CARIBOU, Maine — Back in 1988, Shane Giles attended Caribou’s vocational program while he was a junior at Fort Fairfield High School. He founded N.S. Giles less than a decade later in 1998, working out of the back of his truck and providing contracting services to smaller clients with residential projects. Over the next two decades, his company grew to be the largest industrial commercial concrete company in the state with a crew of 125.
Now, Giles finds himself back in The County laying the foundation for Caribou’s new multi-million dollar PreK-8 school project.
Giles, whose company is responsible for four major projects in Bangor (Eastern Maine Medical Center, Hollywood Slots, the Cross Insurance Center, and the new Bangor Savings Bank headquarters), said he’s glad to be back in Caribou.
“The big difference is the people,” he said. “Customers seem to have a greater sense of appreciation for a project in The County. The Bangor and Portland markets are so accustomed to having large projects going on, plus you have limited space to do your work.”
He said Aroostook is far less crowded, but that he still has support from “a lot of great local contractors in the area” such as Soderberg Construction and S.W. Collins, concluding that The County is a “friendly environment to work in.”
The company was even able to work with a local real estate agency and rent a couple homes with multiple bedrooms in order to house out-of-town workers.
“We have two houses rented up here for the next year or so,” he said. “That worked out really well.”
N.S. Giles employs workers from all around Maine, and Giles said a large portion of the workers are either from The County originally or “very familiar with the area,” adding that many would prefer to come up to Caribou for a large scale project.
“It’s not hard to ask people to come up this way,” he said. “It’s practically their backyard.”
While the new school is their largest task in The County, N.S. Giles is no stranger to the region. They worked on the border crossing in Fort Kent, helped build a dike on the Aroostook River, and laid the foundation for Tractor Supply Co. in Presque Isle.
The company also prides itself on bringing in young employees with little to no experience and training them to become successful members of the company, with good pay and plenty of room for advancement.
Scott Kennedy, the firm’s human resources director, said that while “50 percent of the workforce in construction and skilled trades is 45 or older,” the average age of an N.S. Giles employee is roughly 32. He attributes this to the company’s training program, which Giles himself developed.
“This was developed under the direction of Shane and his vision, because there are not a lot of programs like this,” Kennedy said. “There’s a lot of opportunity here; it’s mind boggling.”
Some of the younger employees have been with the company for years, Giles said.
“We actually have a 33-year-old superintendent on the project who has been with us for 12 years, and a 29-year-old foreman who has been here for seven years. Some are even younger than that.”
He said that while some may misconstrue this as an “inexperienced team,” Giles said that the workers receive extensive training and can easily work their way up the ranks if they show initiative.
On Sept. 20, he treated his crew members to lunch from Governor’s Restaurant and gave them a speech about their progress on the project and about future job prospects.
Giles told them that they’ve all “been doing an awesome job” and that the project is several weeks ahead of schedule.
“To date we’ve got about 42 tons of steel that is in and delivered to this site,” he said, “and we have 415 yards of concrete in the ground to date. That’s on our sixth week. It’s a pretty amazing start; we’re further ahead than anticipated and hoping to hit some higher marks before we close this down for the winter.”
He also told some of the newer crew members about the opportunities that lie ahead if they stay with N.S. Giles.
“This organization has worked hard to bring people up through groups and programs and it has certainly paid off,” he said. “Five years ago today, we had 38 employees and right now we have 125. We’re a company on the move and you guys are all a part of it. You see the advancement opportunities here. Every one of you here have that same opportunity.”
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- Workers at N.S. Giles, a subcontractor for the new Caribou PreK-8 school project, are several weeks ahead of schedule on the foundation. (Chris Bouchard)
