Albert W. Fink
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From the time that George Hutton hired him as a field engineer in June 1971 until his retirement in January 2009, Al Fink participated in more than 25 projects and held a number of leadership positions within the Pankow companies.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Fink graduated in 1966 with a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University).
He began his career in the training program of the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, but left after a year to join Bechtel Corporation as a design engineer. In 1970 he left the San Francisco-based firm to enroll in the MBA program at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.
Within weeks of receiving his degree, Fink was working as a field engineer on the Kauluwela Elderly Housing project, a 22-story, 175-unit apartment building. As was the case with many of the company’s high-rise projects built during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, this structure was erected using slipform technology on a three-day cycle, which Fink describes in some detail in his interview.
Norman “Red” Metcalf was the superintendent on this project and became Fink’s mentor on many additional projects.
Metcalf and Fink reprised their roles as superintendent and field engineer, respectively, on The Esplanade, a 9-story, 209-unit condominium designed by Leo S. Wou. The project team devised a number of innovations to complete the sprawling complex, which Fink also describes in detail in his interview.
Upon completion of the Esplanade, in 1973, Metcalf and Fink, now a project engineer, formed the core of the team that built the Pearl One and Pearl Two condominiums, which overlook Pearl Harbor. The latter project won the Build America national award from the Associated General Contractors of America. Fink used a first generation video camera to record the construction of the Pearl Two high-rise.
Fink was also project engineer on a number of other projects before he was promoted to superintendent. His first project in his new position was Pacific Monarch, a 34-story, 216-unit condominium constructed in Waikiki. He reported to the job site on 5 March 1978—the day his twin daughters were born. This project utilized a special jump form system for both the building’s service core and columns, and used flying forms to install the floor slabs.
(In contrast to the slipform, which moves upward incrementally while crews pour concrete, a jump form is raised to the next level only after crews pour the concrete for an entire floor and it hardens sufficiently to support the weight of the floor above it. After the crew rolls back the forms, it raises the entire form system to the next level, using either a crane or hydraulic jacks. During the 1980s, Pankow teams increasingly deployed jump forms to erect high-rise structures, especially in California, because ever more stringent building codes for seismic zones eliminating the time advantages associated with using slipform technology.)
Fink worked as a superintendent from 1978 to 1983. As early as 1981, he began working on preconstruction activities associated with various projects. In 1983 he was promoted to project sponsor.
In 1991 Fink was promoted to vice president. When George Hutton, who had headed Pankow in Hawaii since 1965, tendered his resignation in September of that year, Fink became regional manager for Hawaii. Later, he was named director of business development in Hawaii.
In 1999 Charlie Pankow asked Fink to help launch Mid-State Precast, a Pankow subsidiary, in Corcoran, California—a dusty town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The second project for Mid-State was the Paramount, a 39-story residential tower in San Francisco that utilized the precast hybrid moment-resistant frame, an innovative structural technology designed to make buildings more “earthquake proof.”
During Fink’s tenure as president and general manager of Mid-State Precast from 1999 to 2005, the subsidiary manufactured precast concrete structural and architectural elements for almost two dozen projects, many of which were completed by other contractors.
Fink spent his final years with the company in the Hawaii office, where he returned to his position as director of business development.
