The rise of service divisions

By Emma Peterson. 

Get reliable, sustainable work from the service side of the roofing industry. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Heidi J. Ellsworth hosted Will Riley of Centerpoint Connect and Chad Westbrook of Service Alignment to talk about balancing construction and service in roofing businesses. In both their careers, Will and Chad have seen the power of service departments. Will explained, “In 2017 I got an opportunity to go work for a replacement commercial roofing contractor out of Fort Worth that wanted to grow through service. We ended up going from 12 million to 28 million in a three-year period of time and service was the largest contributor to that growth.”  

Chad credits a large amount of his decades of success to a focus on service and maintenance. He elaborated, “We wanted to focus on growing revenue in a sustainable way, where there was more than just the opportunity to have a one-and-done job, but space for sustained growth year over year.” The answer to that desire for sustainable growth was focusing on service initiatives and eventually grew into Chad founding his company, Service Alignment. 

The two spoke about how opening and focusing energy on a service division has both short-term and long-term benefits. Will explained, “I think that there's an incredible amount of thirst for all things surrounding service. The initial attraction of higher margins, or maybe less risk, is powerful. But I think bigger picture contractors are seeing that that really gets them in.” The bigger picture he described is a business that is less dependent on bids and is more about doing work on the contractor’s terms.  

Chad added that there is more reliability in getting jobs and work in service. “Service really became that front-and-center way to be able to say, ‘Well, they're not replacing their roof so what are they doing?’ They're repairing it,” he explained. “The contractors that I'm working with are understanding that roofs leak 50 to 100 times if not more, depending on what the building's tolerance is, before owners even think about replacing the roof.” This exemplifies the value of service divisions and how reliable and constant the work is, especially during and after hard fiscal years where big projects are not being awarded as frequently.  

Read the transcript, Listen to the full episode or Watch the video to learn more about what a service division can do for your company and how you can start one.