Customer Profiles
“We needed an open structure to use as a food pavilion and it had to be delivered in time for our Grand Opening,” says Adam J, Hawaiian Falls Project Manager.
Adam: "The Quality...Blew Us Away"
Ask anyone where their favorite place to be during the Texas summer is, and you’ll probably hear, ‘the shade!’ It’s hot! The summer of 2012, the Hawaiian Falls Waterpark decided it was time to cool off the residents of Waco with the fifth addition to the chain. “Timing was extremely important to us,” says Adam J., the Hawaiian Falls Project Manager from Waco. “We needed an open structure to use as a food pavilion and it had to be delivered in time for our Grand Opening.”
A recreational facility which would shelter families and friends escaping the heat of the Texas summer was a project which would have special significance to Armstrong Steel. “Hawaiian Falls was a fun project because our in-house engineers work really hard to get into the minds of the people who will be using our buildings, so they got to think like summer swimmers for a while, which was a blast,” said Ethan Chumley, Armstrong CEO.
Hawaiian Falls had some requirements. Adam J. made it clear the steel building had to withstand the elements - heat which would reach triple digits; high winds in the fall and spring; and require little maintenance. No one wants a maintenance crew disrupting the summer cool-down with a bunch of equipment.
Additionally, Waco, Texas is known for termites. A wooden structure would quickly become a tasty meal and breeding ground for pests. Because Hawaiian Falls is a water park, wood would absorb water, rot quicker. Perhaps the biggest issue – fungus! Fungus lives, breathes and multiplies on organic materials like wood. Remember, this is a pavilion where families would go to eat! No one wants to go to a water park and come home with bacteria which was either ingested or attached itself to the feet of young swimmers.
Time Was Of The Essence
And it had to be delivered, erected, and decorated in time for the highly publicized and heavily anticipated Grand Opening Celebration, so time was of the essence – and the heat was on.
“This is one of the biggest reasons many customers come to Armstrong Steel – the in-house engineering and detailing center means that costly time delays are all but eliminated,” offered Chumley. “We have much greater control over details and can meet deadlines much easier.”
A few weeks later, trucks rolled into the soon-to-be-opened water park and unloaded what would become the refreshment pavilion where Waco families and friends would gather when they came to cool off. “The quality of the building blew us away,” says Adam. “They told us it would be easy to erect, but, WOW, it was a breeze!”
Armstrong Steel buildings come complete with erection manuals, detailed assembly instructions, and wet stamped engineer blueprints. All the parts are numbered and correspond to the drawings and, in a matter of days or weeks, a small crew is very capable of erecting what would take a large crew months to erect using traditional wood framing or brick and mortar.
“They came through in a pinch,” says Adam.
That summer, 145,000 people escaped the unforgiving Texas sun. Those people swam in the wave pools, they tumbled down slides, they tanned themselves on the deck. Children laughed, teenagers flirted, adults got to spend time with the family. And those people ate hot dogs and drank sodas in a giant Pavilion, free from termites, no chance of fungus, delivered on time, and on budget.
Thanks in large part to the imaginative minds of Armstrong’s in-house engineers, who got another chance to escape the office and anticipate the complete experiences of one of our customers.