Garco Building Systems Inc., an Airway Heights pre-engineered building maker, has more than doubled its sales and steadily increased employment since 2011, with the installation of new equipment helping it expand its production capacity.

Garco's parent company, Houston-based NCI Building Systems Inc., which bought the longtime Spokane-area business in 2007, has invested roughly $2.2 million in new machinery and equipment upgrades at the 140,000-square-foot plant over the past three years, says David Zabinski, the plant's general manager.

Some capital improvements currently are under way at the plant, located at 2714 S. Garfield, as part of overall upgrades that are integrating shared systems to fabricate products that can be used throughout NCI's subsidiaries. Garco also fabricates and sells building component packages directly to contractors and subcontractors throughout much of the western U.S. and parts of Canada.

The plant equipment improvements have helped boost revenues from about $14.7 million in 2011 fiscal year sales to $30.3 million for the 2012 fiscal year. Zabinski says that he expects the company's sales for the current fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31, to reach $36 million.

"We want to bring our sales up from $36 million to $55 million annually in the near future," Zabinski says, adding that he expects to achieve that goal in the next two to three years. In the past year, Garco Building Systems also has grown from 130 employees to 150 workers.

The company designs structures, mostly industrial and commercial buildings, to custom architectural specifications. The components are fabricated at the plant and shipped to a construction site to be assembled by a project owner's contractor. Products include steel structural components, wall and roof panels, secondary framing, and trim.

Common examples of the types of building component packages that Garco has fabricated include ones for warehouse facilities, large mining structures, and complexes for military bases. The buildings range mostly in size from about 10,000 square feet up to 125,000 square feet of floor space.

Recent mining industry-related work includes structural components mainly for large structures built to store heavy equipment at mine sites, Zabinski says. He says the company also has had a steady number of military projects for base improvements or expansions.

The plant employees include welders, machine operators, painters, and shipping and maintenance workers.

One of the company's larger orders on the horizon is a multiple building complex for equipment and maintenance facilities in Fort Lewis, Wash., for a project that contractor Garco Construction Inc., of Spokane, will build, Zabinski says.

Garco's annual revenues peaked at about $45 million in 2008 and then fell sharply during the recession to levels that included $25.6 million in 2009 and $24.4 million in 2010.

Zabinski says joining forces with NCI has been a key driver behind the company's recent growth, adding, "We have a broader area we serve, and additional capital investment by NCI that we did not have previously."

"As a result, the office and shop have been able to hire through the recession," he says. "We've been able to sustain our business and grow unlike other businesses, because of the expanded area we're able to serve now."

Cody Carlson, Garco's Spokane-based sales manager, says Garco provides its products in Alaska, Hawaii, western Canada, and all Western states except Arizona. "We've had the addition of our Colorado area and Wyoming since 2011," he says.

Carlson says two factors are part of driving Garco's growth: a greater shop capacity and an expansion of its engineering services that allowed Garco to hike its design capability and go after more projects. He says the company has hired six to eight additional engineers and between 14 and 18 drafters since 2011. It also upgraded its software systems in the past two years.

The company's engineering services complete plans and drawings, and detail every part and piece to be fabricated at the shop, Carlson says. "It's helped us to improve our turnaround time from the point the customer orders to when we deliver it on-site," he says.

In turn, he says, the higher production level requires additional upgrades of equipment. "We've also had a good influx of mining and industrial work since 2011," he adds.

Zabinski says the company is looking to expand its sales territory into the Dakotas and Nebraska by next year.

Part of current plant improvements includes installation of a welding training station to create an internal welding school, and NCI is developing the curriculum training. The station will enable Garco to combine training for new welders and ongoing training for its current 15 to 20 welders.

"We're hiring more welders; we'd like to bring in about 10 more," says Laura Timmins, the plant's human resources director. "With the welding school, we're just waiting for one more piece of equipment, and it will probably be in use by the end of June. We have some machine operators who also want to train, so it allows us to do some cross-training."

She says the plant wants to hire about 10 additional workers for positions that are open now or expected to be in the near future, such as for shipping workers and machine operators.

Also recently, the company installed a new beam automation line that punches desired holes in parts of the steel beams, eliminating manual drilling of the beam parts.

Currently, Garco is adding several hundred linear feet of conveyer to its panel lines that make building exterior panels, which will reduce manual material handling with increased automation, Zabinski says. This addition will transport the panel product from the area where it's fabricated to the plant's shipping area. Once that's completed, the line operator will be able to run more panels without having to stop the machine to offload.

"We're also installing a lift station outside, for June completion, for truck loading of our products," Zabinski says. "Before, we had to load our products piece by piece."

The lift station will be powered hydraulically, enabling one operator of the equipment to transfer full loads of material onto a truck for shipment in about 20 minutes. The new equipment can lift 45,000-plus pounds at one time.

Without this station, usually two or three employees handle the loading using several forklifts. The equipment will handle loading onto a standard-sized flatbed truck, which can range from 96 inches to just over 100 inches in width and be up to 53 feet in length.

Carlson says the new lift station will allow for greater efficiency and turnaround time for shipping a pre-engineered building.

In 2011, Garco also updated its steel-panel manufacturing line, and installed an automated plasma cutter in the plant's burn center, which enables it to process more than 200 tons of steel components a week, more than doubling the plant's previous capacity of 80 tons per week.

Zabinski says that with the recent upgrades and ones coming on line, the company hopes to increase its production to 300 tons of steel components per week within about two years.

Of its current 150 workers, about 100 work in the plant, while most of the others work in the company's offices there. A few employees are based outside of the Spokane area.