Toyota awards foundation contract to local firm
 

Harrell Contracting Group , based in Ridgeland, Madison County, has formed a partnership with Homewood, Illinois-based Graycor Industrial Contractors Inc., for the foundation project for the plant's stamping and paint buildings. Work for his project will begin in September. Harrell employs 150 people in the state of Mississippi.

"We continue to receive many competitive bids from Mississippi companies and are thrilled to see such high interest in doing business with Toyota," says Jeff Caldwell, assistant general manager of production engineering at Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc . "Great progress has been made at the Blue Springs site and we're confident that we'll remain on schedule, but we still have many challenges ahead of us."

Toyota also selected Midwest Steel, Inc . of Detroit, Michigan, for the structural steel project for the plant's stamping and paint buildings. This project will coincide with the foundation project in September.

Site preparation will continue through this fall and Toyota will select general contractors for the project in October. At peak construction in summer 2008, approximately 2,000 workers will be on site and the majority of them will be from the local area.

In February, Toyota announced that it had chosen a 1,700-acre site in Blue Springs to build 150,000 Toyota Highlander SUVs annually. The new plant represents a $1.3 billion investment by Toyota that is expected to hire around 2,000 team members. Vehicle production is scheduled to start by 2010.

Source: [url=http://www.constructiondigital.com/NewsArticle.aspx?articleid=2078]Construction Digital[/url]