Growing up, David watched his father build homes, manage a lumberyard, and constantly work on various projects.
David took an interest in these things at a very young age.  He spent a lot of time watching his father work and he enjoyed
helping in any way that he could. The interest in building and designing things was a very common trait throughout David's family.
Having engineers as uncles and architects as cousins, there was a lot of exposure to different aspects of building and design.

David spent his summers working with his father in the lumberyard and helping build his family home on the outskirts of town. 
Working with cement became fascinating to David at a very young age. When big bags of cement broke, he was quick to fill nail bags
and take it home. This is when he then started making concrete bricks.

David his many big milestones throughout his teenate life. At the age of 14, David was hired for a full time job by one of the
contractors who worked with his father.  Here, he developed his carpentry skills and was head brick tender.  By the age of 17, 
David was strongly encouraged to start his own concrete contracting company to help meet the demands for sidewalks,
driveways, patios and porches. His business kept him very busy for a few summers.

David graduated as valedictorian of his class and quickly discovered he had a passion for engineering and geology. In 1970, 
he graduated with his degree as a geologist. Following graduation, David was offered two jobs. The first was a geologist for

offshore drilling rigs and the other was a geoplogist deep underground in the uranium mines of New Mexico.  David lived in N.M. only
for a few months when he got the phone call that his father had become very ill.  He then made the decision to move back to Hays
to help his mom and assist in his dad's business.

David combined his love for construction and concrete with home building and soon he was building spec homes using
precast(fractured fin) decorative concrete panels. Before long David was involoved in several Architectural commercial projects
with banks, churches, jails, etc.  The County Jail project in 1973 was large and a demanding schedule over the winter months,
so David invested in a Precast Plant that made large tilt up panels and a pre-stressed concrete roof. The architectural projects
were interesting and educational but required retooling for every job with new form work, etc.  In 1975, a large modular home
builder inquired about precast basement walls delivered to remote sites that were too challenging for ready mix delivery.
Even when they could deliver to those remote sites the quality control was not good.
The modular home needed precise foundations/basements that fit the premade homes.

This was the inspiration that David needed to develop the "Waffle-Crete" panel, since the panels were light weight, 
precise, strong as a solid 8" thick wall, but easily delivered to remote sites. These panels only had the equivalent
 thickness of about 3.5 inches of material.  The challenge was to develop form work/molds that were economical and accurate.
After much experimenting with other materials, such as Fiberglass, David came up with the idea of large thermoformed plastic for
the mold bodies.  Long story short, tooling was built and the Waffle-Crete molds were formed and used for basements and other projects
including a 3 story all precast apartment building (walls and floors) finished in 1976.  THe 24 units of apartements were constructed in
about 3 months total time and it was apparent that this "Waffle-Crete" was much more than just a basement wall panel.