Metal roofing estimates made easy

By Jenny Yu. 

Sherwin-Williams' Roofing Passport brings speed, accuracy and confidence to custom metal roofing bids. 

As metal roofing continues to gain ground in the residential market, Sherwin-Williams is equipping contractors with tools to compete more effectively. In this RLW®, Karen Edwards spoke with Junny Lee and Heather McGinnis of Sherwin-Williams about how the company’s Roofing Passport program is helping contractors streamline metal estimates and grow their businesses. 

Junny pointed to durability and longevity as key drivers behind metal’s rise. “We know that a metal roof is two, three, maybe four times longer than the lifespan of an asphalt roof,” Junny stated. Still, contractors face barriers when adding metal to their offerings. “We’ve narrowed it down to three things: lack of training, the cost perception or the uphill battle of upselling.” Through its MetalVue program, Sherwin-Williams addresses those concerns with training, sales support and data-backed performance metrics.  

Furthermore, their Roofing Passport program tackles one of the biggest hurdles: estimating custom metal jobs quickly and accurately.  

“As far as going into the home and bidding, the thing that we heard over and over again was the fact that it was hard, because it’s a custom product, to deliver on a bid for metal,” Heather said. “So, what we did as a company that just wants to get another piece of metal on a roof was to say: we need to simplify this estimating process. We need to make it easy. We need to be able to compete alongside with asphalt.”  

From there, Sherwin-Williams created Roofing Passport, a cloud-based software that ingests Eagleview reports, blueprints or XML files and generates a detailed takeoff report, including panel layouts, trim, accessories and fasteners. “It provides fewer errors and delays, it’s accurate and it’s an automated turnaround,” Heather shared, adding that estimates are typically within $200 of final costs. 

Notably, Sherwin-Williams does not charge contractors to use the platform beyond third-party report fees. “This is just something we wanted to do for the contractors to help get more metal up there,” Heather expressed. 

Read the first article in this series, Listen to the conversation or Watch the presentation to learn more about Roofing Passport and see the software in action.