BOISE -- Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney will be visiting Idaho on Friday.
He will be starting his day in Boise with a fundraiser lunch, followed by a free public rally. The rally is at Guerdon Enterprises.
The company had no idea the Romney campaign wanted to use its facility until Monday. The CEO, Lad Dawson, was heading into a business meeting when he got the call from campaign officials.
"My immediate thought was, 'this is great,'" said Dawson. After a few minutes, he agreed to host the rally. "This is a good way to receive some recognition for the work our team has been able to do ."
Guerdon Enterprises is a modular building company. Dawson explains the work his company does as a giant puzzle.
"We use factory technology, modular building technology to build and construct large, complex projects."
The team at Guerdon figures out how to divide large buildings into small modules. Guerdon Enterprises builds homes, apartments, hotels, military housing, even campus dorms.
Guerdon Enterprises does two-thirds of the construction work at the Boise facility. The units go through 24 different stations. Workers start each unit by building the floors and finish with wrapping up the units to ship them across the country.
Guerdon Enterprises does all the electrical and plumbing work at the factory. Cabinets and molding are installed before the modules are shipped.
The modules are shipped across the western United States and into Canada. When the units arrive on site, regional crews assemble them and finish connecting all the wiring.
The entire construction process happens in a matter of months. Guerdon Enterprises is about to start work on a 220-room hotel that is heading to North Dakota.
"We will start producing the modules in our factory in March. We will start the site work about the same time. By July that hotel will be completely finished and occupied," said Dawson.
Dawson says when most people learn about the company they can't believe it is here in Boise.
That's part of the reason Dawson is so excited to have Romney and the community here for the rally. "We are pleased and proud that the local community is going to have an opportunity to learn a little more about us."
To make room for the crowd expected at the rally, Geurdon Enterprises will move some of the modules its working on outside, temporarily.
The Romney campaign is expecting around 1,000 people at Friday's rally. It starts at 1:30 p.m. and goes until 3 p.m.
