Inside the Roofing Alliance's 2024 Student Competition

By Jesse Sanchez. 

Bridging the gap between academia and industry. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, host Megan Ellsworth sat down with Kyle Cahill, a project manager at King of Texas Roofing, to discuss the 2024 Roofing Alliance Student Competition. The competition was a defining event for aspiring roofing professionals. As the competition celebrated its 10th anniversary, it continues to grow in prestige and participation, doubling the number of competing teams this year. A significant aspect of this event is the mentorship provided by industry professionals, such as Kyle, who himself participated in the competition back in 2021. 

This year’s challenge revolved around the Formula One Paddock in Las Vegas, a high-profile roofing project that presents unique logistical and technical difficulties. Kyle, now a mentor, plays a crucial role in guiding the student teams through these complexities, helping them bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world application. “These kids have almost some pretty substantial knowledge of how buildings are put together,” Kyle explains. “My job is to help bridge that informational gap between what they already know...and how all of that takes place from the roofing subcontractor's point of view.” 

What makes this mentorship particularly rewarding for Kyle is witnessing the creativity and fresh perspectives the students bring. He highlights how their problem-solving approaches often surprise him: “They don't think like typical roofers in the industry...Their solutions to some of these issues are really kind of out there, but they make sense in almost every way.” 

The competition not only equipped students with practical skills but also exposed them to the broader roofing industry through the International Roofing Expo (IRE), where they can network with industry leaders and potential employers. Kyle expresses the importance of such events in attracting the next generation of talent to the industry, noting, “These kinds of projects are happening everywhere, and all the possibilities that they can do in the roofing world are pretty endless.” 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast to learn more about Roofing Alliance’s tenth annual student competition.