With a portfolio that includes the Fastenal World Headquarters in Winona, multiple projects on the Mayo Clinic Campus in Rochester and many college campuses in the area — including Saint Mary’s, Viterbo and Winona State — vice president Tom Plachecki credits the longevity of Winona Heating & Ventilating to the company’s culture.

“Your company is only as good as your people, and we have good people here,” Plachecki said. “We have a culture that’s like a family, and we treat our employees right with pay and benefits.”

Plachecki said that familial culture is created by building relationships with each employee, having open communication and keeping the focus for employees on family and safety.

“We have a lot of pride in the communities we work, and the skill level of our guys is tremendous,” Plachecki said. “Working with our employees, we always want them to know their family comes first. Also, safety is No. 1 when you’re here. We want our people going home the same way they came, no cutting corners on safety.”

Winona Heating & Ventilating has a long list of services it provides beyond HVAC and its maintenance, including commercial roofing, building automation design and installation, air and water system testing and balancing, and building information modeling.

The company has a stream of metal products — air ducts, piping and custom sheet metal parts — hauled from their workshops onto a jobsite for one of its many crews to assemble.

Winona shop foreman Dusty Luedtke has been with Winona Heating & Ventilating for nine years. He’s worked his way up to leading a 12-person crew that completes all the parts before they are sent out for assembly.

“I believe that the people who come in here come with a particular set of skills and are capable of doing their jobs,” Luedtke said. “So when working as a team it’s like a chain; everyone contributes their strongest link to create a final product.”

Luedtke said after years of working in the area and on many projects he sees regularly, he’s developed a sense of pride in both his work and the community. He enjoys teasing his daughter by continually pointing out the buildings he’s created parts for.

“I believe everybody here has a sense of pride in their work,” Luedtke said. “We want to have a good product because at the end of the day, it’s on us — we’re responsible to make sure that it is.”

With a company that’s now over 120 years old, Luedtke said keeping up with the growth of technology available is part of Winona Heating & Ventilating’s success.

“If we had the mentality that, ‘This is how we did it a hundred years ago,’ we wouldn’t be able to compete,” Luedtke said. “So part of our success is taking that next step to advance, make the next project more efficient and finding better ways to do things that make it easier on our guys.”

Ed Tschumper is a 42-year journeyman sheet metal worker in the Winona shop. Starting with the company when he was 16, the union tradesman said he’s worked his way up while making good wages without having to break his back.

“That’s important,” Tschumper said. “When I started there were probably only 30-40 people back in ‘81, and now we’ve grown to 175. And the new technology has grown with us, making things more user-friendly and easier on you.”

Tschumper credits Winona Heating & Ventilating’s longevity to the people that work throughout the company — from the presidents to the crews in the field.

“We’ve just always had that,” Tschumper said. “They are always looking out for us and our safety. And we’ve built up a good reputation so we’re picking up more and more work so we’ve been staying busy and it’s been fun to work here.”