewago team members were on site the day after the fire to begin demolition work and clear the site. Plans were quickly developed to help Miller Chemical achieve their goal of being back up and running within the year.

Celebrating 60 Years of a Commitment to Excellence2016 marked Conewago Enterprises Inc.’s 60th anniversary. While the organization has grown significantly since it was founded by Donald B. Smith, Sr. in 1956, CEI continues to grow, evolve and thrive, serving a wide variety of clients throughout the mid-Atlantic region and beyond.

Conewago has taken on some of the largest and most complex construction projects in the region and has succeeded by maintaining our Commitment to Excellence and strong desire to meet the needs of our clients.

With the third generation now working in the family business, we are grateful for the long time employees, dedicated team of professionals and repeat customers that have driven the continued growth and success of Conewago Enterprises.

Continued on Page 2

Conewago Helps Miller Chemical Rebuild Campus in One Year After Catastrophic Fire

Optimizing Efficiencies in New Facility

While a majority of the buildings on the campus were de-stroyed, several structures survived the fire. A vertical tank storage building and a horizontal tank storage building constructed by Conewa-go withstood the flames fully intact. These buildings were constructed using Cone-wago’s fire-rated precast wall panels and the panels simply needed to be cleaned and painted afterwards.

The team at Conewago worked in tandem with Miller Chemical leadership and Mill-er’s chemical process equipment vendors to help redesign the facility to capitalize on efficiencies. “The layout and buildings at our plant had evolved over time and were basically built as they were needed,” said Svec. “As a result, we had different manufacturing and production func-tions in different locations, which led to some minor inefficien-cies and awkward routing of product flow in the factory and warehouse.”

Starting with a clean slate, the team thought through the lay-out and designed a contiguous structure that would help op-timize operations.

While the footprint of the new facility is the same as the pre-vious structure, the new 97,000 square foot building features higher ceilings with a 32 foot clear height and was construct-ed using best practices and the best materials the industry has to offer. The new non-combustible insulated precast con-crete building is also outfitted with a state-of-the-art sprinkler system and is located adjacent to a new storm water basin that can hold 90 minutes of full flow from the sprinklers.

Overcoming Obstacles

While the plant was destroyed by the searing heat from the chemical fire, ironically, it was freezing temperatures and harsh winter weather that presented obstacles Conewago had to overcome to meet their ambitious one-year goal to de-liver a completed facility.

“I remember looking out on a windy, snowy day with freezing temperatures and the crew from Conewago was on site shov-eling snow off the concrete so they could get back to work,”

said Svec. “That just showed me how dedicated they were to get-ting this job done.”

The Conewago team was moti-vated to achieve their goal and help a fellow Hanover area busi-ness during a difficult time.

Less than a year after construc-tion began, the Use & Occupan-cy permit for the new building was approved on June 3, 2016. On June 8, 2016, Miller employ-

ees were packaging their first batch of product in their new building, one year to the day after the devastating fire.

“When I look back on the whole process, I am still in awe of what Conewago accomplished here,” said Svec. “We dealt with a lot of challenges in working to make things right with our neighbors and the environmental impacts from the fire, but we couldn’t be happier with the work Conewago did.”

“Initially our ownership was a little bit hesitant to just go with Conewago as our contractor without bidding out the job, but we had complete faith in Conewago and knew we wanted to get the job done quickly,” added Svec. “When it was all said and done, our owners told us they were glad we talked them into doing it this way and letting Conewago handle the project.”

Continued from Page 1

Miller Chemical traces its roots back to the late 1930’s and has a proud history of providing chemical and fertilizer prod-ucts to scores of clients on a regional, national and interna-tional basis.

Amazingly, Miller’s sales and revenue for the year after the fire fell less than 5% short of the previous year. Their team worked out of rented space and went above and beyond to make certain they met the needs of their clients.

Investing in the Future of the Construction IndustryConewago Enterprises’ Charitable Foundation encourages students to apply who are pursuing a career in engineering, con-struction, or business related fields. The foundation supports the development of the next generation of leaders in the industry each year by awarding several four-year scholarships to students.The scholarships are awarded to graduating high school seniors and are distributed based on scholastic performance, overall character and financial need. To date, the foundation has awarded more than $480,000 in four-year scholarships to a total of 21 students from Adams County and western York County.

Five students who headed to college this fall received the scholarships:

In early October, Conewago Enterprises Charitable Founda-tion hosted the 6th Annual Sporting Clay Fundraiser. A full field of shooters took to the challenging 20-station course at Central Penn Sporting Clays and enjoyed a casual reception afterwards.

“It was an honor to be part of a great fundraising event that helps deserving local students and was a lot of fun,” said Michael Harter, VP/Principal of McConkey & Company, who was a first time participant in the event. “Conewago’s efforts to grow the next generation of leaders in their field has in-spired our team at McConkey to look into ways we can do something similar in our industry.”

Conewago covers all expenses related to the shoot and the reception to ensure that every dollar raised goes directly to

support the Foundation. This year the event raised $43,000, making the 2016 event the most successful on record! Cone-wago kicked in a matching pledge of $43,000 that coupled with an additional $14,000 from the foundation will allow Conewago to offer a total of five $20,000 scholarships again in 2017.

Clay Shoot Fundraiser Supports Scholarships

Congratulations and good luck to all of our 2016 scholarship recipients!

Brooke Eller, a graduate of Bigler-ville High School, is attending HACC and plans to transfer to Mount St. Mary’s University

Nancy Diaz Fajardo, a graduate of Hanover High School, is attending Lebanon Valley College

Samantha Brown, a graduate of Fairfield High School, is attending Shippensburg University

Justin Klunk, a graduate of New Oxford High School, is attending Thaddeus Stevens College

Kyle Krout, a graduate of Hanover High School, is attending Juniata College.

The entire Conewago family wishes you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season!

YWCA – 10,419 square foot facility – Gettysburg, PA

Conewago is fortunate to have a number of exciting projects underway or near completion throughout the region. In The Works:

St. Katherine Drexel – 20,136 square foot church – Frederick, MD

AquaPhoenix – two story plant and office additions, totaling 19,882 square feet – Hanover, PA

Sam’s Club – 14 acre site development – Hanover, PA

Mercersburg Academy Fieldhouse – 62,700 square foot athletic facility – Mercersburg, PA

Trammell Crow – 1,148,274 square foot distribution center - Perryville, MD