Pyramid graders earn Hi-Q award

SEELEY LAKE - Pyramid Mountain Lumber excelled again this year in grader performance. The Western Wood Products Association (WWPA) recognized Monie Bergeson, Tim Wood, Chace Bartolet and Paul Gereg with the High Quality (Hi-Q) Award for their timber grading accuracy in 2019. This is more than half of the certified graders at Pyramid.

Pyramid offers three to four different species of lumber and each species has three different products that qualify for the Hi-Q award. To be eligible for the award, graders must be a certified grader in each product and must meet the minimum footage requirement per product. For the common one-inch boards, 12,000 board feet must be inspected per grader. For two-inch dimension lumber and high-quality shop grades, they must inspect 15,000 board feet of each product.

WWPA performs a monthly inspection of graders at various mills. Graders must be at least 95 percent accurate over the course of the year to qualify for the award.

Wood was certified as a grader in 1985. Bergeson was certified in 1986. They both estimate they have received the Hi-Q award 15-20 times over the course of their career.

Gereg has been working at Pyramid for four years and Bartolet started three years ago. They both have received the Hi-Q award the last two years. The first year they weren't eligible because they were still training.

"Having the experience of guys like Tim Wood and Monie who have been doing this for 30 plus years has really paid off especially in the training that they have given to these younger graders," said Kyle Kenney, Pyramid's Quality Control Supervisor. "It is showing with guys like Chace and Paul being younger guys and not doing it as long already getting into the Hi-Q and qualifying for that award. We are really lucky as a company to have guys that have that type of experience."

Kenney said that the manual grading skill set is being lost because of the shift to automated grading. As Pyramid shifted this last fall to automatic grading, the grading experience at the mill has helped get the GradExpert machine dialed into the quality that Pyramid wants to offer in their products to their customers. With the implementation of the GradExpert, Kenney said they still hope to implement the Hi-Q program. They just need to research how that will work with the automated grading.

"This award goes a long way to show these guys' high proficiency in grading and how hard they work," said Kenney. "Pyramid has a really good reputation for being on grade and being within that 95 percent on grade range that we are required by the WWPA. It goes a long way in us getting the most out of our lumber as well as putting a quality product out to the customer."

Bergeson, Wood, Bartolet and Gereg each received a certificate, Hi-Q sticker and patch with the year from WWPA. Pyramid also gave them an extra day of paid vacation for their hard work.