Bob Heisler
Go to Oral HistoryReturn to Biographies & Oral Histories Home
Robert Heisler’s business relationship with Charlie Pankow began while the latter headed Peter Kiewit Sons’ building division in Arcadia, California. His firm, Key Mechanical Industries (KMI), acted as mechanical subcontractor on many Kiewit and Pankow projects. Heisler also played a critical role in helping Charlie Pankow establish his new company, Charles Pankow, Inc.
Heisler served three and a half years as a combat engineer in World War II and then studied mechanical engineering at the University of Southern California on the GI Bill. He graduated in 1950.
Heisler began working for General Electric in Schenectady, New York. Three years later, he was working in GE’s a motor plant in San José, California. Because of his desire to stay in California, he left the company rather than travel, as was expected for individuals on the “career track.” He took a job with an airconditioning supply firm in southern California. In 1955, he and Lee Sandahl, with whom he had studied at the University of Southern California, acquired a bankrupt firm and established Key Refrigeration, based in Santa Fe Springs, an industrial suburb in Los Angeles County. They later changed the company’s name to Key Mechanical Industries.
Between 1957 and 1963, KMI was the mechanical subcontractor on several projects built by the Kiewit building division that Charlie Pankow headed, including the American Cement Building in Los Angeles and the Air Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
As he relates in his interview, Heisler shared Charlie Pankow’s design-build approach to construction. As members of the design-build team, Heisler and Sandahl suggested several innovative ways of incorporating HVAC systems into the design of tall concrete commercial structures.
Heisler helped Charlie Pankow get started in the commercial construction business by introducing him to Alex Kerner of Federal Insurance, Bill Poindexter, his lawyer, and Dick Brewer and Frank Orrico of Winmar, the real estate arm of Safeco Insurance. Federal Insurance became Pankow’s bonding company. Poindexter became Pankow’s corporate counsel in southern California. Winmar became Pankow’s most important client.
Over three decades, KMI acted as mechanical subcontractor on many Pankow projects, including most of the office buildings and shopping centers constructed for Winmar. During this time, Pankow accounted for at least 25 percent of KMI’s business.
KMI evolved as a holding company for a number of entities, including Key Air Conditioning, KMI Engineers, Key Industrial Company, and Key Mechanical Service Company. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Heisler and Sandahl sold these firms to key employees. At the time of this interview, they remained interested in a single entity, Shoreline, Washington-based Northwest Mechanical.
