BIGFOOT SYSTEMS®

It is a painstaking task to do alone. Usually, one worker has to clamber in the hole to level each wooden box and attach each construction tube. At the same time, another worker up top has to make sure all the construction tubes are aligned and level... That day in 1996, Swinimer found himself in a hole - struggling with a wooden footing form. "I still remember the moment," he recalls. "I was lying over in the hole and it was just like a lightning bolt came over me: 'By God, there's got to be a better way than this!'"... That night, Swinimer sketched out an idea for making the footing form and the construction tube as one unit. It wasn't his first invention. Previously, he'd made a collapsible, eight-sided cedar picnic table that anyone could easily sit down at without climbing awkwardly over a bench seat. He'd also started making fence post caps in the 1980s, long before they became a mass-market item.

Primary location: Lebanon United States