Reinforcing the Future: Rick Thompson of Post Tensioning Solutions on Contractor Advertising and Innovation

Audio Transcription

Mark Lamberth:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Contractor Grow Show, where you’ll get contractor advertising ideas and suggestions. My name is Mark, I’m your host, and today I have the honor of talking with Rick Thompson at Post Tensioning Solutions over in the northwest in Auburn, Washington. Rick, thanks for being with us today.

Rick Thompson:
Yeah, thank you. Mark. I know that you are an outstanding member of the construction industry too, though it’s an honor to be here with you.

Mark Lamberth:
Oh, I appreciate that, man. So you guys have been at this for a long, long time. I mean, it’s an interesting business and I want to get into your experience here. I’m really curious to hear about the kind of path of the business over the years, but maybe you can just tell us a little bit before we get into all that, what is post tensioning, your post-tensioning solutions? I mean, this is what you guys do. It looks like a very serious industrial engineered solution for commercial buildings. Maybe you can tell me about it. What is it?

Rick Thompson:
Well, post-tensioning is a high tech form of concrete reinforcement that uses a high grade steel that you’re allowed to apply forces to counterbalance the loads within a building. So if you look at a cable stay bridge, how the cables go up and down and they carry that big span, well, you actually do that in a six inch slab where the cables go down and up over the columns, but you put hydraulic forces on ’em, thousands and thousands of tons of pressure to hold up the center. So that weight that is coming down is counterbalanced by the force you put into the strand and causing an upward lift in the middle of it or wherever the loads are to make a zero balance so that the strand can carry it, the concrete and the rebar don’t carry so much, and that’ll make your building lighter and stronger and more flexible. And because of the thinner slabs, it also allows you to make a taller building with less room. And maybe even in a high rise, you might even be able to add two or three stories to a high rise because of the thinner slabs giving you more rental space. So it has a lot of advantages for it and it’s used in many things.

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. And this is a huge industry, but it basically allows more space in the building kind of at all levels. I mean more space at every floor level, more space potentially of adding a few more floors as well. And it’s kind of a high-tech industrial sort of solution to basically claiming more really valuable space out of buildings. Is that right?

Rick Thompson:
Right. And it saves steels for every pound of post-tensioning you get to eliminate at least three pounds of conventional steel. So it overall savings adds up over the building because not only is the building now less, but it has less envelope and smaller footings, and it just kind of escalates to the whole building the savings because you took away weight.

Mark Lamberth:
Amazing. Now are these brand new commercial buildings or do you guys also retrofit in different ways?

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Rick Thompson:
Well, our specialty is retrofit and repair, but they’re used in brand new buildings and bridges and all kinds of structures for many years. It started in the US in the fifties, sixties and became very popular through the seventies and eighties, and now has advanced quite a lot to be a very high tech form of a concrete reinforcement that’s dependable and flexible and used on a regular basis depending upon the structure and the need.

Mark Lamberth:
Amazing, amazing man. When you go in retrofit the building, are the advantages of saved space? I mean, is that the same advantages why a business or company or building owner will want to go into a retrofit with post tensioning slabs or there other benefits yet still? I mean are there sort of earthquake kind of retrofitting and some other advantages that come from retrofitting a building in this way?

Rick Thompson:
Well, a post-tensioning building could be retrofitted for several different reasons. You could red it, retrofit it for external post-tensioning so that it was easier and more economical to do. Like if you want to do wood blue lamb beams, you could add external post tensioning to them to increase their load. Or the same with structural. So you can add load capacity to beams or members by adding external or other types of post-tensioning. But most of the post tenant is used new. And sometimes when you retrofit a existing post-tensioning building, you have these live tendons that if they’re broken, they would lose their force and take away the structural value of the building. So we have techniques to come in to post-tensioning without losing those forces. And normally you would reshore the building two floors down when you do a large opening. But with our methods, we can actually give you new opening and no shoring and we can re-anchor five strand anchors and two strand.

We have these custom stuff, we can actually res a three quarter inch tail, which is very, very short after it’s been cut off. And we can actually stress if you cut it off early down to a half inch. So we can just do things that could aid the contractor in an error or a mistake, replace tendons, we can replace any tendon in a structure with the same size. So we have special equipment for that. So we have a handful of things I like to think of ourself as the doctor of post-tensioning. You have a problem with your post-tensioning building and we have the proper medical knowledge to be able to correct and fix that problem, so it’ll be healthy building again.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow, that is wild, man. I mean, you’ve been at this for a long, long time. We saw doing research for the show. I mean, you’ve been at this for 40 years, is that right?

Rick Thompson:
Well, I’m actually a little older than that. I’ve been in over 50.

Mark Lamberth:
Incredible, man, I

Rick Thompson:
Started very young.

Mark Lamberth:
Amazing. So I mean, how does one get into, because these are commercial buildings, all right, I mean, are you doing this on any kind of residential?

Rick Thompson:
Yeah, a matter of fact, most post is sold on residential homes in Texas and California for slab on grade homes. A lot of homes are done that because the number one complaint you’ll have for a home is a crack in the slab with post tensioning. It puts the slab under compression and prevents those cracks from happening. You could use conventional reinforcing, but for conventional reinforcing to work, the slab actually has to crack a little bit so the rebar can go in detention to hold it from cracking anymore post tension is stressed, so the stress force is already put upon it, so it it’s already in tension and doesn’t have to crack at all to get it to go into tension. So those make a more cleaner slab for a home, and a lot of homes are done that way.

Mark Lamberth:
Amazing. So I mean this is a highly technical field. I mean, how did you go about to getting into this and now really pioneering it with your team? It sounds like you guys have really figured out how to do this very, very well and are really adding to the, I dunno, general knowledge for the marketplace through unique services around it. How did you get into this here, Rick?

Rick Thompson:
Well, being as old as I am, I started quite young as an iron worker. My mom was a accountant for a steel firm and for my 18th birthday, I got a great job going out and working the high iron as an iron worker.
And so I started off on structural steel and walking the steel, the two inch beams and the six inch beams in the things before they had safety lines and all that stuff. And then it started around that time in the seventies it was becoming, and I went to work for a company from Switzerland that brought this subject to the United States, and I worked with them as a leader in a foreman. And by the age of 21, I was running the longest post tensioning structure in the United States. It was a traveler forum in a Seattle area where we had a bridge where you could actually knock out two columns and it would still stay standing. So I worked with them and went on to do nuclear tendon plants and help them develop the technology and the installation methods that we use today. And from there I was offered a chance to start a company.
So I’ve actually started companies on three different continents, the US to buy and India and my company in India detailed the Freedom Tower, just done a handful of things. And now we got into the part that people need is retrofitting because we can retrofit quickly and cleanly for people so they can get the new open look or whatever they want on their building without a substantial loss or fear of during construction. Because of the forces, people do tend to be afraid of post tensioning because they can break and pop out and you hear horror stories of them breaking and popping out going across the street. And that is way back from the olden days when the brand was considered. It was unbonded, but it had more room. So now they make them that they just pop out a little bit if they break or not, and they’re much, much more safer and much more reliable.

Mark Lamberth:
Wild. So the open floor plan that everyone is really loving these days, I mean, is the business kind of in a growth? Is the industry really in kind of a growth mode that be accurate to

Rick Thompson:
Say? Yeah, I think that construction is in growth mode. Everybody has a unique place to work and be. We actually have developed just a new patent and a hybrid structural I-beam that combines post-tensioning and I-beams together to allow you to get a much longer span. So you want those low profile and really long bands nowadays for those open areas. And this is a very economical way to do it without having to get a really tall structural beam that’ll interfere with your head height.

Mark Lamberth:
Incredible. Wow. What percentage of the work you guys do, do you guys do? I mean a large percentage of residential work yourselves mean? You said the industry does, but you guys mostly commercial or a lot of residential as well? We’re

Rick Thompson:
Mostly commercial residential in the northwest because of the soil and they’re saying it’s not so much slab on grade houses, we will do anything, but most of that residential is going to be in Arizona, Texas, and California. Those areas where you have more of a clay soil, they have what they call a raft slab. So your home actually kind of floats on the dearth and it will drift, and because of that, it’ll cause more cracking. And so with the post tension, you get a much nicer slab like that here. They’re still doing a lot of wood. They don’t do concrete floors for homes very often at all.

Mark Lamberth:
Oh, I see. Interesting. Okay. I mean, we talked a little bit about the team before the show. I mean, it sounds like your team is sort of between union shop, you guys are in Auburn, Washington team is between 12, 15 guys say and 50 moving around the country where different work is. Is that right? I mean is that about the size of the team, 12 to up to even 50 people at different times?

Rick Thompson:
Yeah. Well it depends. Construction, some jobs are big, some jobs are small and construction. One of the main things about construction is jobs end and you get a new one. The volume of people goes up and down. I have to admit, I really love the people that work with us and respect them. And we have people that come and come back. And so we’ve got a nice history of people and I’ve been in the industry a long time, so I have many people that have gone on and done great things that are available to us to work together and stuff. So I feel very fantastic with the people we work

Mark Lamberth:
With. Amazing. What percentage of the work that you guys do is out of state or other parts of the country versus your local area there?

Rick Thompson:
Well, right now most of our work is in the northwest. I would say 80 20 right now. But we are making active growth section where we’re expanding into other areas. We just finished a project in Idaho. We got projects in Utah and Nevada. We’re looking at Nevada, and so we’re expanding all throughout the country. Somebody brought me a project from New Jersey that I might take a look at and I’d like to get down to Florida if possible.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow, amazing. And when someone brings you a project, I mean, how long does it take for you guys? I mean, I can’t even imagine what’s involved in, I built some houses and stuff, but I can’t really imagine what’s involved in hardcore 12 story commercial building retrofit. How long did it take for you guys to put together kind of a project spec and plans and whatnot to even kind of engage with a potential client?

Rick Thompson:
Well, we’re very knowledgeable at what we do. So it’s pretty quickly. There is a substantial, sometimes initiation work out with the structural engineer and the people designing the building to make them comfortable with the techniques because we are working with high forces. But I have a picture in the back to hear me. It says PTI institute. We were on the cover of that one. That place was over 500 square feet of remodeling that was completed in less than six months.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow. 500, 500 feet of remodeling,

Rick Thompson:
500,000 square,

Mark Lamberth:
500,000 square feet of remodeling.

Rick Thompson:
And it was done under six months. That’s why it’s on cover because it was done. And we created a opening in a post actually six openings in a post tensioning slab with over 2,500 tendons being re-anchor to accomplish this goal.

Mark Lamberth:
Incredible, man. Amazing. So I mean 500,000 square feet plus got that project beginning to end on the six months. Incredible. Did those guys have a rush on that project? Is that why? Trying to get the project done as quickly as possible. But I mean are you responsive to rush pricing? I mean, is that a need that comes up in the industry sometimes or it just always, let’s get this done quickly, get it out of here?

Rick Thompson:
Well, we try to be quick and efficient, but sometimes there’s a need for quickness. It depends upon the dollar value they put on each day. We have techniques to accelerate, cures, accelerate stressing. We can work with schedules to help people really compress their schedule if that is their goal. Some buildings don’t really matter if they compress it that much because the way it’s sold and leased out, it doesn’t really matter. Residential usually doesn’t matter how long it takes, a lot of times because the way they sell ’em. But office space and things that have instant occupation make a tremendous difference in how soon it’s completed. So like an office building that was an office building for Microsoft, they have so many square feet of unusable space that they can’t use each month. So they put a dollar value on that month and they save so much by having that place available for people to work again.

Mark Lamberth:
Oh, I see. Okay. Interesting. Wow, amazing. Well, Rick, when I was taking a look at the business and what you guys are up to and some of your socials and stuff, it was fun seeing that you got some fun interests outside of the post-tensioning world. It looks like you love Disney World, you proposed to your wife down there and then also we saw that you wrote a book. I see there, it looks like the cover of the book right there behind you. Maybe you could tell me, it looks like the quantum mindset in a nutshell. Tell me about this man.

Rick Thompson:
Well, first of all, I’m going to tell you about my wife. I love her dearly and she’s very good to me.

Mark Lamberth:
Cynthia, right?

Rick Thompson:
Cynthia, she makes me feel like a king. And one of the reasons we got picked Disneyland like that because I was born the year Disneyland opened up.

Mark Lamberth:
Oh, no kidding.

Rick Thompson:
So the same year I was born, they opened up. So that was kind of had some connections there for that. And then the book, I wrote that book because I want people to succeed. All we talked about going to India and Dubai, and it’s like a lot of that is just truly believing that you can do that. And what I found when I tried to start a little company, I thought in another country that it was surprising to me how much the world cried for development and people to step up and really help make the world a better place. And through physics, because I love physics and biology and science, that I realized that nothing is reality until you observe it. Have you heard of the slit test where they shoot a wave through two slits and if you don’t look at it, it remains a wave. But if you observe it, as soon as you observe it, it turns into a particle and now you have two lines, but it doesn’t turn into a particle until you observe it. So that’s the cat in the box, dead or alive. So really the

Mark Lamberth:
Schrodinger’s cat is that what this is

Rick Thompson:
Cat. So it proves that reality doesn’t really happen until we focus on it. And you can prove through experiment in my books and other things that you can focus on water and actually change the molecular structure of water and make it good by thinking good thoughts or make it bad by thinking bad thoughts. And so I just wanted people to learn that their thoughts and their emotions that they put out in the world really dictate to them and what they create. I want everybody to have a great life and be able to believe that they can do great things and have that great life. And I have one story from the book, I’d like to tell if it’s okay.

Mark Lamberth:
Sure, yeah, please.

Rick Thompson:
It’s called the Golden Box. And when you pass away and go to heaven, you’ve had a great life and you go to heaven and God says, welcome, welcome, welcome. And you wait at the gate and they go to get some paperwork and come back. But with you next you is this giant golden box with ribbons and all sparkly and beautiful and it’s like, wow, that’s quite a box. And when they get back you say, oh, that’s a box and it has my name on it, what’s in that box with my name? And they say, well, people usually don’t ask. We usually don’t tell, but you ask, you can see and you open in it, it up and in it is all the gifts that God gave you that you didn’t accept. We’re all given everything. Most of the time we’re just the one denying ourself of the gifts that we should receive.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow, amazing. I love it, man. You tell that story in your book.

Rick Thompson:
Yes, I do. And many others

Mark Lamberth:
Fantastic.

Rick Thompson:
And I’m proud of it. It has a good rating on, it’s an audio audible and on Amazon it’s easy to pick up.

Mark Lamberth:
That’s awesome, Rick. So the quantum mindset in a nutshell by Rick Thompson over on Amazon picked that one up. I love it. Well Rick, so is winding down here. What does the future look like for post tensioning mean? Are you guys kind of in stable kind of mode? Are you guys in growth mode right now? I mean, what’s the next year or two look like in terms of growth for the company? I

Rick Thompson:
Think we’re in a tremendous growth mode. I’m working with a company on the East coast to help us grow. I’m partners with a legal advertising company that helps me come to market and learn how to be a better presenter. And I’m also working with a structural engineer that’s a recognized international engineer to bring product to the us. So I think this year is going to be life-changing and really tell a new story for post-tensioning solutions.

Mark Lamberth:
I love it. I love it. What a great inspiring way to end the show here on the Contractor Growth Show. Fantastic. Rick, if folks want to get in touch with you, if they’re in Auburn or if they’re in some other part of the country, if they want to learn more about Post tension, they have a project, or if they’re in the local area in the northwest and they want to work with you, what are a couple of good ways to get in touch with you guys?

Rick Thompson:
Well, I have our website post engine solutions.com, and there’s emails and addresses on that. I’d recommend that I have my own phone number memorized, so I can’t really give that one to you. Let’s see if I got a card here.

Mark Lamberth:
Sure, no problem. Of course, it’d be your phone number on the site. Yeah.

Rick Thompson:
But the best way is just look up our website at post-tensioning solutions.com and the phone number and all that’s there. And you can call or email us and we’ll get back to you. And I’m happy to answer any questions anybody has, and I had like to see everybody go out and do great things and learn and grow and make this world a better place.

Mark Lamberth:
That’s awesome. Fantastic. Rick, thank you so much for being on the show today and we’ll talk with you again too here, man.

Rick Thompson:
Alright, thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure and an honor.

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