Jason Hildenbrand IRE interview - TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Jason Hildenbrand from MTL Holdings. You can read the transcript below or watch the video.

Lauren White: Hey everyone, I'm Lauren White with Roofers Coffee Shop and we are at IRE 2024 in the MTL Holdings booth with Jason here and we are standing in front of some roof to wall coping. Can you tell me more about what roof to wall coping

Jason Hildenbrand: Is? Sure, Lauren. So, um, with our brand partner, so MTL is the parent company of Metal Air Hickman and also Citadel Architectural Products and Citadel Architectural products, um, is an industry leader in aluminum composite panel manufacturing and installation. So we manufacture and have fabricators that manufacture these aluminum composite panels. And one of the challenges with aluminum composite panels is tying in the roofing system at the top and making sure that that's tested code compliance system. So what we've done is develop a tested ES one compliant coping system that also integrates within the panel. So you can install the panels independently of the coping. You can maintain, if you put right behind you here, you can maintain kind of those clean lines. Most of the time if you have a straight coping behind you, you don't have that vertical line that's going all the way up with this, you can actually maintain that so you maintain the aesthetic of what you're looking for all the way up throughout that design element.

Lauren White: Okay. And so besides the aesthetic of it, what are the other benefits of this system?

Jason Hildenbrand: So certainly having a tested system at the top to protect the, the roof and the other, uh, or the membrane and the other roofing components from failure. ES one being a requirement in code. Generally if we're putting a cap on uh, a parapet wall that doesn't have that, then you are leaving that subject to the wind and the elements and possibly failure. With this, you ensure that compliance, you ensure that resiliency in the design and make sure that, that that roof system is gonna stay intact and be part of that design going forward.

Lauren White: Okay, great. Thank you. Alright, thank you. We are standing in front of some very large gutters right now. Very good. Do you wanna tell us about your XL gutters?

Jason Hildenbrand: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, this is our X Excel gutter product. This was launched earlier this year about July timeframe. Uh, really designed to, uh, take advantage of and capture the gutter opportunities that we're seeing that are continuing to increase as buildings get larger and larger. So as buildings get larger and larger roofs get larger and larger data centers, things like that, obviously the gutter has to follow that and get larger as well. Um, backing up just a bit, um, in 2021, the international building code adopted GT one as a gutter test standard, which requires gutters to be tested per that GT one standard, uh, to be compliant with building code. With that there was a need for that larger gutter testing. Most gutters tested were smaller, say smaller than eight inches. Alright. So with our Excel gutter, we've developed a product that will get you from eight inches up to 14 inches to capture those larger sizes and ensure compliance with, uh, building code and IBC 2021.

Lauren White: Okay. And so what are the benefits to the contractor of this system that you have? Yep.

Jason Hildenbrand: So with the, with this Excel gutter, it utilizes an internal bracket system. So if you picture a large gutter on, uh, on any building, generally what you'll see is large brackets around the outside that have to be fabricated or painted to match or um, require some excessive labor to install with these internal brackets. There's a rotate system similar to the way we do it with most of our copings, and you can actually install all of the components of this from the roof. So there's a receiver piece on the bottom, the gutter sits down into that receiver piece, uh, and you fasten the, the brackets to the wall and basically that's it. Um, to this point, contractors have told us that they see up to a 60% labor savings by installing this gutter over a traditional large gutter with brackets and internal strapping and those kind of things. So it's a significant savings from a, from an installation standpoint.

Lauren White: Yeah, for sure. And so with downspouts, because you have so much more, do you need more downspouts to accommodate all of the water coming through or

Jason Hildenbrand: Fewer? That's a great, great question actually. You can use less downspouts with a larger gutter 'cause you're channeling more water through there and you can actually have less drops for downspout, which again would decrease the amount of labor needed to install. It could de it could improve the aesthetic of a building. You don't have a bunch of downspout drops and things like that. So, uh, it's an overall win-win for, for everybody really.

Lauren White: Great. And what, is this the only color it comes in or do you have

Jason Hildenbrand: Multiple? It comes in any of our standard express or even custom colors. We could do it in just about anything.

Lauren White: Oh, very cool. Awesome. Well thank you so much about talking gutters with me. <laugh>. Absolutely. Thank you.

Jason Hildenbrand: So this is Mtls Falcon tool, uh, the RTS team who field measures, uh, for our contractors free of charge. Uh, we use this device to accurately measure copings, um, with multiple other products that we are including in it. Uh, as Connor's showing you right now, we will clamp the wall that, that feeds all of the information into the app. As you are measuring the wall rounding the radius, it'll do the radius. It plugs in a roadmap so the contractors have something to follow when they're doing install, it'll be color coded, uh, it prints out a large, uh, information so they have everything that they need. And this also speeds up and can take off up to three days of lead time because when we field measure, we can essentially submit this from the roof and have the quote sit back the same day. So Connor will demonstrate as he, he's clamping the wall, it'll do all of our miters, our radius and, uh, helps us in the field. So he is clamping now, he's getting the wall size. He'll go around and do the radius he'll clamp again. He inputs it. You can hear this, you can hear this talk as you're, as you're going and it's automatically putting all the information that we need into the app.

That is it.

Lauren White: Hey everyone, I'm Lauren White with Roofers Coffee Shop and we are here in Vegas at IRE 2024 and we are with our friends MTL Holdings right now. And Jason, I'll have you introduce yourself.

Jason Hildenbrand: Hi, thanks Lauren. I'm Jason Hildenbrand. I'm the director of branded sales for MTL, uh, the parent Company of Metal Era and Hickman Edge Systems.

Lauren White: Wonderful. And so we are standing in front of this cool looking device. Yeah, the Falcon. Wanna tell us about it?

Jason Hildenbrand: Yeah, so we're standing here. This is our Falcon Display wall. So our Falcon Measuring Technology is the proprietary technology that we use to measure, uh, roof parapet walls, uh, for the, the width and dimensions, corners, linear footage, those kind of things. Uh, it's utilized by our regional technical sales team. Uh, we have a team of nine, uh, individuals throughout the country that go around and we offer free, uh, measurement and technical services to our contractors and partners. And part of that service is a measurement with the falcon where we can measure, uh, parapet wall, uh, to thousands of an inch and 10th tenths of a degree. So it's very accurate. Um, and it, it gives the contractor that's installing the, the product actually a roadmap of where everything goes. So it's kind of a, um, color coded map. If there's different sizes of walls or different elements within the parapet, it will give you a, a step-by-step map of this piece goes here, this piece goes here and really allows the contractor to easily install when it might be, uh, a complex project, um, with a lots, lot of different parts and pieces.

Lauren White: Wow, very cool. And so what are, what, what feedback do you get about this? Like what are people telling you about this technology?

Jason Hildenbrand: Yeah, so the, um, the, the feedback has been great on this. The, uh, the proprietary technology, it's actually spatial locating so it knows where it is at any time in space. And so once we start on one end of the roof and say we're gonna start at point A, it knows where it is at, at every time within that. And so what we're trying to get some feedback here at the IRE this week is, uh, the app technology can also be used to locate possibly other things on a roof. Can we use it for things other than a parapet wall or a roof edge? And so we're looking for feedback from contractors or potential users of the app and system to see if there's other ways that we can utilize this in the market.