[ B y L o r i S i c h t e r M a n n ]Todd Barrett, regional manager at

Maine Drilling & Blasting, says there’sno lack of obstacles in his industry thatmight stop a lesser company in itstracks. this applies to completing com-

plex projects, transporting explosives toremote locations, and ensuring thesafety of employees, the public and theenvironment. it also applies to the nu-merous tough but vital internal meas-ures on which Maine Drilling & Blastingcurrently is focused.

regardless of the obstacles, the com-pany has proven to be a solutions-basedoperation for nearly half-a-century.What started as a kitchen-table conceptin 1966 has grown to become a tour-de-

force in the drilling and blasting land-scape throughout the northeast andMid-atlantic regions.

With local offices throughout thenortheast and corporate headquartersin Gardiner, Maine, the company pro-vides clients with literally every aspectneeded – from project start to comple-tion – and under one roof. a distin-guished engineering department, aproactive safety program, efficient dis-tribution services, experienced blast-

Maine Drilling & Blasting has found successwith a unique perspective in the drilling andblasting industry.

A Real Blast

Maine Drilling and Blasting has been serving the Northeast since 1966..

www.mdandb.com | Headquarters: Gardiner,

Maine | Service: Drilling, mining and blasting

Employees: 360

Maine Drilling & Blasting

P R O F I L E

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“We have a focus, andit’s breaking rock. And,we do it well.”// MITCHELL GREEN, senior vice president

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• Gardiner, Maine

ing technical services, and equipmentrepair capabilities all come togetherseamlessly on every project, regard-less of its simplicity or complexity.

as Maine Drilling & Blasting has ex-panded its capabilities, a new emphasishas been placed on the internal workingsof the company. From cutting-edge safetyinitiatives to new lines of communicationopened companywide, Maine Drillingand Blasting is proving that a strong andsteady focus can have a big impact.

FORGING NEW GROUND

For many years, Maine Drilling &Blasting has expanded its footprint toprojects outside the Pine tree State.in January 2012, the company enteredinto a joint venture partnership withDyno nobel, the largest manufacturerof explosives in north america. as partof the agreement, Maine acquiredDyno nobel’s northeast operations,consolidating these into the company’salready established footprint in thenortheast and Mid-atlantic regions,

and enhancing Maine’s business to theMid-atlantic.

the partnership comes at the righttime for Maine Drilling & Blasting,whose projects over the years have got-ten more intricate. Plus, the stakes havegotten higher and there is more geo-graphical land to cover. even so, SeniorVice President Mitchell Green says thecompany’s success and reach have al-lowed it to pursue new opportunities.

“We’ve worked hard to develop acommon culture,” he explains. “Be-cause we’ve diversified and grown in a

very broad geographical area, main-taining a common culture is very im-portant. it enables us to providecontinuity in our operations through-out our levels of service.”

Green notes that it is the mission ofMaine Drilling & Blasting to offer thesame brand of service to clients inPennsylvania – and elsewhere – asclients receive in Maine. “‘Making ithappen’ is our value/service proposi-tion,” he adds. “it’s a mindset we ac-tively nurture that’s all aboutconsistency, synergy, ownership andour core values. We apply our basic corevalues of respect, fairness, honesty andresponsibility to everything we do,”Green continues. “it’s at the base of howwe interact with our customers, oursuppliers, regulators, the general public,and with each other.”

although Maine Drilling & Blastingbegan as a family operation, it long agooutgrew the kitchen table where thebusiness model was first sketched. yet,as Green explains, upper management is

The company says it places a high priority on creating a safe environment..

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“Because we’ve diversi-fied and grown in a verybroad geographicalarea, maintaining acommon culture is veryimportant. It enables usto provide continuity inour operations.”// MITCHELL GREEN, senior vice president

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Regional Manager Todd Barrett, Safety Manager Rick Galletta and Senior Vice President Mitchell Green.

bring experience to Maine Drilling and Blasting’s management team..

more than just hard hats and protectiveeyewear. For nearly half-a-century, thecompany has taken great care to not onlyprotect employees, but also clients, thepublic, and the environment. “our em-ployees are trained on environmentalbest practices for using explosives,” Gal-letta explains. “We make sure we don’tproduce environmental concerns whenwe’re on a job site.”

in the past 12 months, Maine Drilling& Blasting has prioritized the advance-ment of safety in the company culture. asGalletta explains, the organization re-cently established a corporate safetycommittee to assess safety adherencethroughout the organization. “the com-mittee – which is comprised of depart-mental, divisional and executive

management – aligns our safety practiceswith our core values,” he adds. “they per-form corporate safety assessments,which help guide future initiatives.”

according to Galletta, the most suc-cessful initiative to date has been the be-havior-based safety observationprogram. “With help from the safetycommittee, we’ve trained more than 60employees in job site observation andcommunication techniques, and thoseindividuals have provided more than1,200 formal safety observations in thelast year,” he says. “as we train more in-dividuals in other divisions, we antici-pate an increase in the number of formalsafety observations.”

Similar to the behavior-based safetyobservation program is the company’s

focused on keeping the family feel amongthe company’s 360 employees.

“even though the company hasgrown, we want to retain that tight-knitintimacy,” he says. “to do this, we’vespent the last three years focusing onthe heritage of the company – lettingemployees know where the businesscame from and where it’s going. thishas made employees feel more con-nected to the operation.”

Fostering the employee-company re-lationship is made easier by the fact that30.5 percent of the company is em-ployee-owned. Maine Drilling & Blast-ing calls this its “Work Like an owner”initiative. “We want to leverage the in-vestment that these folks have in thecompany, and by improved communica-tions, liberate employees to work to thenext level of productivity.” Green adds.“We can purchase equipment, explo-sives, and have vertically integratedservices, all great tools, but People arethe fuel that ‘Make it happen’ in thefield every day.”

ON AND AWARE

For Maine Drilling & Blasting, the ropethat binds the company is safety. “For us,safety really is about taking care of eachother,” Green explains.

Safety Manager rick Galletta says theMaine Drilling & Blasting faces uniquechallenges that illustrate the impor-tance of safety. “We place a very highimportance on safety because every-thing we do is hazardous,” he notes. “it’snot too often we arrive at a job site andtake out the nice, flat, even ground. in-stead, our people, equipment, and ex-plosives have to travel on all types ofterrain, let it be mud, slick rock, or in anextremely remote location.”

Safety for Maine Drilling & Blasting is

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employees, and it ties in with the compa-nywide goal of complete cohesiveness.”

PROJECTS AND TECHNOLOGY

Maine Drilling & Blasting is no strangerto complex projects. Most recently, thecompany completed work on sinking anew foundation in what’s referred to asan “urban hole” – a site where thedrilling and blasting activities are sur-rounded on all four sides by existing ele-ments. in the case of the StamfordGateway Plaza in Stamford, conn.,Maine Drilling & Blasting had to contendwith railroad tracks to the north, com-mercial buildings on the east, residencesto the south and a river to the west.

in addition to the Stamford project,the company was selected to join thelargest drilling and blasting project inthe state of Maine to date. helping to se-

cure more than 100 miles of powertransmission lines through more than 75communities, Maine Drilling & Blastingis following the route, applying its ex-pertise and state-of-the-art technologyto ensure maximum project efficiency.

“one of the greatest advances we’veapplied to this project, and others inthese remote conditions is our field datacapture [FDc] system,” explains tedPurington, coo of Maine Drilling andBlasting. “With this technology, everyaspect of a project – from payroll re-ports, drill reports, blast reports, costreports, and safety reports – is captureddigitally. What was once documented onpaper, and took up to two weeks toprocess, is almost instantaneous.”

the result of implementing this tech-nology is more accurate, real-time infor-mation regarding every angle of aproject. “the FDc system gives us pre-cise information on the progress of aproject, and it’s helping us to bettermanage production costs, which is bet-ter for our customers and our company,”Purington says.

in terms of mobility, Maine Drilling &Blasting also has expanded its BraVo di-vision – a best-of-the-best group that isdispatched for larger challenging projects,so as to not disrupt local service demands.as todd Barrett explains, this specializedteam is extremely apt and flexible. theBraVo team moves from these large op-portunistic projects, offering great per-sonal development opportunities yetoutside of local divisional management.

“this group doesn’t take away fromour existing divisions or create an in-tegrity issue within current operations,”he adds. “it provides excellent projectand technical skill development thatmay not be offered in day-to-day opera-tions. We really love the challenge ofthese large project opportunities.” EMI

near-Miss reporting initiative, whichencourages open dialog between fieldworkers, supervisors and upper man-agement. “We have great safetyrecords out there, but unless some-thing was broken equipment-wise, werarely heard about incidents that hap-pened in the different divisions,” Gal-letta explains.

“to increase transparency, we encour-aged everyone to communicate witheach other through the near-Miss re-porting initiative. this concept took offin a big way,” Galletta says. “We re-sponded to even minor concerns madeby employees. as a result, we’ve beenable to identify a couple of reoccurringissues and provide better training, inshort getting out in front through man-aging leading indicators. the whole con-cept gives a sense of empowerment to

The company says it is no stranger to complex projects..

Published by Phoenix Media Corporation Tel: 312.676.1101 Fax: 312.676.1280

On behalf of Maine Drilling & Blasting © 2013 Phoenix Media Corporation. All rights reserved.