Impossible vs Possible: Aaron Hammond Makes Big Changes with Small Suggestions

Apr 26, 2017

When asked about his experiences dealing with the theme of Impossible vs Possible, Aaron Hammond wrote about his recent experience working with Rommel Construction to optimize their pull. Aaron started working with Southwire six years ago as a Maxis Tools Specialist and has worked his way up to be a Contractor Solutions superstar.

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Rommel Construction had tried to buy into the SIMpull® CoilPAK™ wire payoff system when it was first launched. Unfortunately, their expectations were not met - lack of jobsite support and  product handling knowledge at the time were probably the leading factors. They did buy a SIMpull CoilPAK Cart which had been sitting in their warehouse collecting dust. I met with these guys about a month ago at their foremans' meeting and presented the whole SIMpull Solutions® set to them. I re-introduced the SIMpull CoilPAK wire payoff system and talked them into trying them out again with better support and new CoilPAK accessories. They were willing. At the time, Ed Phillips, who is the Lead Foreman at the R House Job in Baltimore, had already bought 2,500’ spools but was willing to return the untouched spools and replace them with SIMpull CoilPAK wire payoffs. They ended up swapping out 45+ spools for SIMpull CoilPAK wire payoffs. I got called into the job a few weeks later and I was ready to show up to the job with Southwire’s bag of tricks.

When I arrived, I noticed that their old red SIMpull CoilPAK Cart had the old tap, I knew this could be an issue with the #10 Solid they were about to pull. I swapped out the old tap with our current modified roller tap, gave them a couple GRIPit™ pulling devices and also hooked up the GUIDEit™ to their panel. The first pull they pulled in nine wire of  #10 solid in a 1” conduit using our new SIMpull Fish Tape. The pull went flawless and they saw the value of utilizing our system right off the bat.

After the first pull, Ed Phillips said the real test was seeing how freely an individual circuit would pull out next to the other eight wires sitting in the conduit. He needed to pull 50 extra feet from the conduit and he did with extreme ease. He was blown away. He explained how time consuming this process is when executing the traditional way with 2,500’ spools. From here, they did another pull and this time they pulled in 10 wires of #10 solid through a 3/4”. Ed thought surely this was close to an impossible pull to do without applying lube, but we proved him wrong and again this was just as easy to pull in as the first... the impossible became possible!  

I came back a couple days later to check on them and also capture more videos of them pulling in some home runs. Ed was still very happy with the set up and had no complaints. He seemed to really like the fact that the neutrals were striped to go with each phase and again, he could not stop talking about how much he loved Southwire's SIMpull Solutions no-lube products. He pulled in 3 circuits through 5 boxes at a total of 500’ in 45 minutes. Ed states that this is would be impossible with a traditional set up, but the Southwire CoilPAK wire payoff system made it possible.

Overall, this was a huge success for Southwire considering that Rommel Construction is busy with a lot of work right now and Ed Phillips is one of their top foremans. He will be in charge a larger job they have starting soon which he intends to use more of our solutions on. They took back a bunch of 2,500’ spools on this job to give us a shot with the SIMpull CoilPAK wire payoffs and we brought their old red cart back to life in the process. Our job site support goes a long way and our SIMpull Solutions products and solutions set speaks for itself once the contractor fully understands how the system operates.

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For more information about Contractor Solutions or to bring the Contractor Solutions team to your jobsite, please visit their website contractorsolutions.southwire.com.

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