Coatings Unlimited

🛠️ Keeping Safety at the Forefront at Coatings Unlimited! 🛠️ Even in the midst of a busy season, we believe that nothing is more important than the well-being of our team. That's why we took time this week at our Coatings Unlimited MN office for a focused 1st Aid & CPR training session. Our small group training ensured that each team member received personalized, hands-on instruction. Whether it's on the job or in everyday life, these essential skills empower our employees to respond quickly and effectively in emergency situations. A big thank you to everyone who participated and our dedicated trainer who made the session engaging and informative. Let’s continue to prioritize safety as we tackle the rest of this season! #SafetyFirst #TeamTraining #CoatingsUnlimited #CPRTraining #FirstAid

As the construction industry evolves, it’s clear that bringing more women into construction will be crucial. Riley’s skills and business acumen have shown that she would excel in construction, and her time on the jobsite served as a reminder of the many talented women poised to make a significant impact in this field. We’re excited for Riley and other women of her generation, whether they choose to work in the field or on the business side. Their potential is limitless, and we’re eager to see them drive the future of construction forward. #womeninconstruction #FutureOfConstruction #DiversityInConstruction #LoyolaChicago

🎉 We’re thrilled to announce that Coatings Unlimited has been recognized as a Top Finisher at the 2024 Crest Awards for our 2023 Performance! The Crest Awards celebrate contractors who excel in safety training and are presented annually by FCA International, North America’s largest community of finishing contractors. We’re honored to be ranked among the best in our industry. Our recognition speaks to our outstanding safety record, with our EMR (Experience Modification Rate) reflecting fewer losses, injuries, and illnesses compared to industry standards. This three-year average assessment — tracked over a four-year period for better accuracy — highlights our commitment to maintaining a top-notch safety program. At Coatings Unlimited, safety isn’t just a priority — it’s a core value. Being named among the elite contractors reinforces our dedication to creating a safe working environment for our team and delivering exceptional service to our customers. We appreciate all of our people who contribute to our safety culture. Here’s to continuing to set the standard in our industry! 🦺 #CrestAwards2024 #TopFinishers

In the 1980s, Bill Walsh led the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl wins as the team’s head coach. He molded Joe Montana into a legendary quarterback, popularized the West Coast offense, and transformed the 49ers from one of the worst teams in the NFL into a Lombardi-winning dynasty. One of Bill Walsh’s core philosophies was that if you want to lead a high performing team, you have to be a high performer yourself. This is a philosophy our leadership practices here at Coatings Unlimited. CUI leadership has put in hours of continuing education, including Advanced Management Certification from Olin Business School, in order to maintain a high level of performance. By learning to excel as practitioners, our leadership can pass those skills on to the people in our organization. And taking a page out of Bill Walsh’s playbook, it’s how we lead our CUI team to greatness.

Certification doesn’t equal competency. Now, don’t get us wrong — we believe certifications are important.  But sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of the purpose of third-party inspections, which is to get the project done for the customer according to the drawings. And if an inspector lacks practical experience and fails to see the end goal, it can cost the contractor — and by extension, the customer — more money unnecessarily after all is said and done. You can avoid all of that unnecessary expense by hiring a trusted, reputable contractor. Competency shouldn’t have to cost extra.

What do Coatings Unlimited and 3D printing have in common? The answer is at the at the Soo Locks Facility in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed the largest U.S. civil works component produced by a 3D printer. Coatings Unlimited worked on this important project, which was designed to ensure the facility’s Poe Lock would be able to avert a catastrophic closure. According to the Corps, using a 3D printer to manufacture the component — a 12-foot-long metal part for the lock’s ship arrestor system — allowed for faster production times and lower costs for maintenance and property improvements. The Corps was able to build the part in 12 weeks, versus the projected 18-month lead time for conventional manufacturing. Certainly, this won’t be the last infrastructure project of this kind, as 3D printing continues to improve efficiencies and provide solutions to a host of different challenges. And since CUI got to be part of the first such project, we’re looking forward to leveraging this experience for other innovative infrastructure projects.

Protecting some of our nation’s most critical infrastructure is one of our roles as a coatings contractor. And it’s a responsibility we take seriously. That responsibility came into focus on one of our recent projects at the Soo Locks Facility in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed the largest U.S. civil works component produced by a 3D printer. According to the Corps, installing the component — a 12-foot-long metal part for the Poe Lock ship arrestor system — meant ensuring the lock would be able to avert a catastrophic closure. Working on these kinds of important infrastructure projects is where we thrive. And it gives us great pride to be able to preserve our nation’s structures, job after job.

It’s been exciting to play even just a small role in supporting customers in emerging markets that are providing clean-air technology for the power market. One project Coatings Unlimited recently completed was for a North Dakota ethanol facility in need of underground storage for over 100,000 tons of C02 per year. And so, instead of releasing these carbon emissions into the atmosphere, the facility is capturing and safely storing them in an underground well. Through the work we do at Coatings Unlimited, we touch so many different industries, from food packaging to national defense to roads and bridges. Being so versatile puts us in a strong position to be able to seamlessly pivot to growing industries like carbon capture and ethanol, where there are customers that depend on companies like us to protect their facilities. We’re doing something different here almost every day, and it never gets old.

Add public art to our growing list of project types. As a national coatings contractor, we touch just about every segment of the U.S. economy — critical infrastructure, aerospace, transportation, logistics, food production, you name it. And one cool project we worked on recently involved the renovation of a sculpture at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis. By applying a fresh protective coating to the sculpture, our team brought color and new life to this signature work of art. We take a lot of pride in our projects, both large and small, and it’s been rewarding to play a part in conserving a piece of art that the public can continue to enjoy for years to come.

We consider ourselves to be facilitators of helping employees achieve their career goals. It’s worth noting that this isn’t just a message coming from the top. If you take a look on social media, this is a sentiment that’s being mirrored all the way from our craft workers to our supervisors. The feedback is truly humbling and encouraging. And so, this isn’t just what we’re saying. This is coming from the people who have been working with us the longest. That tells us we’re doing something right.