Positive, proactive common goal

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This article was published 14/11/2024 (340 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tower Engineering might be headquartered in Linden Woods, but in many ways its roots are in the West End.

That’s where Jack Abiusi and Mike Houvardas, two of the Winnipeg firm’s founding partners, met when they were teenagers. The sons of Italian and Greek immigrants, respectively, Abiusi and Houvardas bonded over, among other things, their shared interests in math and science.

At the time, they didn’t imagine they would both become mechanical engineers, much less they would run an engineering firm together. But more than 45 years later, that’s exactly the case.

When they started Tower with two colleagues in 1997, Abiusi remembers someone suggesting it would be great if the company was like a children’s soccer team: different people coming together to achieve a common goal.

“I can’t remember which partner said that, but I loved that idea,” Abiusi says. “We’re just a bunch of immigrant kids from the West End that wanted to have a business … We came from all different cultures and diverse backgrounds and somehow our common goal brought us together.”

That goal was to create a business specializing in structural, mechanical and electrical engineering, with a firm understanding of the construction process and a focus on customer service.

The company has changed a lot since then. Today, the ownership group consists of eight working partners. They are joined by eight associates and a full-time staff of more than 65 who work in offices in Winnipeg, Winkler, Calgary and Kelowna, B.C. Annual revenue is around $12 million.

As much as things have changed over the last 27 years, the goal remains the same.

“We always knew that to be successful, we needed to be positive and proactive,” Abiusi says. “We needed to be client-focused, and we had to deliver that good engineering through our staff.”

Tower provides engineering, design and project management services for clients from B.C. to Quebec.

The company has a 25-year relationship with Loblaw Companies Ltd. that has resulted in the company providing engineering services for new construction and renovations to Superstore, Extra Foods and No Frills grocery store locations across Western Canada.

Tower has also provided mechanical design for numerous new Canadian Tire outlets.

But some of Abiusi’s favourite Tower projects have been completed in the keystone province.

A 22,000-square-foot addition to the Spenst Bros. Premium Meats processing plant in Winkler that Tower worked on is one example.

Another is the South Interlake Recreation Centre in Warren, which was completed in 2006. The 30,000-sq.-ft., two-storey arena uses geothermal technology for heating and cooling, resulting in a $30,000 annual energy bill that is half of what a conventional system would cost.

Tower’s work on the project earned the company a Canadian Consulting Engineering Award in 2009.

“Those are the projects I really like — when I have a community group or a small Manitoba company that needs to succeed and we’re that missing piece that helps them execute a project,” Abiusi says.

The company recently completed work on the Halo apartments in Winnipeg — a $100-million development at 3015 and 3025 Pembina Hwy. that offers more than 400 premium and luxury rental units and 8,400 sq. ft. of commercial retail space.

Staff continually ask clients how Tower can better serve them. “We treat our clients’ projects like they are our own,” Abiusi says.

To that end, staff members at Tower enjoy a good challenge.

“Every client has something different they’re looking for and there’s a challenge with how you’re going to tackle that,” says partner Gary Hiebert.

“We like our people to be passionate and excited about solving really, really ugly problems that nobody else can solve,” Abiusi adds.

“That’s fun to us. You know, buildings that are failing, buildings that nobody else wants to touch, challenges that nobody wants to touch — I have a roster of people that’ll say to me, ‘Send me. I want to fix that problem.’”

That attitude is the result of the mentorship Tower’s leadership provides.

“As much as I like designing on my own, I enjoy mentoring and passing on some of the knowledge that might be difficult to find elsewhere,” Houvardas says. “I’m closer to the end of my career than the beginning of it and it’s great to see the young engineers developing.”

Staff in the Winnipeg office get together to enjoy muffins every Wednesday, popcorn every Friday and barbecues every few weeks. There’s table tennis available in the middle of the office, so people can pick up the paddles and play whenever they want.

Treating the staff well and mentoring them to become responsible leaders is an important part of the company’s culture, according to Hiebert.

“Generally, there’s a nice happy buzz of work here,” he says. “We have no yellers — there’s no place for them. We have no table-tippers. If somebody’s angry, you get to close the door and vent — that’s all part of business and work life — but in general, we cultivate a culture of service and respect.”

Tower established its Calgary office around 10 years ago, and expanded it when COVID-19 lockdowns made flying to job sites in Alberta from Winnipeg challenging.

“We found ourselves with a lot of people driving around Western Canada and some of our key people said we might as well just stay in Alberta and access and service our clients from here,” Abiusi says.

Around that same time, one of the company’s partners moved to Kelowna to better serve B.C. clients. Another partner recently moved to Winkler to be closer to Tower projects in that area.

“Our goal is to be a strong Western Canadian engineering company, centred right here in Manitoba,” Abiusi says. “We think it’s within our grasp to do that — to bring our culture and our customer service and our people to those provinces.”

From Winnipeg’s West End to communities across Western Canada, Tower Engineering is making an impact.

“It’s unbelievable that we can be on this journey,” Abiusi says.

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca