Founder of DeAndrea Coring and Sawing, Inc., Mike DeAndrea, was also a founding member of the Concrete Sawing & Drilling Association (CSDA).

The renovation to the downtown Denver’s Barclay Towers’ second floor was a particularly challenging job that required cutting 24 custom windows.

Fifty years of operation is a time to celebrate for any company—though for DeAndrea Coring and Sawing, Inc.’s President and CEO, Paul DeAndrea, the milestone comes with mixed emotions. There is pride, for sure, as well as melancholy memories of the past and excitement about the road ahead.

His father, Mike, a former butcher, founded DeAndrea Coring and Sawing, Inc. (DeAndrea) when Paul was just 4 years old. Mike would go on to build a business and influence this specialty trade for the next 25 years. When he passed of a stroke, then 29-year-old Paul would continue his father’s legacy, pushing boundaries and creating opportunities.

Now, exactly 25 years later, Paul reflects on the milestones of a company that drills deep to drive change as it readies for the next era.

The First 25

In many ways, DeAndrea is synonymous with the Concrete Sawing & Drilling Association (CSDA), of which Mike was a founding member along with 11 of his colleagues in the coring/sawing profession.

Through CSDA, Mike helped set a standard for concrete sawing, coring and drilling that is still held today. This nonprofit trade association that includes contractors, manufacturers and affiliated members from the concrete construction and renovation industry now represents some 500 international member companies. Mike also had the opportunity to work on a number of high-profile dam, bridge and highway projects throughout Colorado, all while sharing his knowledge with his son, Paul.

While he worked for his dad throughout high school and beyond, Paul would become a managing partner in 1989 after graduating with honors with a degree in Construction Management. He even helped his dad add concrete patching and pouring services to the business in the 1990s, to expand the company’s services. That legacy would serve him well when his father passed.

Like Father, Like Son

Just as Mike was a pioneer in the concrete sawing, coring and drilling industry, Paul had ideas of his own, both as a concrete practitioner, a problem solver and a business owner with a small, but highly skilled team.

He confirms, “If a job came along that nobody else wanted, we took it and found a way to solve the problem.”

Building on the memory of his beloved father, he’s made a conscious effort to push beyond nonconventional cutting, coring and sawing services with the motto, “If we can’t cut it, no one can.”

Paul says, “We built a reputation for performing complex and challenging jobs throughout the Mountain West region on projects that ranged from reservoirs to major highway expansions.”

He recalls one particularly pivotal project on the 32-story Barclay Towers in 2003. Brooke Banbury sought to renovate the then-vacant second floor of the building as a summer get-away. However, the floor didn’t have any windows. The owner contacted DeAndrea to cut 24 windows in the high-rise.

“Since the windows were already fabricated, each of a unique size, the cuts had to be very precise,” Paul says. “As well, there could be no overcuts between the rebar so as not to weaken the larger structure.”

Adding to the complexity, the cuts had to be made within a tight schedule as the windows were already fabricated and waiting to be installed. Removing the concrete was a challenge too, as Larimer is a very busy street, with little access for haul trucks or a crane.

Paul planned and successfully executed the plan. The precision cuts took about three weeks, but the demo was done in just one day. With a crane parked on the city of Denver’s busy Larimer Street and haul trucks waiting for loads, crews started at 7 a.m. and finished by 12:30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon when traffic was minimal.

This was just one example of Paul’s ingenuity. He also saw ways to advance and improve concrete- related processes while adding more services to ensure his team had work.

Beyond the Core

While the concrete coring, drilling and sawing business was on the rise, Paul continued to evaluate new innovations, which led to the next milestone moment for this pioneering company. He saw great potential in ground-penetrating radar (GPR) as a way to replace more conventional X-ray technology used to “see” inside concrete before cutting and sawing.

As a nondestructive testing method that uses electromagnetic waves to see below a surface, GPR was both safer for operators (no radiation) and offered better visibility in thicker concrete (up to 20 inches). Soon after, DeAndrea was the first coring and sawing company in Colorado to offer GPR, which led to another company milestone: the establishment of the Concrete Imaging Services (CIS) Division in 2004. For the next decade, DeAndrea was the primary GPR service provider in the state.

But the talented DeAndrea team wasn’t done. Turns out, the skill sets that make for expert coring and drilling are also ideal for installing bollards, cutting egress windows, grinding and polishing floors, sawing and sealing highways, and much more.

Engraved for Success

The jobs completed by DeAndrea over the last 50 years range in scope and scale. One day the company might remove a bridge and the next perform some core drills on a dam.

The talented crew even spent considerable time renovating a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Brighton, Colorado, which required cutting 100,000 linear feet of concrete inside the building. The owner challenged DeAndrea to sawcut 6,000 lineal feet of concrete a day—but the team actually cut and removed an average of 8,000 square feet a day, outpacing the surveyor’s layout. Like most of its customer base, the turbine manufacturer continues to be one of DeAndrea’s repeat customers.

The team has worked on thousands of projects throughout the state of Colorado and surrounding Rocky Mountain states, including Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas and Nebraska. Workers once drilled 8,000 handrail holes at Denver’s Pepsi Center (now known as Ball Arena), saw cut and removed concrete pan decking from Concourse C at Denver International Airport (DIA) and renovated the DIA Pikes Peak Shuttle Lot. Current work includes a highway saw-and-seal job in Windsor, Colorado, on State Highway 392 and Larimer County Road 5.

And the company continues to expand, most recently with the addition of concrete engraving services—cutting concrete at a whole new level of precision of 0.006 inches.

DeAndrea added precision concrete engraving to its list of services this past year. Using its decades of concrete coring and sawing expertise, the firm’s talented team can engrave virtually indestructible safety signage, logos and decorative signs into concrete and stone for commercial and residential use. To date, these skilled craftspeople have used portable engraving machinery to etch designs into concrete, stone, brick, tile, granite, slate, bluestone, acrylic, high-density plastic and wood.

Paul says, “I have been doing this job my entire life. I like finding new opportunities and challenges, giving our team a chance to work more complex jobs, manage bigger projects and grow professionally.” It’s a mindset that his father would be proud of.