ICBA celebrates 50 years of serving open shop construction this year, and we are looking back every week at some of the significant moments, milestones, and people who helped ICBA become Canada’s largest construction association.
Today, we wind the clock back and look at the start for one of the key founders of ICBA: Bill Kerkhoff.
Bill Kerkhoff, ICBA Life Member
Bill Kerkhoff arrived in Canada as part of a Dutch immigrant family. Trained in carpentry, he played an important role even as a teenager in the launch of his family’s Chilliwack-based home building business, which took out its first building permit in 1968.
The business grew and expanded into non-residential, and in 1980 entered entirely new territory – for itself and the open shop sector – when it won the bid for a high-rise residential tower in Kelowna. By this time the building trades knew Kerkhoff was a threat to their monopoly, and he was well-acquainted with the tactics they were likely to deploy against him in Kelowna. “It was a real battle from day one till the very last,” he said.
Conscious of non-affiliation clauses, Kerkhoff avoided having union and non-union sub-contractors on site at the same time. But a unionized crew halted its three-quarters-complete installation of a highly specialized type of foundation, on the premise that while no non-union crews were there at the same time, they had prepared the site. The Labour Relations Board declined to remove the picket, leaving Kerkhoff with no option but to tear out the piles, and switch to an entirely different type of foundation for the building.
Picketing then prevented local drivers from delivering concrete for the large, continuous pour the project required. As on many other projects, this was overcome with help from Rempel Bros. Concrete. The cavalry-like arrival of its green-and-white trucks enabled Kerkhoff to supply his project from local batch plants. “They came in the evening before – a dozen trucks, all Rempel trucks and the next morning they started pouring. There must have been a hundred guys on the picket line and they were just furious,” he recalled.
Kerkhoff’s first Kelowna high-rise
Finally, the unions attempted to use their leverage over crane availability and operation. Every supplier of the particular type needed was unionized, so Kerkhoff resorted to buying his own – although that still left the challenge of assembling it. A crane company from Spokane was finally able to do it, but only after more wrangling with both unions and government officials over the presence of foreign workers. Disassembly of the crane was among the final challenges, and although an Edmonton contractor was found, he had to use the unorthodox method of taking the crane apart piece by piece from an A-frame installed on the building roof.
In the end, Kerkhoff got the project done, despite the hurdles put in his path, and within an already tight client timeline. Profitability, of course, suffered significantly. The experience was greatly frustrating, although he says it prepared him for similar challenges on larger and even more intensely opposed projects still to come. “You know, you’re in the middle of it and there’s no going back. So I always found the key is you’ve got to keep moving. You know, when you have problems, don’t stand still. That’s the nature of the business.”
That wouldn’t be the last Kelowna high-rise built by Kerkhoff Construction. Today, the Kelowna skyline is shaped by Kerkhoff buildings such as One Water Street and 1151 Sunset.
Kerkhoff, an ICBA Life Member, would go on to build Hatzic Elementary, Pennyfarthing, the Kamloops Courthouse, the SkyTrain Bridge, the Coquihalla Highway’s Great Bear Snow Shed and 18 bridges, 20 Expo 86 buildings, and much, much more. He is an icon in B.C. construction.
Today, his son Leonard runs Kerkhoff Construction and is the chair of the ICBA Board of Directors.
(From left): ICBA President Chris Gardner, Bill Kerkhoff, retired ICBA President Philip Hochstein — on the 22nd floor of a Kerkhoff tower under construction in Kelowna
