Multifaceted Fabricator

by Mark Robins | 3 February 2020 12:00 am

Since then, this South Bend, Ind., company known as Shaffner Heaney Associates Inc., has flourished to become a nationally recognized wall panel manufacturer specializing in custom wall systems and building panel systems. Rainscreen systems, copper wall panels and aluminum wall panels are just a few types of exterior wall cladding solutions it not only makes, but also fabricates, sells and installs for new and retrofitted buildings.

Composite Company

Much of the company’s early success and growth resulted from Mooresville, N.C.-based Alcan Composites USA Inc. selling its Alucobond branded aluminum composite material (ACM) product in the United States for the first time in 1980. Shaffner Heaney worked closely with Alucobond and became one of the first ACM fabricators in America at that time. “We had a territory and we fabricated in that territory,” Heaney, now president at the company, says. “As other products were introduced in the marketplace, the territory model went away and all fabricators had access to other manufacturers’ projects.”

Shaffner Heaney grew with the ACM industry until that became the biggest part of its business in the early 1990s—manufacturing and installing that product in and around the Midwest. “We still are a istributor of other manufacturers’ products in the Midwest, in protected sales territories, as well as installers of their products,” Heaney says. “But the composite metal panel business is the biggest portion of our business.”

SHApe Architectural

Because Shaffner Heaney is a multifaceted company with fabrication, installation and distribution, it spun off a brand called SHApe Architectural, which is now its metals’ division. This helps it differentiate its metal manufactured products as a brand of its own so there is no brand confusion in the marketplace where it sells its metal products to other companies to install. Product offerings include composite metal panel systems as well as plate, perforated and phenolic panel systems. Shaffner Heaney can also offer many of these systems in engineered unitized assemblies saving the contractor costs, which reduces installation time. It also owns Envel Façades Inc. a separate company manufacturing ultra-high-performance concrete rainscreen façade panels.

Because Shaffner Heaney manufactures its own metal products, it can exercise a great deal of process control and respond quickly to ever-changing project conditions and schedules. Its project managers can communicate expectations directly to its contractor customers. Also, “As we ventured deeper and deeper into installing our own manufactured products in the early 2000s, the composite metal panel material market became extremely competitive with more and more companies fabricating and installing themselves,” Heaney says. “So naturally we had to do the same.

By controlling the project management of the job, we are not reliant on a secondary customer’s project management capabilities to filter that information to us so we can respond quickly. It’s having our finger on the button of the project. [We are] a lot more intimately aware of what’s going on the project instead of having information filtered through a third party.”

More Complex Projects

Shaffner Heaney actively recruits outstanding employees with extensive background and talent. “The capabilities of our people have allowed us to take on projects of great complexity, allowing us a greater freedom and selection of projects to choose from,” Heaney says. “This sets us apart from our competitors who go after simpler, easier work. This helps us get good margins on projects.”

One Shaffner Heaney metal-based project of note is the renovated Charleston, W.Va.-based Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center, formerly the Charleston Civic Center. “We had a good-size contract on it with a lot of scope. We could tell there was a lot going on from the bid documents,” says Mark Haab, vice president of operations at SHApe Architectural. “We spent a lot of time and energy on it. We were installing it ourselves with help from a local union and we were fighting for space to do our work. There was a tall glass face with a “V” at the top right by the river. All the work had to be installed by a river barge. There was a very definite window on whenthe barge could arrive and when it had to leave. In planning meetings we had to get ahead of that and plan exactly when we were going to be there, making doubly sure everything was drawn and built properly. We had a contingency plan if something happened because it would have interfered with our completion on-time. They had an aggressive timeline to complete the work.”

Shaffner Heaney is especially proud of its work on the University of Iowa’s Voxman School of Music in Iowa City, Iowa. “This was an incredibly complicated project that our staff turned into a simple-to-install design. Then installation was executed in the field by some real craftspeople with stunning results,” Heaney says. “The job was 100% coordinated and we were able to work with the constantly updated project model and create very detailed drawings of the framing system that hung off the ceiling and supported the ACM panels. There were a lot of penetrations in the ceiling and it had to be coordinated upfront, which took a lot of effort. Everything worked out pretty well and it was a special job.”

In addition to complexity, location is a factor in determining Shaffner Heaney’s projects. “[This] determines if an area is underserved by a subcontracting community that would or could install our product,” Heaney says. “Then we will bid on it if the job is an attractive one for us. We would prefer to sell material to subcontractors who install it; we are filling in gaps in places that otherwise wouldn’t have competitive bids on those projects. We work in plenty of markets and work with plenty of subcontractors.”

Often, Shaffner Heaney will hear about a job it may be interested in, and then make a call to their customers in that area who may be looking at the job. “If they are bidding on it we will work with them on it and give them the material price rather than the installed price,” Heaney says. “A lot of jobs we take as a case-by-case basis. A good example is we have a glazing contractor that picks up the scope when it’s related to the glazing. That’s an easy call to make but we always try to keep up with customers in those different areas to not interfere with their business model and still be a supplier to them rather than a competitor.”

Source URL: https://www.metalconstructionnews.com/articles/multifaceted-fabricator/

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