Manitoba Chamber of Commerce
Issue link: http://publications.winnipegfreepress.com/i/830133
26 MBiz | june 2017 C onstruction industry veterans with a long list of accomplishments in Winnipeg and around the world, David Poole and Jamie McCulloch went into business together because they wanted to do things differently. In their second year as owners of Total Project Management (TPM), they discovered how different that could be. "We got a call from a woman in May 2015," recalls Poole, a structural engineer, who oversaw project management at Tower Engineering before founding TPM with McCulloch in 2014. "She said, 'Do you want to build a rammed earth house?' I said, 'Sure. What's that?' " The partners quickly learned that rammed earth is a technique in which a special dry mix of low-cement-content concrete is used to create walls that can be textured and tinted to resemble the natural stratification of a rock face. As well as providing a one-of-a-kind look, rammed earth buildings are energy efficient, because the mass of concrete retains heat well once it's warmed up. And because producing cement creates a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, the lower cement content means the building has a smaller carbon footprint. Building a rammed earth house wasn't just a learning experience for the company. It provided a blueprint of the way Poole and McCulloch do business: Putting together the best team possible for the specific needs of a job, bringing in just the right contractors, engineers or suppliers, and involving them early in the process to ensure that all the pieces fit together. At the growing firm, now with a staff of six, Poole heads the engineering team while McCulloch, whose experience is in construction project management, oversees the construction side of the business. Their office, on the second floor of a heritage building on Main Street, is just above the architectural firm Bridgman Collaborative, with whom they've worked on innovative projects like the University of Winnipeg's new Leatherdale Hall and the Manito Ikwe Kagiikwe Mothering Project at Mount Carmel Clinic. For the rammed earth house, they brought in an engineer with extensive Concrete BOND Rammed earth house took collaborative effort By Bob Armstrong