Roofing goes global

By Emma Peterson.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at preparing the first U.S. team to compete at IFD’s Championship of Young Roofers.

At the end of 2024, The Coffee Shops™ crew got an incredible opportunity — cover the first U.S. team’s participation in the prestigious International Federation for the Roofing Trades (IFD) competition live from Austria! So, as they were packing their bags and checking their passports, Heidi J. Ellsworth and Megan Ellsworth sat down with R.J. Radobenko, Gary Howe and Steve Little for an episode of Roofing Road Trips® to talk about the significance of the U.S. joining the global roofing community through IFD.  

The IFD was originally founded over 70 years ago. The organization brings together member companies from around the world for seminar-based meetings that focus on “creating  a permanent bond between its members, studying common professional problems and to derive from them knowledge for individual members or the organization as a whole and  safeguarding and supporting the common economic, business, technical, social, cultural and other professional interests of the members at international level.”  

As a part of this initiative, the IFD hosts what is called the World Championship of Young Roofers, which is what Megan and Heidi attended and covered in 2024! Gary took a team from his company, Durable Slate. He shared what they competed in, saying, “The category we competed in is what they consider the steep-slope category. The host country picked the types of materials from certain manufacturers and guide the installation standards. So for this competition, Austria chose a natural clay tile roof installation from a German-based clay tile manufacturer and another product called Eternit, which is a synthetic cementitious based roofing shingle.”

Steve’s team from KPost Roofing and Waterproofing represented in another category, focused on single ply. He explained, “We competed in the TPO side of the business, working with the Sika Sarnafil product line and of course adapting all the European standards for that.” Last but not least, R.J.’s team from Global Roofing Group came in to compete in the metal roofing and siding part of the competition. He explained, “Some of the most interesting things to navigate were just the basics. Like, they use a metric system versus imperial, so that's inches versus centimeters. That's a huge thing. There are also different tools and terminology that our teams had to learn.”  

Even with all the products, tools and other difficulties, the U.S. teams rose to the challenge and made us all proud last November. As Megan observed when she got back home after the competition, “It was amazing to see all these young competitors’ artisanship and pride. It was evident in every detail, whether it was slate, metal or low-slope work.”

Read the transcript or Listen to the episode to get more behind-the-scenes on how these teams prepared for the global stage. You can also rewatch all the action on our YouTube channel.