DECEMBER 2023 THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE AMERICA - EAST 2 | R. A. Hiller Company The goods and services and the means by which they’re made and distributed may have changed through the years, but the intangibles like reliability, dependability and quality have not. And that, in the estimation of Ed Good, is what’s kept the R.A. Hiller Company in good stead with its customers and employees over 60-plus years since its humble beginnings in western Pennsylvania. “It’s really like a family-first environment here,” said Good, an 18-year company veteran who’s now the sales manager for Hiller’s business. “Everybody understands that you have to work to make money, but family is very important and that’s carried over. It’s the type of company where as long as you take care of what you’re responsible for and you do your job, it’s a very fair place to work.” The company was founded in 1950 by its namesake, Ralph A. Hiller, as an industrial distribution entity that sold pneumatic and hydraulic components to the industrial sector in its home territory. It evolved to work within the nuclear power industry in the late 1960s by designing custom linear actuators for safety related applications, which focused on main steam R. A. Hiller Company | 3 isolation valves and main feedwater valves within a nuclear power plant. The business is still an industrial distribution company with a western Pennsylvania customer base that these days stretches into northern Ohio and West Virginia. It’s also added a manufacturing component that’s an important offshoot of the company that acquired Hiller in 2010, UK-based Rotork. Hiller is considered a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rotork, which employs 2,300 worldwide and reported a net profit of nearly 90 million pounds in 2012. “It’s the same business model, same distribution territory, same customers,” Good said. “It’s just more of a global presence now in the nuclear market.” Hiller’s operations come out of a single building in Export, Pa. – about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh – that houses full manufacturing capabilities, a weld shop and a paint booth, as well as engineering, procurement, project management functions and support for the sales staff. Forty-five employees work at the facility, a total that’s been boosted by about 10 over the last few years, Good said. The acquisition prompted a “more structured” approach than had been the case pre-
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