Charting the future of roofing

By Anna Lockhart.  

Brad Van Dam shares his insights on SPRI, industry growth and American manufacturing.  

At the 2024 International Roofing Expo (IRE) in Las Vegas, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Brad Van Dam of MTL Holdings, parent company of Metal-Era and Hickman Edge Systems, for a special live episode of the Roofing Road Trips® podcast. In this episode, “A SPRI Year of Success,” the two discuss the importance of Brad’s work with the Single Ply Roofing Industry (SPRI) and his thoughts on the current state of the roofing industry.  

SPRI is an organization consisting of commercial roofing professionals who are dedicated to the promotion of innovation and educational opportunities within the industry. They work to provide members of the industry with proper access to valuable informational resources and are the leading authority in single-ply roofing. Brad shared, “Members come together at SPRI to try to advance the mission, technical resources, code, compliance, new codes and the roofing industry. They find common ground on an issue and then work together to try to advance that code position and create white papers. It's a great place to go and collaborate about making the technical portion of roofing.” 

In addition to discussing his work with SPRI, Brad shared his thoughts and predictions for the future of the industry, and what challenges he sees being a theme for 2024. He shared, “The biggest challenge remaining for the industry is how do we get future growth? But I think there's enough labor, talented contractors, talented workers in the industry that are going to be able to continue this growth. We’ve just got to figure out some things for beyond that.” 

He continued to share that as an American manufacturer, companies like MTL Holdings are dedicated to boosting the growth by continuing to manufacturer here in the states and seeing a change in the concerns for growth. “We believe in American manufacturing. We certainly have done everything we can to invest in additional robotics, automation, to try to advance that. A lot of people are starting to do that. And they get that this is a great place to invest. It's a great place to invest in people, in businesses.” 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast to learn more about the conversation and SPRI!