When Tom Cruise slid into the living room in stocking feet and sang into a pretend microphone, the movie he was acting in wasn’t about family-owned construction firms. But the film’s title certainly applies.

David Voss Jr., CEO, and Tim Kippenhan, COO, co-owners of Miron Construction Co. Inc., headquartered in Neenah, say their industry segment is a risky business, and statistics bear this out. Family-owned companies in general rarely make it beyond the first generation. In fact, only one in three succeed once the reins are handed from seniors to juniors. And it’s no secret that the construction industry has been hard hit by the current economic recession.

While no major Wisconsin contractors have bitten the dust lately, one Madison family-owned construction firm closed its doors in March 2010 — Henshue Construction Inc. — and recently a 90-year-old Waterloo, Iowa, family firm — Prairie Construction Co. Inc. — failed.

That kind of news sends chills up and down any contractor’s spine. But neither Voss nor Kippenhan is shivering. Miron Construction has managed to survive into its third generation of family owners, and the company continues to thrive — even in a bad economy.

In August, industry authority McGraw-Hill Construction reported that, for January–July 2011, total construction starts took another hit, down 
6 percent from the same period a year ago. This is better than the dives of 2008 and 2009, but still evidence that economic recovery is not exactly imminent. Nonetheless, Miron prevails.

Engineering News-Record (ENR) listed Miron as number three on its 2010 Top 10 Wisconsin Contractors list, which recognized firms that have not only “weathered the storm” of the recession, but have grown in spite of it. The company also ranked 94th on ENR’s national Top 400 Contractors of 2010 list.

Over the last decade, Voss notes, Miron has grown approximately 130 percent, from revenue of $225 million in 2000 to $518 million in 2010. But 2011 has been the toughest year he’s seen in his 35 years in the business. Still, he’s optimistic.

“It’s just because of the whole economy and where the country is in general. There’s a lot of apathy, a lot of concern, and I guess I shouldn’t say pessimism, but it’s the big question mark. People are just too nervous to forge ahead. I really think that once we get this nervousness out of the way and things get settled, we’ll be fine. Tim and I have said if we can maintain in 2011, we’ve done our job.”

It appears they are definitely doing their jobs, as Kippenhan estimates the firm will finish 2011 at around $520 million. Not a stellar increase over 2010, but an increase all the same — or at least stability.

A Tale of Two Families
Patrick G. Miron, Voss’s grandfather, who migrated to Neenah from Canada, founded Miron Construction in 1918. In 1949 his father, David Sr., and Kippenhan’s grandfather, Roland, became stockholders in the company along with Patrick Miron and two others. Thirty years later, in 1979, Dave Jr. and Kippenhan’s father, Greg, became stockholders along with Dave’s brother, Patrick, who sold out just a few years ago. Greg Kippenhan retired about five years ago. So now it’s the Dave and Tim Show.

Relations between the two families has always been important, and undoubtedly one of the keys to the company’s success.

“It’s been a great relationship between the Kippenhan and Voss families,” Voss says. “I’ve seen that for a long, long time. It’s good to have two different (viewpoints) as to where they think the company should go, to have good ideas to bounce off of. And the two families are very, very similar — a lot of kids, a lot of passion for the future.”

Voss’s children are already involved in the business. Voss’s oldest son, also named David, is a project manager in the Neenah office. Dan is a vice president of business development in Wausau, and Michael works in the warehouse and yard operation in Menasha. Katie, Voss’s only daughter, is currently studying at Fox Valley Technical College but still works for the company part-time in the accounting department.

“So as you might guess, weekends and holidays are pretty much filled with what’s going on at Miron,” Voss confesses.

While Kippenhan’s children are younger (the oldest is 13), he’s confident they’ll come aboard when they reach employment age, continuing the two families’ tradition. Transferring ownership out of the families is not likely, Voss says.

“I don’t think anybody is here to sell the company anytime in the near future because we all have children who are very excited and very passionate about the future and being in this business.”

Secrets to Success
Kippenhan and Voss point to three major keys to their company’s success: project diversity, innovation and, perhaps most of all, relationships with their customers.

Company management has worked hard to avoid putting all its eggs into one or two baskets. Miron works in a variety of industries: education, health care, commercial office and retail, general industrial, government and utility work among others. Kippenhan says some markets have helped them stay afloat.

“What’s actually carried us in the last year and a half is some of the heavier industrial type work — working in the power plants, working in the paper industry. Actually, that has been fairly strong. And we’ve been doing more dairy and food processing work all over the country with existing clients,” he says. “That diversity has helped us over time. It gives us some flexibility so that in conditions like this we can roll with the punches.”

Innovation, too, has helped Miron succeed. In fact, the company has a designated officer for that: Steve Tyink, vice president of business innovation. Voss believes Miron is the only company in the industry to include that title on its management roster.

“What Steve does is sit down with our potential and existing clients and talk about their business and how it runs and what everybody does in a day,” Voss explains.

While the traditional construction model holds that companies interact with the architect and simply build what’s on the plan, Miron goes a few steps farther. By delving into daily activities — not just with owners and managers, but with all levels of employees — the vice president of business innovation is able to help clients zero in on actual solutions.

“He does this by forming groups at our customer’s facility and having innovation teams that really talk about what they want when the project is complete. And people come up with a lot of non-construction things, like where do we put things, what forms do we use, and all kinds of information that goes way beyond bricks and mortar, but makes the company more efficient when we’re all done,” Voss says.

The result is fewer change orders, greater satisfaction at project completion and even stronger relationships — another factor that’s integral to the company’s success. When clients are happy, they tell others, and that is the pyramid of business success. Voss says Miron focuses on customer satisfaction in numerous ways.

“Making sure at the end of the day that (clients) feel we’ve treated them fairly, that we’re great on our work, that if we tell them we’re going to be done, we’re done, and that it’s a quality product at a competitive price,” he says.

Once those objectives have been met, all that’s left is thanking the client. Voss feels Miron does a pretty good job of this — not just on pretty letterhead, but out in the field.

“When you get so busy, it’s easy to forget to say thank you. But, boy if this economy has done anything, it sure has brought that to light. To really thank our existing clients for hanging in there with us and thinking about us when their needs come up. It means a lot to a person when a laborer in the field walks up to an engineer from a hospital or a manufacturing firm, and says, ‘Hey, thanks for giving Miron the opportunity to build this.’ That goes a long way,” he says. 

Photography by David Omastiak (except where noted)

By Marcia Tillett-Zinzow

Marcia Tillett-Zinzow is a freelance writer who lives in the Lauderdale Lakes area north of Elkhorn.