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David Hanson - Fabcon Inc.
October 2004
Name: David Hanson, Retired President and
founder of Fabcon, Inc.
Date of Birth, Place: March 27, 1929, Duluth, MN
College: 1947 to 1952. Graduated from Iowa State
University, Ames, Iowa, with B. S. degrees in Civil (Structural)
Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Family: His first wife Betty died in 1974 after a
ten year battle with cancer. They have three sons: Paul is a
construction engineer; Keith runs a water utility in Utah; and Bruce
is a software engineer. He also raised four more children with his
second wife Mimm. Richard is a musician; Susan and Karen are college
professors; and Kristin is a lawyer. He has ten grandchildren.
Hobbies: Volunteer work with local church groups.
He is property manager and a member of the Plymouth Congregational
church; chairman of the Bigelow Chapel Building Committee; and
commissioner of the Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission;
and he still skis on snow and water.
First position in Concrete Industry (year and company):
Sales Manager of Zenith Concrete Products Co., a producer of
autoclaved concrete blocks, eight inch hollow-core precast
structural slabs, and machine made concrete pipe based in Duluth.
Present position in Concrete Industry: Retired
president and founder of Fabcon Inc., in Savage MN. Continues to act
as consultant and recently appointed director of American Artstone
in New Alm, MN.
Boards and Committees: Served as the Chairman of
the Board of the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute in 1988, and
is a Fellow of PCI and of ASCE.
Most Significant Mentors: Gordon Butler, the father
of a friend growing up who introduced him to the concrete business;
Jean Hampstead, his college counselor and college professor who
guided him through his two engineering majors; Henry Nagy, Founder
of Spancrete in Milwaukee; and Gerald Rauenhorst who believed in
Hanson enough to finance Fabcon.
Most Significant Improvement to Precast Industry:
Sandwich wall panels.
Challenges for the Industry: Developing new ideas
and systems.
Advice to future Industry Icons: Market or perish.
“You have to let the public know who you are and what you do.”
More about David Hanson:
A Minnesota Native Finds Success in His Hometown
Normally Dave Hanson would have graduated from college in 1951, four
years after he started, but about halfway through his Industrial
Engineering degree program he decided take to double major. The
Structural Engineering degree added a year to his college
experience, but it was worth it for the driven young engineer. “It
was incredibly complicated but I learned so much,” Hanson says of
his studies.
The year he graduated Hanson was drafted into the Corps of Engineers
and served in Korea in a heavy construction battalion as a sergeant,
and the experience has a profound impact on his life and career.
During his two years of active duty, Hanson built bridges, roads,
and rebuilt the headquarters for the 8th army. “I still use what I
learned in Korea,” he says.
When he returned, in 1954, he had the engineering education and
experience to go anywhere and get a job, and that was what he
intended to do. He and his wife, Betty, who he married his last year
in college, had both been born and raised in Minnesota but they were
ready to move someplace new. Hanson set up interviews with
construction companies around the country and they set off, driving
down to Florida then up the East coast, stopping along the way to
interview for jobs and tour concrete facilities. They saw a lot and
learned a lot, admits Hanson, and he was offered a few jobs in heavy
construction – but in the end, he turned them down. “It turned out
that heavy construction sites were in terrible places and you ended
up living in a trailer.”
Eventually Hanson and his wife wound up back in Duluth where he was
offered a sales management position at Zenith Concrete Products Co.,
a producer of autoclaved concrete blocks, eight inch hollow-core
precast structural slabs, and machine-made concrete pipe. “In the
end this was the best offer,” he says. He took the job and they
settled back into their Minnesota life. Soon the first of three sons
was born.
He stayed with the company for two years doing sales, marketing, and
start up research on mixtures with fly ash and silica sand, but he
wasn’t happy with his boss. Then
in 1957, after attending a fraternity reunion in Ames, Iowa, Hanson
stopped by the placement office where he found an ad for a sales
manager at Midwest Concrete Industries, a producer of architectural
exposed aggregate wall panels, and double tees and bridge beams, in
West Des Moines IA. He sent his resume and got the job.
“Midwest Concrete was a pioneer in exposed aggregate panels,” Hanson
says of his new employer. He spent five years there, until another
opportunity arrived that he couldn’t turn down.
A Great Beginning, An Abrupt End
In 1962, an acquaintance owned a company called Spancrete Midwest,
in Osseo, MN. The company was floundering after two years, and the
boss had fired everyone except his 10 best union guys. He offered
Hanson the position of general manager and engineer with the
directive to rebuild the business. He took the business over and
figured out how to make in work.
Hanson brought one salesperson with him and, “in short order we had
it up and running,” he says. By 1967 he had tripled the size of the
first plant, added a second plant and had about 350 employees.
Everything was going great until 1970, when the same boss who hired
him to turn the company around, came in one day and unceremoniously
fired him. “It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,”
chuckles Hanson, who says the firing changed his life. Shortly
after, one of his best customers, Gerald Rauenhorst of Opus
Construction, heard what had happened and was incensed. He knew
Hanson was talented and wanted to build a new plant in Minnesota to
make floors and wall panels, so he offered him $5 million to start
his own company.
Hanson credits much of his career success to Rauenhorst’s faith in
him. “You don’t start this kind of business with a pick-up and
shovel,” he says. “His credit built that plant.”
After much battling with local communities that didn’t want a messy
plant in their neighborhoods, Hanson found a plant site in Savage,
MN, and built Fabcon. “I was pretty sure we would be successful,”
Hanson says. And he was right.
From the beginning Fabcon did substantial business producing and
erecting solid walls and hollow core wall panels for complete
apartment buildings. Then in 1974, during the energy crisis, Fabcon
invented the insulated sandwich wall panel, which embedded foam
insulation within the prestressed panels to provide instant
insulation. “Sandwich panels were the greatest boon to the precast
business,” he says. The insulated panels are energy efficient, they
are faster to put up, and because the insulation is pre-packaged in
the panels it can’t be stolen and it isn’t a fire hazard on the
construction site. “Sandwich panels are huge in the design build
market,” he says. “It’s as close as you can get to an ‘instant
building.’”
In 1995 Hanson arranged the purchase of SpanDeck plants in
Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH. Fabcon doubled the size of each
using the rolling bed SpanDeck process in all the plants.
Over Hanson’s years at Fabcon he built more than 5000 buildings in
20 states, including several million-square-foot warehouses. But in
all his years, he never went after the giant contracts. Hanson is
proud of the fact that, as big as Fabcon got, he never took a job
over a million dollars. His business strategy was to stick to
traditional small-to-moderate projects, and he attributes that
approach to his ongoing success. “One of my goals was never to build
a huge stadium,” he says, “because if it fails the company goes
broke.”
The Masterpiece Built in Retirement
Hanson retired from Fabcon in March of 1996, just before his 68th
birthday. He stayed on for another five years as consultant and
director of Fabcon, and a consultant to the President of Master
Builders of Cleveland, OH.
“It’s risky to have a old codger as your chief,” he says of his
retirement, although he left an impressive legacy in his wake. When
he retired, his plants could produce a capacity of 41,000 square
feet of wall panels per day.
These days, Hanson uses his construction experience for non-profit
work. He spent the last four years chairing the building committee
for the Bigelow Chapel at the United Theological Seminary, in St,
Paul, MN. It’s just been dedicated and the exterior is precast
resembling split travertine stone case by American Art Stone. “The
outside is like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” marvels Hanson,
who is certain it will win major architectural awards. The open
joint construction uses rough stone molded off of 18 inch travertine
blocks and cost $700 per square foot to build. “People will come to
Minneapolis just to see this chapel.”
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