A 70-year-old Steinbach company has been named one of Canada's Best Managed Companies.

Brian Pries is the General Manager at Barkman Concrete and says they were encouraged to apply for the award which is judged upon four key areas.

"One of them is strategy - do you have a plan in place, are you following a plan, are you committed to executing on a plan in your marketplace. Next one is capability - do you have the people to carry out your plan, do you have the facilities, sort of can you follow through on your plan. Another one is commitment, which looks a lot at the culture of the company - are you involved in your community, what are you doing from those kind of perspectives. Then the last one would be the financial side - do you have the financial strength to do what you need to do and be viable and healthy."

Pries says the company started in 1948 with three Barkman brothers and was located on Main Street with the name Barkman Plumbing and Hardware.

"Probably within the first ten years of their existence they moved into concrete work. It all started with trying to put septic tanks in the ground, actually. They moved from there and over the next ten years or so the concrete side of the business just grew and grew."

He notes the company moved off Main Street to their current location at the corner of Brandt Street and McKenzie Avenue in 1963.

"Through the 60's, 70's, and 80's there was a lot of growth for the company, getting into landscape products and that's just grown now to where that's the majority of our business."

Pries says one of the biggest changes over the years has been moving from producing everything through manual labour to having state-of-the-art machinery to take over a percentage of production. He notes their landscaping products are mainly produced with machinery these days.

He adds when he started working for the company in the early 2000's there were between 100 and 150 employees noting they now have closer to 250 employees in the summer.

"We're always planning for growth. We firmly believe that if you're not growing you're going backward. So, we look to see growth. We've expanded a lot through western Canada over the last five to ten years and so we woudl like to see that continue."

Pries says they are finishing up a few skateparks and then stepping back from those projects. He notes they started producing skateparks about 15 years ago and the market for them seems to have dropped off adding over the years things come and go.

Going forward, he says the company wants to continue to grow as a business that is both family owned and locally owned, as well as continue to be a strong local employer. He says these are qualities which are important to the family who continues to own and run the company.