Urbana Ironworks

Mike's Welding Service was established in 1996 when the owner, Michael Roderick used a tax refund check to purchase his first welder. He made a homemade trailer and started advertising as a fabrication and mobile repair shop. After one year, Mike found his niche in fabricating rails for home builders. His first contract was with NVR then with Craftstar and Craftmark homes. By 2000, the housing market was red hot and Mike expanded his company. He soon built a larger welding shop with an overhead crane and incorporated two 300 gallon paint tanks into the operation. The paint tanks are used for dipping the rails and other products, one tank filled with an industrial primer and the other with an industrial black paint from PPG.

Mike's Welding Service, Inc. became incorporated in the state of Maryland in Jan. of 2000. Mike hired his 1st then 2nd employee and serviced home builders in 4 states including Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The company continued to grow, working primarily for builders, landscapers, property management companies and home owners without any advertising until late 2008, the day of reckoning for the housing industry.

In 2008, Mike's Welding Service, Inc. had a website created for the company and Urbana Ironworks was born, a new division of Mikes Welding Service, Inc. Now listed as MWS inc. T/A: Urbana Iron-works. We started looking at more customized ironwork, small commercial jobs and structural as well as misc. steel projects. We quickly expanded to the District of Columbia where the housing, residential and commercial markets were seemingly unaffected by the recession. With several of our competitors stepping away from the business or downsizing we also took advantage of the talented labor on the job market and expanded our business again. We added a structural steel shop and expanded our parking lot in 2013. In 2017 Mike purchased a 30 ton crane and a truck for hauling our finished product to the various job sites.

Today we still do ADA  handicap ramp railings, stainless steel and aluminum cable rail systems, custom iron and aluminum railings, including Powder Coating or Galvanizing if required. We also proudly work with structural steel, steel stairs, stair towers, miscellaneous and ornamental steel. We have anywhere from 10 - 12 employees and several subcontractors that we use on a regular basis when needed to complete jobs in a timely fashion. We have proudly worked at Arlington National Cemetery, National Cathedrals' Elementary School, Metro Station at Landover, MD, The US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Also, we have fabricated thousands of linear feet of stainless steel curved cable rail system at Brookside Botanical Gardens and structural and misc. steel projects at many different  apartment complexes in Washington DC and the surrounding areas. We have had the privilege of working for Moseley Construction, Pirhl Development, Blue Rock Construction, Wagman Construction, Summit Construction, UIP, Snead Construction and other smaller firms.