| OTIA III State Bridge Delivery |
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| Web Brief (Feb 04) |
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Navigational Construction helps ODOT keep work zones safe
REDMOND, Ore.—The classic American success story is a rags-to-riches rise from humble beginnings to being company president. For Kimberlie Hollinger, owner of Navigational Construction Inc., there is a unique twist on the story; she went from flags to riches.
A decade ago, Hollinger started Navigational Construction as a flagging operation designed to earn college money for her eight children. Over the years, she grew her tiny family enterprise into a $2.5 million business with 25 employees.
Navigational Construction, based in Redmond, supplies signs, barrels, and barricades to control traffic flow around construction sites. Currently, the company is keeping traffic moving during reconstruction of a dozen bridges on the Mt. Hood to Chemult corridor—along U.S. 26 and U.S. 97.
That project is part of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s 10-year, $3 billion Oregon Transportation Investment Act (OTIA) bridge and highway program. During the next decade, OTIA funds will repair or replace hundreds of bridges, pave and maintain city and county roads, improve and expand interchanges, add new capacity to Oregon’s highway system, and remove freight bottlenecks statewide.
“This is a great program, and we are delighted to be a part of it,” said Hollinger. “ODOT is engaged in a historic effort to rebuild the state’s aging highway bridges and it is an honor to be working with them.”
Navigational Construction builds new signs for permanent installation and recycles and refaces old aluminum signs for use at construction sites.
“We are the only Oregon sign company that employs a unique power-washing machine to ‘hydro strip’ old traffic signs prior to refacing,” Hollinger said. “It’s a great way to get maximum use out of the signs.”
Although Navigational Construction has expanded the scope of its work in many areas throughout the state, Hollinger is quick to point out that it hasn’t lost its humble beginnings or its family-based roots. One of her sons works for the company, as does a son-in-law. And, out on the highway, her daughter is carrying on the family’s flagging tradition, controlling the flow of traffic and keeping work zones safe.
Navigational Construction is just one of the women-owned businesses under contract to ODOT as part of the OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program. The bridge program is laying the foundation for continued growth and prosperity for the broadest cross-section of Oregon’s workforce by maximizing the participation of minority groups, women, and emerging small businesses and encouraging diversity in contracting and hiring. About 18 family-wage jobs are sustained for every $1 million spent on transportation construction in Oregon. Each year during the OTIA program, construction projects will sustain about 5,000 family-wage jobs.
Learn more about OTIA III online: www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/OTIA/bridge_delivery.shtml
# ODOT #
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