Bill Ziadie works for the vibratory hammer company American Piledriving Equipment, Inc., which is best known by its acronym APE. Bill’s business card says simply “Sales & Rentals,” a title that doesn’t do justice to his acumen in the industry.
Ziadie is a well-known and respected sales person, despite claiming to have no skill or technique at sales. What he does takes pride in, however, is having an encyclopedic knowledge of the uses, parameters, application and maintenance of piledriving equipment—a claim claims that others back up.
He lives in Hackettstown, New Jersey, the town he grew up in, and works out of the APE office in the New Jersey side of the New York harbor.
By Warren Miller, Marine Construction Magazine
MCMag: How did you get started in construction equipment?
Bill Ziadie: Through equipment maintenance. After I graduated from high school, I went into the Army. My Military Occupational Specialty was 62-Bravo, which was construction equipment mechanics. That’s what I did for four years. When I got out, I had a friend whose sister was an executive secretary for a company that imported watches from Japan.
There’s a place in Morris County, N.J. that they call the International Trade Zone. It’s a Rockefeller property with its own customs clearing. The idea was to have foreign companies set up shop and have materials shipped directly there, clearing customs in the facility instead of the ports. I had taken my last 40 days in the Army on leave, and was bored because all my friends were working weekdays. My friend’s sister said they were always looking for warehouse help, so I went to work there.
While working in the warehouse, a co-worker had met a mechanic from a construction equipment company who needed a service tech. The company was ICE, the International Construction Company. I met the mechanic and was offered a job and went to work for ICE.
Did you have experience with piledriving equipment before that?
No. I served the last 13 months of my enlistment doing maintenance in a battalion in Camp Casey, South Korea servicing what they called the “float equipment.” The battalion had to maintain a minimum of 80 percent of their equipment in combatready condition. They would float anything that wasn’t in top working order to us and we’d give them something that was ready—tanks, jeeps, armored mobiles and all kinds of smaller equipment.
What did you enjoy the most about your Army work? Did it lead into construction?
I aspired to be a mechanic of some sort, but when you’re 22, you take whatever comes along. The thing with ICE was interesting. I was hired as a helper. I hardly knew what piledriving was, but I learned quickly by going on jobs. The older guy I worked for was hard on his guys, but I’d just been in the Army and was used to it. Plus, I’d wrestled in high school and my coach was brutal. He’d have gone to jail if he coached today. You learn how to endure harsh environments.
When they thought I was a good enough mechanic to go out and do field service, I went. Then my supervisor got hurt on a job and I became in charge of the yard. Other people were hired after me as the company got bigger.
How did you transition from mechanic to sales?
APE was started in 1990 by someone I knew because we had both worked for ICE. In 1994, knowing that there wasn’t much room for me to move up at ICE, I called him to ask about APE, which he co-owned. I was told they only had a budget for one person—and they could either hire a salesperson who couldn’t fix anything or hire a mechanic who might make a few sales.
That’s why they hired me. I knew all the customers because I was the face of ICE in the Northeast from a service standpoint.
And that was your introduction to entrepreneurship?
Yes. You had to be self-sufficient. To this day at APE, you operate almost as an independent contractor. They don’t prop you up. They’ll give you engineering support, but they aren’t making dayto- day decisions for you. You go out and find your work.
I’ve always been an independent contractor in my mind.
Was that appealing to you, after starting in the military?
Oh, yeah. Very appealing.
I worked by myself doing everything. I rented space from a trucking company, prepared the equipment, power-washed it, loaded it on the truck, went out to the job site and set it up, made sure it ran right, then went around to do sales calls. If the phone rang where there was a problem, I’d go out to do field service, then go back to the office to do my paperwork. I was my own secretary.
I did that for two years and have no idea how I did it. My wife wondered whether someone was sabotaging me because every time it was her birthday or our anniversary, the phone would ring and I’d have to go to a job site.
But that’s the way the business is, and not just at APE. You have to jump through hoops and be responsive to the customer. If there’s a problem, “the day after tomorrow” is not an answer that anyone’s gonna put up with. You’ll lose customers quickly with that attitude.
What contributed most to your success?
I think my knowledge of maintenance and how equipment works.
At the end of 2000, I got sideways with the president of APE. We later patched that up, but I’d left APE by then to work at an equipment rental company that bought a division of another hammer supplier and turned it into their piledriving operation for the East Coast.
But it wasn’t for me. There’s wasn’t much opportunity to be a mechanic. I’m a lousy salesperson, to be frank. The guys who’re good at sales are really personable. They develop relationships with their customers. I had a young family at the time and I didn’t have any desire for that.
What I bring to the table is knowledge. I know a lot about the equipment, more than most. I was able to pick things up from a technical standpoint and I’ve seen a lot. I can often troubleshoot things over the phone.
I have customers that over the years I’ve done repeat business with, and they appreciate having someone who has that knowledge, someone who can ask and answer questions. I’ll work with them to bid jobs.
More recently, I’ve become proficient at running GRLWEAP. I use my skills there to help contractors bid jobs by accurately sizing the hammers.
I’m working on one right now where I was sent the package for a design/build project that was bidding. After looking at it and breaking out all the pile parameters, I found a bunch of discrepancies. I ran some preliminary wave equation analyses and found problems. I went back to my customer, and they went back to engineering, and engineering acknowledged that what I found was accurate and revised the design accordingly.
You just mentioned wave equation modeling, and I’ve been told that you are one of the industry’s experts at that. What software do you work with and what kinds of information can it provide?
In recent years, I’ve run software from Pile Dynamics, Inc. called GRLWEAP that determines bearing capacity, stress and hammer performance for piledriving by mathematically driving the pile in the program. The technology came from Case Western University in Cleveland, where they did research and figured out that they can measure the stress wave an impact hammer produces when it strikes the top of a pile as it goes to the tip and the reflection that comes back. Through that research, they learned to determine the pile’s capacity, as well as tell the stresses that are being absorbed by the pile. The wave equation software was born of that research.
There are plenty of people who can run this program, but none of them run it from the perspective of the hammer supplier, or from the perspective of someone who has an intimate understanding of the operating principle of impact hammers and vibratory hammers.
Vibratory hammer driveability analyses are my specialty. I’m not an engineer, I’m not a college graduate. I’ve never even taken a college course. But I have an aptitude for running the program, and because I work for a hammer manufacturer, I get feedback on the accuracy of my vibratory analyses. This has allowed me to work through the recommended user inputs and make changes that more accurately reflect how the vibratory hammer drives a pile.
The results I produce now are very accurate, if conservative. It has progressed to where I run all of the GRLWEAP driveability analyses for all of the APE branches.
Will computer model testing become required in the future?
It is now. The Federal Highway Administration requires it on their projects.
Where do you see your career going?
I have a consulting company that I formed. When APE has had enough of me, or I’ve had enough of them, I’ll go into business for myself.
I bought my own computer and the software and formed KAS Consulting, a Delaware LLC. Now, when I run the analyses for other branches, it’s done through my consulting company.
The computer program is used by most people only for driven piles—impact hammers like diesel, hydraulic and air hammers. The vibratory hammer is in the program, but most people don’t know how to run it. The other day I got a call from a young engineer at a major firm who was running an analysis on a job in West Virginia and her results didn’t look right. Someone at her company who I know suggested that she call me. Over the phone, she told me what she did and I figured out the mistake she made. She fixed her settings and the results normalized.
My personal brand is already established. I have a reputation and I get requested often. That’s my retirement plan.
Reprinted from Marine Construction Magazine Issue III, 2023.
