A.Y. McDonald Brass Foundry, Dickeyville, Wisconsin

Brass foundries don’t get built from scratch very often, which is part of why A.Y. McDonald Mfg. Co.’s new plant in Dickeyville, Wis., stands out. The Dubuque-based manufacturer moved its casting operation across the Mississippi River into a 431,800-square-foot brass foundry built by Russell, and ENR’s 2026 Midwest Best Projects program gave the job an Award of Merit in Manufacturing on Nov. 9, 2026.

The plant replaces a foundry on Chavenelle Road in Dubuque that the company built about 40 years ago. The Telegraph Herald has put the project at $340 million, one of the largest in Grant County’s history. After a summer “full-dress rehearsal” of production, the company held an invitation-only ribbon cutting in early October 2026.

Project Scope

Kodiak Group led design. Needham DBS was structural engineer, IMEG Consultants Corp. handled mechanical and electrical, and Terracon did the geotechnical work. The site sits on Old Highway Road between Dickeyville and Kieler, along U.S. 61/151. At the groundbreaking, foundry director Andy Shea told SWNews4U the job would move 1.3 million cubic yards of dirt, build one road and rebuild another, and give the plant its own electrical substation.

Process drove every decision. Column locations, deep foundations, floor loads and utility connections were all set by the casting equipment, and because equipment layouts kept changing, construction started before design was finished. Crews installed piles and erected steel while the team was still settling load paths, pile locations and member sizes, checking each call with stakeholders as design caught up. Eight contract amendments went through before the final GMP was set, according to ENR.

Tolerances were tighter than in a typical industrial shell. Surveyors worked beside each subcontractor’s survey crew to verify embeds and steel before and after installation. The VDC team merged models from several design partners and modeled more than 200,000 feet of conduit and 65,000 feet of piping before any of it went in.

Why It Matters

Foundries are hot, loud and dangerous, and the company’s own executives said so at the groundbreaking. The new building uses automated material handling to take over physically demanding tasks and cut worker exposure to molten metal. Shea predicted about 90% more productivity with the same number of people. That’s an owner’s projection, and it’ll take a few years of production data to prove, but it’s the right bet for an industry that can’t hire its way out of a labor shortage.

The fast-track approach is the other takeaway. Setting steel before the process design is frozen is a real risk, and eight amendments ahead of a GMP shows how far the scope moved. It worked here because owner, designer and builder kept re-deciding things together in the field. More heavy-process manufacturers will face the same choice as equipment drawings lag behind the schedule they want.

Project Team & Details