Foundral Acquires 170-Year-Old Fort Wayne Contractor A. Hattersley & Sons

What happened

Foundral, a mechanical contracting platform backed by Chicago private equity firm McNally Capital, announced on May 21, 2026, that it had acquired A. Hattersley & Sons, a piping and HVAC contractor headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Foundral describes itself as a platform dedicated to building and scaling a family of union-backed mechanical contracting companies. Hattersley joins Smith & Oby and its subsidiary DSO, the two businesses Foundral launched with in December 2025. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The seller

A. Hattersley & Sons traces to 1856, when Alfred Hattersley, an English immigrant, bought the Fort Wayne plumbing and gas-fitting firm B.W. Oakley & Son. His sons, and then his grandsons Harry and Eugene, ran the business into the 20th century. It incorporated in 1955 and moved to Mobile Avenue, where it still operates.

From 1956, ownership moved to the people running the company. Harmon O. Hensley took over management from the family in 1956 and invited key employees to become owners, and the last Hattersley family member left in 1967. Hensley's sons followed him, Harmon Olin as president in 1985 and Brian as CEO in 1994, and Brian Hensley brought in further shareholders, among them Jack Koehne and Brad Jenkins. Koehne has been president and CEO since Brian Hensley's death in 2015.

Hattersley designs, engineers, installs, and maintains piping and HVAC systems for commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings, and runs commercial plumbing, a 24-hour service department, and pipe fabrication alongside that work. In 2022 it opened a branch office and a second fabrication shop in Lafayette, Indiana. Its plumbers are union-trained, and the company is affiliated with UA Local 166 of the United Association, the plumbers' and pipefitters' union. Its featured projects are on college campuses: Taylor University's Euler Science Complex, the Student Services Complex at IPFW in Fort Wayne, and the first phase of a campus-wide geothermal loop at Indiana Tech.

"We wanted a partner who could help us scale thoughtfully while preserving the craftsmanship, relationships and culture that have defined our success for generations," Koehne said in the announcement.

The buyer

Foundral was built on Smith & Oby, an existing McNally Capital portfolio company whose history in Ohio construction goes back to 1898, and DSO, its wholly owned West Virginia subsidiary. Jason Richards, a licensed professional engineer with more than 33 years in infrastructure services, is executive chairman and CEO.

When it launched, Foundral said it targets commercial mechanical contractors across the Midwest and neighboring regions with a strong HVAC specialty, union-based labor, and strong workforce depth, and named data centers, hospitals, manufacturing, and colleges and universities among its ideal end markets. Its acquired companies keep their own identities, according to the platform.

"A. Hattersley & Sons has a prestigious history, a strong sense of technical expertise and a desired, strategic location that makes them an exceptional partner," Richards said. Ravi P. Shah, a partner at McNally Capital, which is investing out of McNally Capital Fund III, called Hattersley "a natural addition to the platform."

What this means for mechanical contracting owners

Foundral published its criteria at launch, and Hattersley lines up with three of them: a UA-affiliated workforce, piping and HVAC as the core trade, and a project record built on college campuses, one of the end markets Foundral named. It is also the platform's first company in Indiana, after an Ohio contractor and its West Virginia subsidiary. For union shops in the Midwest, that makes Foundral's list a test an owner can run on his own business before a first conversation, and our guide to selling an HVAC or mechanical business to private equity covers what follows it.

OffDeal is an advisory firm that helps lower-middle-market business owners sell with confidence. Reach out to learn more about our expertise with mechanical contracting businesses in Indiana.

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Source: Foundral - https://foundral.com/foundral-acquires-a-hattersley-sons-expanding-mechanical-services-platform