Serving the engineering and construction sectors in Texas, nationwide, and abroad, Locke Solutions utilizes its impressive amount of experience in precast concrete and fabricated metal products to offer smart solutions for the industrial/petrochemical and electrical/communication subterranean utility markets.
Taking pride in its capacity to create and produce goods specially tailored to its customers’ requirements in order to lower the risk and expense related to changing building site conditions, Locke Solutions began modestly in Houston, Texas, in 2013 and has since expanded, providing exemplary customer service and a positive work environment.
The company began manufacturing its own exclusive self-consolidating concrete mix designs in 2014 after acquiring an automated concrete batch machine from Mixer Systems, Inc., and is the second of only two precast businesses authorized by CenterPoint Energy to design and manufacture precast power manholes in the Houston area. In fact, the National Precast Concrete Association (NPCA) recognized Locke’s quality control program that same year, and the company has been accredited ever since.
Locke Solutions accelerated its growth in 2015 by complementing its 20-ton bridge crane with a 40-ton bridge crane, increasing production capacity, followed by constructing a new 41,750-square-foot facility in March 2017 with 9,000 square feet of office space and a break area for staff members. By adding two more bridge cranes in 2019, the company was able to increase production capacity once more, reaching a maximum indoor single lift capability of 200,000 pounds for a single structure.
Continued expansion in 2021 resulted in the addition of two more bridge cranes, a 1,000-square-foot quality control lab, and more than 56,000 square feet of concrete pavement laydown space. An extra 8,000 square feet of office space was constructed on its second level in 2022 to house the expanding project management, engineering, and estimating teams. The company proudly celebrated its tenth anniversary in January 2023, and soon after, launched a second facility in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, along with a local presence in the North Texas market thanks to a 40,000-square-foot plant in Alvarado.
“We started operations in a small warehouse with a total of three employees,” says Marketing Manager Madison Longoria. “It was a very small operation and through a lot of tenacity and hard work, our team started to grow. We then moved into getting our own batch plant and mixer system the following year in 2014, and developed our own proprietary self-consolidating concrete mix. We started building our team from there, and then upgraded our capacity inside our plant.”
Locke Solutions has steadily grown and expanded its capabilities since, and the last few years have featured rapid growth in all areas. “It’s all been really exciting, growing our team and growing as a company,” says Longoria. “We’re excited to see what the next chapter holds for us.”
The company also offers OSHA 10-hour training free to any employee at the plant, adds Chris Coronado, Head of QAHSE (Quality Assurance, Health and Safety, and Environment), a framework designed to help businesses improve performance in these specific areas. “OSHA 10 is the basic, general safety course that OSHA provides, and we make that free to any employee who wants to take it,” says Coronado, adding the company had about 40 people complete the course last year.
This dedication from the company to keeping employees safe is greatly appreciated, he says. “It opens their eyes to what to expect before they go into the shop. I feel we’ve had better results with that, because it’s tailored to what we do here versus more of a general safety orientation.”
In an ongoing effort to uphold that commitment to quality and safety, Locke Solutions strives to provide surveys for the team via QR codes posted around the plant that employees can scan and then be forwarded to a Microsoft form. “They can then select one of the three plants and log their finding, whether it’s a quality finding or a safety finding,” says Coronado, adding that the surveys aren’t only for negative aspects, but also “really good” things, such as an employee wearing a face shield while working, or making a specific quality product. This is complemented by monthly and quarterly drawings for prizes.
Creating this positive company culture for Locke Industries is a high priority and one that it strives to uphold and maintain.
“We hire around our five core values,” says Coronado. “One of them is a ‘getting it done’ attitude. Another is problem solving. That’s what our culture is driven around. It’s us doing the custom structures. It’s diving in and taking ownership of projects and then executing. We count on our people who have that experience, and it goes a long way when we have those team members who are goal-driven. It goes all the way from the bottom to the top.”
Getting the safety culture right is a value that particularly resonates with HSE Manager Victor Morales. “Over the years it’s actually changed drastically for the better,” he shares. “When it comes to core values and how to get it done—attitude—I think now we have the right people in place, and I think how it comes down to safety from the bottom to the top has really been working in a good way. Plus, we get feedback on everything—the good and bad.”
Locke Solutions’ considerable growth in the past two years has also come with challenges, adds Coronado. “We went through a lot of growing pains and new processes we weren’t accustomed to. It was a lot of changing as we go, making these processes, and ensuring employees are safe and go home safe at the end of the day. It was all new to us, growing from one facility to two.”
Again, safety is a huge and vital element for the company, as evidenced through its ongoing incorporation of NPCA (the National Precast Concrete Association) resources into its day-to-day operations. This involves industry-tailored safety videos, toolbox talks, and lessons learned that the company both tracks and implements.
“We’re not the first ones to do precast,” says Coronado, “so it helps that we’re able to bounce ideas off other members of the NPCA. It helps out a lot that we aren’t in this by ourselves. We have the NPCA organization we can always lean on.”
Additionally, as part of the Houston chapter of the ABC—American Builders and Contractors—the company received the Platinum Award for safety for 2023 and is on track to hit that again this year, adds Morales. “This covers the safety culture, any incidents you’ve had, and recordables versus the man-hours worked, and grades you on a on a scale, giving you a certificate or an award.”
Despite these impressive accolades, Locke Solutions, like every modern company, is facing challenges in bringing a younger workforce into the fold. To help accelerate that goal, the company hosts plant tours, working with local universities and high schools while engaging with industry experts to speak with prospective employees.
“We’ll order lunch for about 20 to 30 students and show them a little bit of the industry,” says Morales. “Precast is a trade that’s not really heard of, so it’s giving those students exposure to that before they graduate. If they want to do more of an engineering or manufacturing degree, they have something they can lean toward. If it’s a trade that they want to come and work at in the plant, we’re giving them that exposure to different opportunities as they grow in their young careers.”
Many younger students may not understand the potential that exists for an outstanding career in the trades, so Locke Industries strives to show them what’s available and how to achieve it successfully.
In the meantime, Locke Solutions has a wealth of exciting projects on the horizon, says Longoria, particularly in regard to expanding its facility. “We’ve been awarded some very large, substantial projects, probably the biggest in the history of our company, that we’re about to start producing more very soon,” she says. “We’re seated on 17 acres here at our headquarters in Houston, and we’re currently expanding our yard extensively to accommodate our ability to store all the different products we’re producing before we ship out. There are a lot of exciting things going on here.”
And while the company does have its “tough days,” it manages to always work through any issues while embracing a family feel. “We always go back to our three unique core values,” says Coronado. “Those are our people, the technical expertise of our team that we have here, and our responsiveness.”
Foundational values also include being a team player, he adds, and genuinely caring about what they do. “We care about each other as a team, and our purpose is to make our customers’ lives easier and our employees lives better, and that’s a motto we try to champion every single day,” he says. “That’s how we work with each other, how we respond to our customers. Precast happens to be the product that we make, so we just want to deliver exceptional customer service to them and help our team in the meantime.”
Like all families, there are occasionally rough waters to navigate, but Locke Solutions always manages to come out ahead. “It’s all a big family, and we strive to hire around that,” says Morales. “We always say, ‘we hire around that, we fire around that.’ The culture is the big differentiator for us. It’s all the people who make the difference.”
