Long-term relationships are as important to Kim Walker as building flawless onsite systems. On every job site and in every customer contact, Walker’s goal is to establish and nourish connections. He knows relationships bring future installation, maintenance, management and pumping work to his business in southeastern Idaho.

Walker and his wife Melanie own Trenchmen Excavating and Construction LLC, in Rexburg. He conducts more than 70 percent of his installation and excavating business directly with the landowner. “Individual homeowner connections are at least as important as relationships with commercial builders,” Walker says. “That’s because a builder’s job is once and done, while a landowner will want and need continuing support for as long as he owns the home.”

The business includes 25 percent new and replacement system installations, 15 percent repairs, 15 percent management services, and 45 percent general excavation. Walker prides himself on installing new systems that fit site conditions and on bringing troubled systems back to health through targeted repairs and effective maintenance and management.

Adapting to the market

After working for another company, Walker and a friend started an excavation business in 1999. Within about a year, Walker was on his own, and he has been ever since. Working throughout seven counties within a 100-mile radius of Rexburg, the company has seen busy and slow times.

Rexburg, home to a Brigham Young University Campus, recently saw three years of rapid expansion, but then growth slowed down, and the backlog of work declined significantly. While new construction is in decline, other opportunities have emerged.

“We have recently been recruited to provide operation and management services to all of the Jet Inc. aerobic systems previously installed in the area,” says Walker. “Jet, through our company, is responding to concerns of the state Department of Environmental Quality that homeowners have not engaged qualified management service providers. It is important for each system’s performance to be up to par, and that is now our responsibility.”

The work starts with a thorough inspection of each system. “Any construction defects are identified and remedied,” says Walker. “Non-working or out-of-spec parts are replaced, and a sample of the treated effluent is sent for lab analysis. We are refining our skills as we go.”

Walker cannot understand installers who walk away from the opportunity for repeated customer contact and the ongoing cash streams that go with management services. “These are the opportunities I look for and build upon,” he says.

Value of rapport

A positive and collaborative relationship with the state Department of Health regulators is an asset that Walker values and safeguards. “Rapport with the regulators is an intangible value I bring onto every site,” he says. “Rapport brings with it trust. The regulators have developed confidence that I know what I am doing.”

That doesn’t mean regulators treat him with leniency, but they are comfortable moving from a “prove it” stance to a willingness to accept Walker’s professional judgments. Rapport is strengthened when installers and regulators collaborate on best-case repair strategies.

The Department of Health regulations apply statewide. Counties cannot diminish the state regulations, but they have some latitude to augment them. Permits for repair systems are based on site conditions, but before any repair strategy is selected, the root cause of the failure must be understood. “From this dual understanding, we identify the best technology for the site,” Walker says. “Sometimes that means proposing a system for a site that couldn’t meet the specifications for new home construction.”

Planning with care

When installing new or replacement systems, Walker plans each job carefully. “Almost as soon as I started digging holes for basements, I was in the onsite installation business,” he says. “I recognized that by ­carefully planning all stages of activity before mobilizing and arriving on site, I could minimize conflicts between contractors, avoid the need to place and then reposition soil and soil stockpiles, and cut operating costs and customer expenses.”

Planning also can diminish the need to haul in material. A well-planned project lets him use all of the site’s attributes and resources with the least effort and cost. He allocates the site’s best soils for onsite system use, and whenever possible he uses surplus soil for earth-shaping and landscaping. He may borrow soil from one spot to use in another. All this helps him save significant money for clients.

When soil conditions or regulations require an area to be reserved for a future replacement drainfield, Walker recommends installing that drainfield during initial construction. He admits that the installation price is higher as a result, but notes that it will never be less expensive than when paid for with today’s dollar.

“The intangible value of avoiding future site disruptions and the possible destruction of landscaping are all considerations I provide to enable my customers to make better decisions,” he says. When there is no regulatory prohibition, he also recommends using both drainfields on an alternating basis from the outset.

Recognizing that an existing system may spontaneously regenerate in a few years, he connects many of his replacement drainfields with the failed system by means of a directional valve. At first, all flow is diverted to the new drainfield. Monitoring of the original drainfield will reveal if or when it can be returned to service. In cases where the old field recovers, he recommends alternating flows so that each system can work and recover.

Focused resources

Walker and Melanie are the firm’s only full-time employees. “For some time, I employed a laborer, but as our work slowed, that person found an alternate opportunity,” says Walker. “He left us rather than us having to let him go.” Walker does call on his brothers from time to time, and they fill in as casual labor when a two- or three-man task is at hand.

Melanie runs the office, handling all financial matters and tracking permits and related paperwork. “Our 10-year-old son, Trey, is the next generation that will take on the business,” Walker says. He likes to be around the equipment and especially by his father’s side.

Excavation and onsite installation equipment includes a 2002 Case 580 Super M backhoe, a 1995 Kobelco 200 LC tracked excavator, and a 1988 Freightliner three-axle dump truck. Walker recently launched a pumping service (Simple Septic Solutions LLC). He traveled to Virginia to pick up his first vacuum truck, a 1998 Freightliner FL70 with a 2,500-gallon tank.

“We expect pumping and system service and management to grow significantly,” Walker says. “These will be the future core services of our enterprise. We purchased our vacuum truck to enable us to keep all of the aerobic system support work in-house.”

The Jet project has opened many homeowners’ doors. “Home-owners do not know or understand their systems, and we find a large number of owner-induced stressors affecting system performance,” Walker says.

Service delivery usually builds the long-term relationships Walker wants with every customer. Owners want to understand and protect their onsite system investments, and Walker has become an educational resource whom landowners seek out.

Advertising exclusively by word-of-mouth, he measures the initial success of his pumping service using a unique scale. In the first four days, he pumped seven septic tanks. Each stop either built a new relationship or extended a connection he already had.

Working in a small community, Trenchmen Excavating sets itself apart by focusing on quality service, attention to detail, and a caring attitude on every job. “Whether a job will be tightly inspected or not has no bearing on our work,” Walker says. “We do every job right. It is simply the right thing to do.”