Looking Ahead

KLEBS Mechanical finds success through pre-planning and innovation

By Jamey Bradbury

ike is our visionary,” says Heath Martin, co-owner of KLEBS Mechanical, Alaska’s largest full-service residential and commercial plumbing, sheet metal, and mechanical services contractor.

In 2018, Mike Klebs joined forces with Martin to buy KLEBS Mechanical from his father, Gary Klebs, who started the company in 1986 as a commercial sheet-metal contractor. Since then, it has been Mike Klebs’ vision that has kept KLEBS Mechanical steady through the Alaska economy’s ups and downs.

Early on, Gary Klebs ushered his company to success by growing his one-man sheet-metal shop into a full-service mechanical company. Clients in remote locations across Alaska and those working on federal government projects for Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson helped the company thrive.

As the commercial side of KLEBS grew, Mike Klebs recalls, existing clients were starting to request KLEBS Mechanical’s services installing home furnaces and boilers. In 1993, KLEBS launched a residential department.

“We’ve always been heavy commercial, and adding the residential component didn’t change that,” Mike Klebs says.

By the late 2000s, KLEBS was returning to projects for an early client, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or JBER. Between jobs triggered by the National Guard’s move from the Kulis Air Force Base to JBER and new facilities for the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, KLEBS Mechanical had a hand in numerous projects, either as a design-build mechanical contractor or a bid-build mechanical contractor.

The “bread and butter” of the company’s commercial division, Mike Klebs says, has always been design-build. Whether KLEBS Mechanical is working on Anchorage-based projects like the Aspen Creek Senior Living facility or remote jobs on the North Slope for frequent client ICE Services, Inc., Mike Klebs comes at every project from a value-engineering and constructability perspective.

“We start building the project in our minds, in the office, and then pre-planning our execution long before we even get out on site,” he says. “By the time the design is 95 to 100 percent, we’ve already worked out a lot of the constructability issues and cost overruns that could occur. Clients like our team’s attention to detail, our ability to plan the execution on the project while collaborating with them on the overall schedule, and coordinating with other subcontractor scopes all during the design phase of the project. This translates into cost savings, as well.”

“We’ve done very large camps on the North Slope that KLEBS has been key in installing and moving,” says Marvin Olson, project manager for ICE Services, Inc. “Their work has to be highly skilled in order to make timelines, and I always rely on them for that. Their costing is fair, they’re always on budget, and on time.”

Prefabrication and preassembly are key parts of that cost savings, especially when it comes to remote work: The KLEBS team pre-builds pieces of mechanical systems in their shop in a controlled environment and then ships those pieces to the job site to be put in place.

This method was key to completing the Denali Bluffs Hotel expansion in 2017. KLEBS had to complete a seventy-bed expansion between October and May, when temperatures often dipped to -30°F to -50°F. Through careful planning and by prefabricating components of the mechanical systems, KLEBS saved on heating and other costs on this project, which earned them an AGC Excellence in Construction Award.

“We try to be as innovative as possible,” Mike Klebs says.

He credits AGC with helping companies like KLEBS Mechanical make connections with clients and fellow AGC members that allow for information sharing. “The wealth of knowledge that’s passed along, even during COVID-19, through webinars, trainings, and networking, is just invaluable.”