RoofersCoffeeShop

Let’s Celebrate Women in the Roofing Industry!

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 15:00:00 PDT

By Evelyn Witterholt, RCS Reporter.

Four trailblazing women in roofing discuss the legacy of women in the industry and the push for inclusion.

In a recent Coffee Conversations, RoofersCoffeeShop® highlighted the voices of four very important women working in the roofing industry today. RCS President Heidi J. Ellsworth spoke with our COO Karen Edwards, Kaci Atherton from McPartlon Roofing, Mackenzie Beldon from Beldon Roofing and LeeAnn Slattery from ATAS International about their amazing work in roofing. They also discuss the ways they are recruiting more young women into the industry.

Kaci started in the medical industry, but after feeling burnt out, she turned to working in the roofing industry. Now, she works as a service coordinator for McPartlon Roofing and loves the support she’s received from the roofing community, particularly the women she’s met through National Women in Roofing (NWIR).

“I was looking for something new,” Kaci said. “I happened upon my current boss, Hillary McPartlon. I was just so attracted to her vision for inclusivity of gender in this industry and her high standards for workplace culture.”

Karen has been working in the roofing industry for years and has an impressive background. Not only is she the COO here at RCS, but she also has her own consulting business, Casimir Group. Her journey in the roofing industry and adapting to this male-dominated industry was not an easy one. “I'm 5'8". I wore couple inch heels too because I wanted to look men in the eye or look down on them, and I used that to my advantage quite often,” she said. “There are things that you shouldn't even have to do, but you do.”

Although Mackenzie was encouraged to join her family’s roofing business by her father, she attributes the success of their company to the matriarchs of the family. “My great-grandmother, Ann Beldon, started the business with my great-grandfather, Morry Beldon,” she said. “She actually was very involved in the day-to-day. She did not have a college degree, but the business was successful because of how she ran it.”

LeeAnn’s background was in wall panel manufacturing before she moved into the roofing industry. While she was nervous at first about entering the industry with minimal knowledge, she found that her coworkers at ATAS International were still very supportive. She wants young people interested in joining the industry to learn from her experience of being inexperienced.

“I was so concerned about (my lack of experience), and they were not at all concerned,” she said. “That's what I would like to tell the younger people as well, to not let something like that sway you from applying for a job because what you think might be a big deal, really might not.”

Listen to the entire Coffee Conversations to hear more from these incredible women about their experiences in roofing and their collective push for inclusivity in the industry.

Brad Beldon on Persevering Through Labor and Supply Chain Crisis

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 15:00:00 PDT

By Cass Jacoby, RCS Reporter.

CEO of Beldon Roofing talks about Ozbee, the supply chain breakdown, and labor shortages in the construction industry.

“It’s a perfect storm,” CEO of Beldon Roofing Company, Brad Beldon, told the San Antonio Express News. He is talking of course of the double whammy combination of the labor shortage and broken supply chain the construction industry is currently experiencing.

“You have the supply chain crisis hitting at the exact same time that labor became a crisis,” says Brad. “COVID took more labor out of the equation and then it shut down factories. When they shut down factories, they can’t get capacity back up.”

The labor shortage is not new to the industry. For decades, construction has struggled to look for new workers, and the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated this issue. “The labor force is on the higher end — they’re closer to my age, in the late 50s. You don’t see the 20 year old’s wanting to enter the construction industry,” says Brad. “We still can’t fill every position. I mean, our backlog is the largest backlog we’ve had in the history of our company, and we can’t do the work.”

Now, with broken supply chains many construction companies are having difficulties getting the materials they need or the materials come at inflated prices. “It’s unprecedented. We have zero transparency. The inflation is just outpacing everything,” says Brad. “So you have a double whammy. That product that we used to see for $300 is now $1,400 and a lot of the MDI is still stuck out in the Pacific and can’t get into here. There are five truckers per every 100 truckloads of demand.”

Brad has done near everything he can to help alleviate this problem, sending letters to President Biden and members of Congress suggesting measures to alleviate the crisis, like expanding the H-2B temporary worker program. However, it is Brad and his co-worker Jodie McCue’s software business Ozbee Team Software that is providing the biggest answer to these issues.

Ozbee Team Software aims to be a one-stop shop for construction companies to do their scheduling, inspections and communicate with employees and customers, among other things. While the software was developed for Beldon Roofing specifically, Brad and Jodie recognized the value of this platform for other contractors.

“(Before developing Ozbee) we were using five (customer relationship management platforms). And entering the data in manually, in multiple systems that couldn’t talk to each other,” says Brad. He explains that it has been helpful to regain back some efficiency, especially in times like these, by working smarter.

Learn more about Beldon Roofing Company in their RoofersCoffeeShop® Directory or visit www.beldon.com.

Beldon Roofing is the March R-Club Roofer of the Month

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 15:00:00 PDT

By Cass Jacoby, RCS Reporter.

Treating everyone like they are family is the key to Beldon Roofing’s success.

RoofersCoffeeShop® is proud to present the honor of R-Club Roofer of the Month to Beldon Roofing Company!

Started in 1946, the Beldon Roofing Company is a family owned and operated business, with a mission that revolves around integrity, innovation and immersion.

“My grandfather would produce the work during the day, oversee the production and then at night he would sell projects, and my grandmother would do the back-office work. They worked very well as a tea,” says chief culture officer and CEO of Beldon Roofing Company Brad Beldon. “And my father joined in 1960, although he started when he was 12, but he joined full-time as an adult in 1960. I started when I was 12. And I joined in 1988. All of our kids started when they were 12.”

The fourth-generation family business pins it’s 76 years of success on being a company that truly is one big family. “As a family business, we really, really value our employees and ensure that they feel they're a part of the Beldon family,” says director of RoofExtend, Mackenzie Beldon. “That's how we live our lives day-to-day. We treat everyone like they're a member of the family, the Beldon team.”

Beldon Roofing Company also attributes its success to more than just the family focused culture of the company, but the internal drive to be the best roofing company possible. “We want to be better than everybody else. And to have lasted 30 years under that criterion, that's a special bond because we're always trying to find better ways to provide that five-star level of service,” says Brad.

Mackenzie adds that this culture of thriving to be the best is what has created so many life-long customers for their company. “We try and learn from what we did and improve upon that today so that we can be better for tomorrow. So for us, our customers drive our business and satisfying our customer is our number one goal,” says Mackenzie. “We do everything that we can to exceed our customers’ expectations.”

At the end of the day, Beldon Roofing is all about treating their employees and customers like they are family, giving everyone love and respect.

Listen to the entire podcast to hear more about Beldon Roofing, their family business philosophy and why they are our R-Club March Roofer of the Month.