Schulte Roofing has gone where few roofing companies have gone before—we’ve constructed a brand new building in front of our main office that’s sole purpose is for job training. Akin to a boy learning the tricks of the carpentry trade by building a bird house before he tackles a shed, or a future-lawyer joining the high school’s mock trial team before landing a real case, Schulte Roofing’s new building was created so our roofers-in-training would have something to practice on.
And we all know, practice makes perfect!
The 1800 square feet mock-house was completed on September 12th and took just twelve days to build. It’s equipped to train 4-5 roofers at one time—both safety training and installation training. It’s for employee use only as the law stipulates that subs cannot be trained. This is good news for us, though, since it means that not only are our employees the most qualified for the job with our intense training, but we’re also not training roofers who will later go out and benefit the competition by working for them.
Offering roofer training in this capacity is not a common practice. Most roofers learn on the job from watching the others do the same work, or from struggling through trial and error. Here at Schulte Roofing, we want the very best employees to be on site for each and every job. Not only does it insure safety, but it also makes for the very best finished product. We want to be able to offer our customers the very best service! When a family chooses Schulte Roofing to install their new roof, they can rest assured that our roofers are adequately trained for the task at hand. The proof is the new building in front of our office. Extreme? Maybe, but if it means giving homeowners peace of mind and a roof-job well done, we’ll take it!
When roofers aren’t properly trained, they adopt bad habits. If those roofers with a pocketful of bad habits train other roofers, the new roofers will have the bad habits too. Bad habits equal installation problems. Installation problems equal unsafe and unreliable roofs. Unreliable roofs equal unhappy customers. It’s a chain. The fact is, bad roof habits and installation practices are trending, but not at Schulte Roofing.
Yes, training our roofers in safety and installation this extensively is more work for us and costs us more money, but in the end we have a better, safer product and a much more efficient job. The customer benefits, and so do we. We have safety meetings once a month already, but now they’ll take place in a real-application setting. Yes, it costs more money, but integrity is important to us and we want to be able to be held accountable for our work. We have the customer’s best interest at heart.
For now, the new building allows for real-life application of metal, tile and shingle roofs, but the future is bright! Down the line, we could make even more advancements and allow for low slope or flat roof applications and the various materials needed for those jobs. The new training building is invaluable and time will tell just how beneficial the practice-building will be. The pros far outweigh the cons and our roofers-in-training are eager to master the tricks of the trade on our new “mock-house” resource.
The College Station roofing training facility is available for viewing 24/7 from Hwy 6 at Schulte Roofing’s main office.