Spring 2026 | Wayne Brothers

Moving Where the Opportunities Are

Author: Keith Wayne, CEO

The past eighteen months have presented a challenging climate for new construction opportunities. That challenge has been compounded by our intentional pursuit of market growth across most of our service offerings. Our planned craftworker hiring and training program has built our ranks to just under 800 employees, and finding adequate work to keep everyone fully engaged at the level we aim for has required real effort.

Our Industrial Services Group has stepped up its growth plans and absorbed craft workers from our buildings divisions. That move has kept everyone productively engaged. As I compiled this article, I received a memo from Operations indicating we may have completed a record volume of work in the first month of our fiscal year. Even so, billings are still running 5 to 8 percent behind our budgeted plan for monthly revenue.

Industrial facility: unfinished dry dock, railings, equipment present.

Optimizing Equipment Foundation Delivery Through Design-Build and Delegated Design

By Chad Hensley, PE, Executive Vice President, Concrete Group, Wayne Brothers and Joseph Wickline, PE, President, Southern Engineering Company (a Wayne Brothers company)

In the first article of this series, we discussed how construction of equipment foundations often carries additional risk compared to common building foundations. This second article examines how a design-build or delegated design approach can reduce those risks, mitigate scope gaps, and improve outcomes.

Siloed Scopes Increase Costs

New build industrial projects often have one entity, typically a GC, who has the scope to construct the building shell while the Owner/OEM retains the responsibility for installing the equipment foundations. Building foundations, specialty slab-on-grade, and/or equipment foundations are frequently designed and bid as separate scopes.

Featured Project

Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies

Wayne Brothers performed the cast-in-place concrete scope for the largest end-to-end cell culture biopharmaceutical CDMO facility in North America. Our scope spanned new construction and retrofit foundations, walls, grade beams, slabs, equipment pads, curbing, and two 30-foot-deep mass concrete waste pit structures across four buildings. By fast-tracking pit construction through collaborative sequencing, our team cut that schedule in half while keeping the broader project on track while coordinating carefully around an already operational Phase 1 campus. The project earned an ABC Eagle Award for Excellence in Concrete.