Mark Christopherson, president of RAI Steel and its sister company, industrial contractors Reineke Athens Inc., said lowering taxes and streamlining regulations are the best ways Congress could help his business.

The RAI plant, which opened last year, employs 25 people, Christopherson said. Customers include Lockheed, Caterpillar, General Mills and Mission Foods. He said he anticipates 40 percent growth this year as the economy improves.

Christopherson said he began planning the new plant in 2007, at the start of a recession, to take advantage of low interest rates and a pool of available workers.

“People think when the economy’s down, you can’t expand,” he said. “I’m telling you that’s the only way to do it.”

Read More at Online Athens.

Construction is underway on the new RAI Steel structural steel fabrication facility in Athens, GA.  This state-of-the-art operation will provide the Southeast with quality structural and specialty steel fabricated products. Completion of the facility is expected in late 2010. However, RAI Steel has made arrangements to begin supplying customers this Spring.

“This expansion of Reinicke Athens, Inc. has come out of a demand from our loyal clients who continue to seek additional products and services from RAI. Our clients, including many Fortune 500 companies, are continuing to ask that we take on a larger part of, and responsibility for, their projects. Having our own steel fabrication facility will not only meet these demands, but greatly enhance our value proposition,” says Mark Christopherson - RAI President.

Roy Zeh – Sales & Marketing Director for RAI Steel states, ”RAI has a solid fourteen year reputation for safety, quality and excellent performance. Those values will also carry directly over into our steel business to ensure our customers will receive the same great customer service and quality products they’ve come to expect from RAI.”

The new 105,000 square foot facility sits on 43 acres located on Hwy 441 near Hwy 10 in Athens, GA. The operation is designed to realize great production efficiencies utilizing leading technology which includes a state-of-the-industry robotic beam line capable of significant production and precision fabrication.

For more information about RAI Steel contact:

RAI Steel
Roy Zeh – Sales & Marketing Director
roy.zeh@rai-steel.com
888.689.3272

Reinicke broke ground Tuesday 2/23 on a $8 million steel manufacturing facility on 43 acres along U.S. Highway 441 next to the company’s existing office 2 miles north of the Athens Perimeter, President Mark Christopherson said Friday.  click here to read entire story…

Built using a mixture of HTML and ColdFusion programs, the new website is designed to be simple, stylish and easy to navigate. It sets out the organizations vision through a mixture of images and editorial information in a multitude of sections.

If you have comments or suggestions regarding this site please send your comments in an email to: info@rai-steel.com.

For more information about this and other RAI projects click on RAI Projects.

Friday, September 23 · 10:00am - 3:00pm

2005 Commerce Road Athens, GA 30607

When a recession strikes, most contractors will hunker down, work off their backlogs and wait for the storm to pass, but Reinicke Athens Inc. (RAI) President Mark Christopherson sees it as an opportunity for growth. “To me, the best time to expand is during a down market when people are available, and people are the most important part of a business, in my opinion,” he states.

“We hadn’t focused on growth until about two years ago – on purpose – because we didn’t feel we had the right people to be able to grow. Right now, we are hiring the cream of the crop. We’ve found some great talent and are having a lot of success filling key positions.

“We’ll be poised to take on additional and much larger projects, whereas other companies won’t be ready. While others are in defensive mode, we are in offensive mode and ready to grow. But, then again, you have to have the work to hire people, too, so it’s kind of a Catch-22 for some companies.”

Fortunately, Christopherson says, there is no shortage of work for RAI. The Athens, Ga.-based industrial contractor works mostly for repeat clients, many of which are Fortune 500 companies. Although it varies from year to year, approximately half of its work is negotiated and the other half is competitive bid. Although “people are bidding a lot more aggressively than they have in the past, “ he says, RAI’s competitive advantage is its capability to self-perform up to 80 percent of a turnkey project.

The company’s services include electrical, mechanical, process piping, concrete, steel fabrication, and 3-D building information modeling detailing services. Because RAI can self-perform so much work, it often serves as general contractor on complex industrial projects. “When you can self-perform a high percentage of the work, you have significant price advantages,” Christopherson points out.

“Everybody in our company understands that production is paramount to our customers’ success, and therefore our success. Our employees understand if our clients aren’t making products, they aren’t making money, and we’re there to help them make money. We’re able to perform fast track construction under high pressure, and that’s one of the reasons our clients choose us.”

Brand-New Fabrication Facility

After serving as general manger for his uncle’s business, Reinicke Corp., Christopherson bought the company’s Athens profit center in 1996 and secured a non-compete agreement that enabled RAI to establish a position in the Georgia marketplace. At the time, its main trades were electrical, mechanical and process piping, but as the company grew, it added concrete and steel fabrication to its service offerings.

RAI’s steel fabrication business has grown to the point where it has branched off into its own company, RAI Steel, Inc.. “We have had a lot of opportunities that we weren’t able to take advantage of because we were not big enough to do it, “ Christopherson notes. As a result, RAI is building a 103,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art structural steel fabrication facility next door to its headquarters that will boast fully automated production capabilities.

“We’re going to have a robotic plasma cutter beam line; drilling, coping, notching all in one stations; and an automated blasting and painting system along with work station areas and assembly areas,” he says. “We’re anticipating we’ll have maybe 25 to 30 employees running that operation at full capacity.” Construction on the $8 million project began in February and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2012.

Project Safety Comes First

In fall 2009, RAI completed work on a 51,000-square foot skidder facility for Caterpillar Forest Products at the equipment manufacturer’s LaGrange, Ga., headquarters. Assembly of all CAT© forest machines, wheel skidders and both Cat and Prentice track feller bunchers were moved from the Caterpillar plant in Aurora, Ill., to LaGrange in support of the 2005 decision to consolidate the manufacturing of all Caterpillar forestry products. The facility was designed and constructed in accordance with LEED certification standards using on-site and local materials with high-recycled content. Other green features include high-efficiency heating and air-conditioning systems, low-flow plumbing fixtures, hot-on-demand water heaters, and an oil/water separator to reduce waste and hauling costs.

RAI’s top priority was to complete the $6 million project safely. “Safety is the most important thing on the job site,” he maintains. “You can’t qualify to work for the customers we work with without a good safety record and a solid safety plan. We have a 0.74 EMR, which is in the 99^th percentile for contractors our size. We get a 26 percent discount off our worker’s compensation rates based on our safety record.

“That goes back to what I said before about employees being our most valuable asset,” he adds. “All you really have in business is your employees, when you get right down to it. We don’t want any of them to get hurt. I know them all personally, and I don’t want to see any of them hurt. We emphasize that and reinforce it on a daily and weekly basis that safety is not an option, it is required.”