As American as Apple Pie
Accurate Concrete Cutting’s approach embodies meaning of American values
The phone rang twice before Vern Balkowitsch answered it with a gruff “hello.”
It was the third of July, and Vern was in his office at Accurate Concrete Cutting, Inc., a 33-year-old, family owned and operated concrete cutting and coring business in Vancouver, Washington. In the office was his wife and business partner, Mary, and their daughter and HR manager Jenny Brown. His son, Vern Jr., who now runs the business with Jenny, was on a job site and unavailable to join us for this interview.
“One of us needs to be working,” Vern Sr. says with a laugh.
Accurate Concrete Construction, or, as the family prefers, Accurate, is the dream of Vern Sr. and Mary Balkowitsch. Accurate’s “family first, nothing is too hard to do, grind and overcome” culture is reflective of the family’s beginnings in rural Washington state.
Vern Sr. left his family’s farm when he was 14 years old after he was hired as a farmhand by a neighbor. His bachelor pad was a small room in the back of a milking barn. “At that time, it was completely normal to leave home when you were young,” says Vern Sr. He enjoyed the gritty, 24-hours a day, physical work. “Farmhands worked around the clock. There was no downtime. And all of us on the farm were extremely competitive—you had to be able to keep up to keep the job.”
Soon after moving into the barn, he met his wife, Mary. And at the tender age of 17, they were married. “This is just what people did back then,” adds Mary. “You grow up, move out, get a job, start a family. I would have never thought that we would own a business.”
But soon, Vern Sr. grew tired of farm work. “I needed a better paying job, so I went into construction.” He was 18 years old. “I liked construction for the same reasons I liked farm work—it was competitive, physical and projects moved quick. You didn’t have to wait to see success.” The career change brought Vern Sr. and Mary to the big city of Vancouver. A few years after they moved, their children, Vern Jr. and Jenny, soon followed.
Vern Sr. worked at the same concrete coring and cutting company for the next 17 years. His work ethic, aggressive and “never say no” attitude soon caught the attention of the owner and clients. “So one day I hear that the owner is thinking of selling, and I tell him that I would like to buy the company from him,” Vern Sr. recalls. In 1985, Vern and the owner decided to partner on a new venture.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.
Upset that the deal didn’t come to fruition, the Balkowitsch family bought the shell of a corporation from the retiring owner.
From Basement to Big Time
From the basement of the family home, Vern Sr. and Mary launched Accurate. Vern Sr. would manage and plan the technical and field work, while Mary would complete the administrative tasks. They decided to focus on five services: wall sawing, wire sawing, slab sawing, core drilling and demolition.
Looking back, Vern Sr. and Mary thought it was pretty audacious. “Neither one of us has had a college education,” Vern Sr. says. But he had the experience of working for another company, and Mary was always good with organization. “We both had a lot to learn but had a good CPA and lots of family support,” says Mary. Their two children worked in the family business from their teenage years. “Accurate is literally as family-orientated as the kitchen table,” adds Vern Sr. “We moved the business from the basement to the kitchen table in 1987.”
From the beginning, Accurate made a name for itself by taking any job. “We never said no,” Vern Sr. says. “Whether a project was small or big or easy or impossible, we did it. Sometimes I think we were delusional, but I didn’t want to lose. And not taking a job was losing,” he says. Mary adds, “And we had an open-door policy. If a client needed something at midnight, we’d be there. It didn’t matter to us. We are committed to our clients.”
They also made a name for themselves by taking on “impossible” jobs and hiring professionals that liked the high-risk, high-reward work. “We’ve worked on projects throughout California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana,” says Vern Sr. “And there have been some doozies!”
One such doozy was an emergency response on a 50-acre dam near Yellowstone National Park. A million-pound boulder fell from a cliff and crushed the structure below. Accurate was on the job quickly and mobilized a 150-ton crane to pin the remaining boulder to the face of the cliff. “We drilled 2,500 feet of core drilling to pin the 1,000-ton rock to the face of the cliff,” Vern Sr. says. “It sounds so easy when I describe it now.”
That project brought more jobs to Accurate. They were the only cutting company on-site when the Shasta Dam in Lake Shasta, California, needed to lower the water temperature in the Sacramento River to bring back the salmon to the river. They spent three years working on the dam below the waterline, ultimately removing 6,800 metric tons of concrete in the process. They also drilled over 35,000 feet of core drilling.
In 2017, Accurate was chosen to remove and repair structural concrete within inches of the glass dome at the Seattle Aquarium. And in 2011, they removed two multi-thousand-ton, unstable boulders in Billings, Montana. “Both were considered ‘impossible’ jobs by the clients,” says Vern Sr. “But our guys did a great job.”
Vern Sr. says that they are “little people” in the industry, but their 1,000 per year-plus jobs and 33-year track record of success seems to indicate otherwise. “We have worked hydropower throughout the Pacific Northwest, including on the Columbia River, Snake River and into North Dakota,” says Jenny. “In 30-plus years, we have done some amazing jobs. From doing a simple job on a residence to removing large boulders to repairing dams, there is no job we would not attempt to do. We thrive on the technical.”
In fact, the Balkowitsch family mostly credits their team and great employees for their success.
“Our business has prospered because we take pride in our employees and the work we do,” Jenny says. “Over half of our employees have been with us for more than 15 years. We have great, experienced employees. They take pride in hard work and ethics. They like to push,” she says.
And while the industry has changed since Vern Sr. started his construction career in the summer of 1969, he feels confident in the future. “It’s bright,” he says. “Success comes from three things: trust, communication and relationships. It’s that simple.”