News

ACI Achieves Diamond Safety Level

April 28, 20220

Atlantic Constructors Recognized for Diamond Level
Safety Standards Through ABC STEP Program

Richmond, Va. (April 4, 2022) – Atlantic Constructors, Inc. (ACI), announced it has achieved Diamond Level in Associated Builders and Contractor’s STEP Safety Management System, meaning the company is 655% safer than the industry average. Founded more than three decades ago, STEP has evolved into a world-class safety program that dramatically improves safety performance among construction industry participants. This award marks ACI’s eighth Diamond Level recognition since 2011 and its fourth in as many years.

“We are very proud of our entire ACI team for this achievement. Nothing else matters if we all do not make it home safely every day,” said ACI President Terrence Kerner.

STEP participants measure their safety processes and policies on key components through a detailed questionnaire with the goal of implementing or enhancing safety programs that reduce jobsite incidents.

This can reduce recordable incidents up to 85%, making the best performing companies more than eight times safer than the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics industry average. Ratings range from Diamond, the highest, to Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Participant.

“Safety is a journey, and that journey is possible because of systems like STEP, which enables ABC member contractors like Atlantic Constructors to have a safer and more productive jobsite,” said Greg Sizemore, ABC Vice President of Health, Safety, Environment and Workforce Development. “I commend ACI for consistently raising the bar of safety performance.”

To learn more about the STEP program, visit abcstep.org.

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with offices in Hampton Road, Roanoke, Sterling, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 1,000 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com.

With New Facility, ACI Quintuples Modular Fabrication Capabilities

February 20, 2025 0

ACInsider Year in Review 2024

January 30, 2025 0

ACI CEO Evan Shriver in CEO Magazine

January 27, 2025 0

ACInsider Fall 2024

September 30, 2024 0

ACI Named Top Workplace

September 27, 2024 0

ACInsider Year in Review 2023

January 29, 2024 0

ACI Celebrates Construction Inclusion Week

October 18, 2023 0

ACInsider Fall 2023

September 11, 2023 0

State Police Commendation

September 21, 20210

We received this commendation for Service team member, Matt Pulley, for exemplifying ACI’s commitment to providing extraordinary service to our customers! Well done, Matt!

Greetings,

I want to take the opportunity to commend the hard work and dedication of Matt Pulley. I want to start by saying Matt represents your company very well.

You may not be aware, but the HVAC system at the State Police Area 22 Office in South Hill VA was on the verge of failing. We had obtained a PO … for your company to repair the system. Matt came out to the office to make the repairs.

At no fault of Matt’s after he had taken our system down and had gotten into the heart of our system beyond the point of no return, he discovered he had the wrong part. Naturally, I was very upset. Matt was very diplomatic, calm, and reassuring in explaining the issue. We had to close the office down until the replacement part could be obtained.

At the time, the best case scenario was the following afternoon or evening. Matt made it clear he was prepared to move mountains to get our office back up and running. Sure enough, the next day in the early afternoon, Matt called the on duty sergeant and explained the part had just arrived Richmond and he was headed that way to pick it up, return to the office in South Hill, and install it. Matt didn’t leave our office until after 9PM that night.

Bottom line, my office had a worst case scenario, the HVAC system went down and we had to close the office to the public. I don’t have to explain the problems that causes a public safety entity like mine. Matt took our worst case scenario and turned it into a best case scenario. We were back up and running in just over 24 hours. Furthermore, Matt returned the very next morning to address other related issues.

In closing, please know of our gratitude for Matt’s skill, hard work, and professionalism he demonstrated in getting our office back up and running.

Service, valor, pride!

First Sergeant Sidney C. Leslie
Virginia Department of State Police
Area 22 Commander (South Hill)

Your Complete OUTDOOR Cooling Solution!

May 29, 20210

Your patio or deck can be just as comfortable as your indoor entertainment spaces. Our Turbo Cool outdoor cooling system creates crisp, refreshing air that feels just like outdoor AC. Say goodbye to traditional fans that do little more than circulate the hot, muggy air.

Stop losing money to heat and humidity; rent or buy our Turbo Cool system and keep your outdoor tables full!

Click here for more information about ACI’s Turbo Cool rental program.

Blueprint for Health Conversation

October 14, 20200

Join us Today, October 14 | 4:30 – 5:00 pm

Heart disease and stroke cause 1 in 3 deaths among women each year– more than all cancers combined. That means heart disease claims the life of a woman every 80 seconds! But we can change that, because 80% of cardiac and stroke events may be prevented with education and action.

Join us for this free presentation from Lisa Lingerfelt of DPR Construction and VCU Health cardiologist, Dr. Barbara Lawson as they share ways to relieve stress in the construction industry and and share the signs, symptoms, and misconceptions about heart disease in woman that may be putting you or a loved one at risk.

Click Here to Register for Today’s Free Zoom Webinar

Why Hard Hats with Heart?

Life is Why.
We want people to experience more of life’s precious moments. It’s why we’ve made better heart and brain health our mission. And until there’s a world free of heart disease and stroke, we’ll be here, working to make a healthier, longer life possible for everyone.

Through the Hard Hats with Heart initiative, American Heart Association will provide resources and inspiration to our partners in the construction industry to help create a culture of wellness for their workforce.

Every 25 seconds someone has a heart attack, the #1 cause of death

Every 40 seconds, someone has a stroke,the #5 cause of death

41% of construction workers were diagnosed withhypertension

Construction workers with heart disease are 60% more likely to retire on disability

Construction workers exposed to long-term loud noise are at an increased risk for heart disease

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with satellite offices in Newport News, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 700 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com.

Introducing Inclusion and Diversity Corner!

May 10, 20190

We hope you enjoy— and are informed by— this first in an ongoing series of articles from ACI’s Director of Diversity Strategies, Bill Cooper (Coop).

What do Small Businesses Need Most?

I first remember hearing this question asked more than 20 years ago at a conference focused on minority businesses. The question was asked by Mel Gravely, now CEO of Triversity Construction in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mel, a thought leader on minority business success, was then the CEO of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Thinking. (Mel actually used minority businesses in asking however I choose to use small in order to address a wider audience).

Since this time, when I have asked audiences, “What do small businesses need most?” like Mel, predictably, I got the same responses – cash and contracts.

I learned from Mel, and the School of Hard Knocks, that while cash and contracts are important—they are not as important as developing and executing a strategy for a small business. Leonard Greenhalgh and James Lowry confirmed this fact in their book, Minority Business Success: Refocusing on the American Dream. They contend that easy access to contracts and capital can “actually be counterproductive if the MBE (minority business enterprise) is not set up to deliver on the contracts or to use the capital wisely.”

Using data collected at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, they compiled a list of the shortcomings most likely to hamper an MBE’s success. Number one on the prioritized list – lack of strategic clarity.

Greenhalgh and Lowry, as well as Gravely, agree that in order to develop this clarity, small businesses must be able to answer questions like:

What’s happening in the market?
Where do I fit in the value chain?
How and where do we compete?
How do we consistently deliver on our promises?
How do we make money?
How do we plan to grow? What customers do we pursue; what customers do we let go?
Who do I hire? Who do I buy from?

While this list is not exhaustive, answers to these questions and others like them will provide business owners with the road map that they need in order to understand where they (and their business) are going.

Putting in work to answer the questions that help provide strategic clarity offers owners a clearer path to profits, growth, and ultimately wealth. This work is an example of the owner working ON his/her business rather than IN that business. Because it’s often easy for the busy entrepreneur to get so caught up on working IN the business (cutting hair in the barber shop, baking cakes in the pastry shop, or supervising the crew on a jobsite) they may fail to make time to work ON their business (developing a strategy, doing research, or attending training to improve their business acumen).

By the way, for those of us who support and advocate on behalf of small business success, when we simply seek firms to satisfy diverse supplier requirements, might it be said of us that we are only working IN our business? For us to be working ON our business, we need to constantly remind them to stay ON it…

Ciao!

Coop

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with satellite offices in Newport News, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 700 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com.

ACI Fabrication Facility

Tour ACI’s 130,000 sq ft Fabrication Shop!

August 20, 20180

All Under One Big Roof

ACI is an extraordinary company doing extraordinary work for our customers. After our people, one of the biggest assets we leverage to the benefit of our clients is our massive, highly automated 130,000 sq ft fabrication shop. Here, we can prefabricate complex installations, handle large scale painting and blasting jobs, assemble massive sheet metal and duct work builds, weld and cut pipe with speed and precision and many other self-performed construction projects. A facility like this empowers us to provide truly innovative solutions as well as allowing us to save our clients time and money while ensuring the highest levels of quality and safety.

While there’s nothing like walking through our facility to truly help gain an understanding of the scope of what is possible here, we hope this video overview will give you a good idea of what ACI can do for you and your next project.

> ACI Fabrication Shop Video

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with satellite offices in Newport News, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 600 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com. For media information, contact Eddie Williams, Director of Marketing at 804.523.8795.

ACI’S Open House

June 14, 20180

Event in Honor of Our A-List

ACI would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved with our recent A-List Open House. During this highly successful event, ACI played host to many of our top customers, partners, and vendors who comprise our “A-List.”

The 200-plus guests who visited our 130,000-square-foot, highly automated production facility had the opportunity to explore our facility and experience firsthand the many self-performed services ACI has to offer.

Local food trucks from Curbside Creations, Riverside City Wood Fire Pizza, and Slideways Mobile Bistro provided much of the fare, with delicious desserts provided by Carytown Cupcakes. To enhance the cupcake experience, our sheet metal shop crafted an amazing, one-of-a-kind cupcake display!

As no special event is complete without live music, we engaged up-and-coming Virginia recording artist, Bryan Elijah Smith. The sounds of his unique brand of Americana music rang through the facility, providing entertainment that had our more than a few guests tapping their feet and singing along.

We hope this Open House allowed our guests to see how much we value them. Many new connections were made and many existing ones were strengthened. Thanks again to everyone who helped make our A-List Open House such an extraordinary success!

View More Photos of our Open House

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with satellite offices in Newport News, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 600 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com. For media information, contact Eddie Williams, Director of Marketing at 804.523.8795.

ACI Makes People Count

ACI Sets Precedent Regarding Diversity

February 6, 20180

Harnessing the Power of People with Different Backgrounds

For many companies, diversity is a buzzword that has become too hard to ignore. From Silicon Valley and the world’s largest tech companies to smaller heavy industry players, employees and the community alike are demanding statistics on a company’s makeup, and, if a company doesn’t measure up on diversity, change.

But Atlantic Constructors doesn’t think diversity is enough.

“Diversity by itself is just a mix of differences, but true inclusion is making the mix work,” said Terrence Kerner, President of ACI. “If we learn to harness the power of people with different backgrounds and experiences, it makes us more innovative.”

With over 700 employees, the leading service and construction provider for commercial and industrial markets knows that it’s the people that set the company apart in the industry.

Bill Cooper, ACI’s Director of Diversity Strategies, shared this after working with the company for a few months: “ACI builds not by counting people, but by making people count.

Click for the full article in Boss Magazine

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with satellite offices in Newport News, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 600 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com.

Helping Out in Puerto Rico

January 24, 20180

Transporting goods from a church in Suffolk, VA to an island more than 1,000 miles off the U.S. coast has proven to be incredibly difficult. Jonathan Gonzalez is an ACI employee at our Suffolk location and a Puerto Rico native with many family members residing on the island. After Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, Jonathan waited several days without hearing if his family was okay. Finally, he got word from a radio station that his family had survived. Like many other Puerto Ricans in the wake of the storm, he decided he would make the trip to the island himself to bring supplies to his family and community.

ACI employees at the Suffolk location collected more than $300 to help Jonathan buy supplies. With this contribution, Jonathan was able to bring 1,000 pounds of food, water and water purification systems, cases of baby wipes for bathing, electronics, flashlights, batteries, battery chargers, extension cords, and a satellite phone to establish communication. ACI also purchased black bins that helped transport the supplies easily. Upon arrival, Jonathan received law enforcement escorts and help from the mayor to disperse his goods as efficiently as possible.

With a little help from ACI, Jonathan was able to provide much-needed relief for 10 days. There is no doubt it takes a certain kind of team to support a fellow employee in this way. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to Jonathan’s journey and his efforts in assisting the people of Puerto Rico.

He shared images of the overwhelming damage and devastation caused by Hurricane Maria. Click the links below for more.

View Pics and Video of Jonathan in Puerto Rico

See How You Can Continue to Help Puerto Rico

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with satellite offices in Newport News, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 600 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com.

ACI Cuts the Cord

June 30, 20170

ACI Makes Major Investment in Safety and Efficiency

In order to meet new OSHA regulations for silica dust exposure, Atlantic Constructors, Inc. (ACI) partnered with Milwaukee Tools to provide, among several other new tools, the Milwaukee HAMMERVAC™ Dedicated Dust Extractor which connects directly to and is powered by the M18 FUEL™ 1” SDS Plus Rotary Hammer. This design allows for a very compact HAMMERVAC™ and rotary hammer combination to fit in the most confined work spaces, utilizing the same replaceable certified HEPA filter as other HAMMERVACS™, which filter 99.97% of all particles greater than 0.3µm.

Evan Shriver, ACI’s Executive Vice President for Construction Operations believes this initiative to be another clear indication of ACI’s dedication to providing something extraordinary to our clients. “These new tools represent a major, $100,000+ investment which will not only ensure ACI meets or exceeds OSHA requirements, but will also provide more efficient layout while increasing safety, quality and productivity for our workers and our customers.”

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Atlantic Constructors, Inc. is a full service industrial and commercial contractor headquartered in Richmond, VA (Chesterfield County) with satellite offices in Newport News, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads, VA. Our highly skilled team of over 550 employees serves customers throughout the mid-Atlantic region. For more information, visit www.acibuilds.com.