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Joel Sheets, VP & General Manager of the Utility DivisionNeedless to say, Tindall today looks quite a bit different than the shed-based Tindall of 1963. But no matter how much may have changed, a few things have always remained the same. First, Tindall’s commitments to service, teamwork, and integrity have never faltered. In fact, their focus on serving their customers, employees, families, and communities has transcended a simple core value—it’s become their tagline and mantra. Tindall is “Engineered to Serve.”
Secondly, Tindall never stopped producing utilities products. Today, their Utility Division has grown to become an essential part of the organization’s growth and has delivered thousands of projects since 2000. It’s also one of the greatest places within the company to see Tindall innovation at work.
“It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come,” says Joel Sheets, Vice President and General Manager of the Utility Division. “In the past, this team was heavily focused on delivering standard precast underground components, and we found a lot of success there. But the more we grew, the more we began to see that customers often needed precast solutions that simply didn’t exist. While some companies might have turned them away, we didn’t. We all put our thinking caps on and decided to do something different.”
For the past twenty years, Tindall has been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with precast concrete, developing never-before-seen utility solutions and an entire collection of one-off, custom products. According to Sheets, this was the natural evolution of their dedication to service.
“Serving our customers is about more than providing a catalogue of standard products,” Sheets says. “It’s about developing the solution they need, whether we have it on hand or not. We knew that our ability to develop unique solutions would be vital to our customers’ success, so we’ve spent decades developing a talented team of sales, service, and designers to help us do just that.”
Sheets believes that each of these elements—service, innovation, and teamwork—are fundamentally intertwined at Tindall. According to him, the Tindall experience goes beyond quality and speed. It becomes more about the experience itself. Tindall’s Utility Division is committed to delivering defect-free, high-performance products, but it’s the nature and depth of the relationships they build with customers that create a truly unique experience for the customer.
“I believe that our success as a division is due to the team we’ve created. We all share a commitment to delivering exceptional products, developing creative solutions, and putting service above all else,” says Sheets.
It was these values that led to the development growth of the Utility Division’s leadership team, an evolution that Sheets says was instrumental in driving the division to where it is today.
“Being so focused on service and teamwork was always sort of a double-edged sword for our team,” Sheets laughed. “We all have a hard time saying no. Creating the leadership team allowed us to better focus our strengths, and that kind of organizational shift has had remarkable impacts on our efficiencies, our capabilities, and our capacity as a team.”
Today, Tindall’s Utility Division has nearly outgrown its facility at the Spartanburg location. Though they’ve managed to make a name for themselves for their innovative solutions, this location simply wasn’t designed to efficiently create custom products. That’s why Sheets was excited to announce Tindall’s plan to develop a new, $27.9-million production facility and home base for the Utility Division.
“This new facility means much more than just increasing our capacity. This will give us the flexibility we need to create better, more innovative products for years to come,” says Sheets. “Every square inch of this facility is purpose built for innovation, efficiency, and teamwork. We’ve incorporated technology and automation that will give us the horsepower we need to keep up with standard orders while focusing our efforts on custom solutions. It’s a major step forward for our division, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us.”
Sheets says that the new production facility will be conveniently located near Tindall’s existing Spartanburg location. The operation is scheduled for completion in early 2021.
