When it comes to finding a niche, it appears McAllister Construction Co. Inc. has hit a hole-in-one.
The Yardley, PA-based company recently completed its fourth golf course construction project, Green Briar at West Lake, in Jackson, NJ. The course is a retirement village set within an enormous golf course.
According to Glenn McAllister, who oversaw site development at Green Briar at West Lake, “The hardest part of doing a golf course is getting used to nothing being level, everything’s supposed to be moving and rolling.
“It takes a lot of patience, because you’ll complete a hole and the architect will change his mind after he sees how it actually looks. Sometimes we had to rework a hole three or four times to get what they’re looking for, which makes it hard to stay on schedule.”
While this was only McAllister’s fifth golf course, the company has 30 years of experience backing the housing and development side of the job, and a good part of the crew has been with the company for 30 years, according to McAllister.
“All the guys have a lot of pride and care in what they do. They’re out there to make it easier for each other and to do a better job as contractors. It has helped McAllister build a good name,” McAllister explained.
“Building golf courses seems to be our new specialty, and we really like to do it, but we will definitely will continue to do our normal residential and housing work because my dad taught us a long time ago that you never give up your old clients,” he said. “We don’t do just one thing, and that’s what makes us a unique company. We service the small person just as well as we do the larger companies.”
It took approximately seven months for McAllister to complete the Green Briar golf course, and in the end the company moved more than 850,000 cu. yds. (646,000 cu m) of dirt.
“Every job has slightly different characteristics,” McAllister explained. “A lot of times we want to go in a sequence that will be helping the golf course builder. It also helps to do the irrigation in a certain way. Since there are houses in between the golf holes, drainage and irrigation become very important.
“We look for the closest routes to haul our dirt, moving it only once, putting it in place and then we don’t have to move it again. We study the blueprints to find the best way to do this.”
The Green Briar site featured eight lakes, which also forced the crew to consider the most efficient plan of attack for the job.
One of the ways McAllister increased its productivity for this project was by purchasing a Caterpillar D8R bulldozer from Giles & Ransome Inc. of Bensalem, PA.
With all of the dirt that had to be moved on this site, McAllister had four to five pans running most of the time, and used its new D8R to push those pans. The company also ran a D5 to do the fine grading, and a D6 to put the dirt on grade by itself.
“The D8R has been a really nice machine. The reason that we bought it is because we have a D8N with more than 10,000 hours on it that has had no major problems. It’s been a great machine,” McAllister said.
According to McAllister, the company purchased its first Caterpillar from Giles & Ransome in the mid 1950s, and over the past 40 years have purchased about 100 pieces of equipment from the distributor.
“We’ve dealt with G&R for a long, long time and they’ve always been good. They’re very knowledgeable and they’re always there to help.”
According to Ed McAllister, who runs the administrative end of the business, the company has about 30 Caterpillar machines from Giles & Ransome in its fleet now.
“Giles & Ransome’s service is great. They really back their equipment … They do a great job,” Ed McAllister explained.
McAllister Construction Co. Inc. has been in business since the late 1940s, and began doing general excavation in the late ’50s.
Giles & Ransome Inc., headquartered in Bensalem, PA, is the authorized distributor for Caterpillar in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey, and Northern Delaware.
For more information on visit www.ransome.com.
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