Mentoring and connecting students to the roofing industry

By Emma Peterson. 

Mentorship through the annual Student Competition is leading the next generation into the industry. 

Each year, the Roofing Alliance hosts the Construction Management Student Competition for undergraduates enrolled in college. This event connects students with the roofing world and gives them opportunities to network and learn about a future career in the industry. It does this by finding a roofing project in the same city the International Roofing Expo is hosted in that year and having teams create bids that illustrate their abilities in roofing, project management, estimating methods and safety practices. A key part of this is mentorship, which Megan Ellsworth got to talk to Kyle Cahill about in an episode of Roofing Road Trips®. 

Kyle is a project manager at King of Texas Roofing in Grand Prairie, Texas. While he was a student at Texas A&M University, he was a participant in the 2021 competition. Fast-forward to 2024 and he’s now mentoring a team for the competition. He explained his role, “My job is to bridge that informational gap between what they already know from the classes they're taking. They take classes about operations, estimating and just how general projects are managed, but my job is to come and explain how all of that takes place from the roofing subcontractor's point of view.”  

Kyle also brought up how this mentorship is not just beneficial for the students, but for him and other mentors as well, “These kids don't think like typical roofers in the industry, so they look at stuff in a wider lens. When you're doing something every day, you kind of get horse blinders and they're able to see a lot more than I am even sometimes.” Watching these kids, Kyle explained how impressed he is with their problem-solving skills and his excitement for the new generation entering the workforce.  

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast to learn more about Kyle and the Roofing Alliance Student Competition.