Building Confidence from the Ground Up

In today’s energy projects, precision is essential. From safety and structural integrity to long-term performance and cost control, the success of a project hinges on how accurately it is planned and executed. This is where professional survey services play a critical role, and why JHA Companies continues to be a trusted partner.

In 2025, JHA Companies’ survey team, led by Project Leader Nik Decker, was contracted by Keystone Foundation to support the construction of a new electrical substation in northern Pennsylvania. 

As Nik explains: “JHA was contracted to lay out the location of the centers of all of the foundations that the various equipment and poles will sit on and to check the anchor bolt locations after they’re installed.”

This type of work is fundamental to the success of electrical infrastructure projects. Foundations and anchor bolts serve as the base for steel structures and poles, and any errors can lead to delays, rework, or long-term performance issues. JHA’s survey team ensures that layout is accurate and within specification tolerances, allowing construction teams to proceed with confidence.

Keystone Foundation Project Leader Peter Travers highlighted why professional survey support was essential on the project: “Each foundation had a set of embedded anchor bolts, and the anchor bolts are bolted onto the steel structures. They have to be pretty accurate, within a sixteenth of an inch. We’re not professional surveyors. We were definitely asking Nick and Garrett a lot of questions to make sure they were double checking everything, and to make sure we weren’t making any mistakes.”

Beyond technical expertise, JHA Companies strongly emphasizes the development of meaningful client relationships. For Nik and his team, every project, regardless of size or duration, is an opportunity to establish trust and respect, something Peter appreciates: “Nick was really easy to work with. They were all great. Easy to communicate with. They made sure our foreman had what he needed. It was a very easy process.”

Nic’s philosophy on client relationships is that “every single relationship is important. It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s somebody that I’m going to be working with for months or for a couple of weeks. I’ve really found that the biggest thing for me to do is to just be open, be honest, be completely myself, take the relationship a little bit beyond just the technical, and then you have a little bit more of a deeper connection there. It’s really building our trust together. It is teaching both of us new things, and they’ll be able to go to other peers in the industry and let them know, hey, JHA really helped us out, not only by doing the project for us, but by making sure that we were educated on how we can improve our own processes and, you know, improve our own work. And that’s important to a lot of people.”

JHA Companies doesn’t just deliver data, they help clients understand it, learn from it, and apply it to future work. By combining technical accuracy with a genuine commitment to education and collaboration, JHA Companies helps ensure that critical energy infrastructure is not only built right the first time, but also sets clients up for long-term success.