Quality Roofing & Sheet Metal - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Austin Barnhardt of Quality Roofing. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast here.

Alice Reyolds:
Hello everyone. My name is Alice Reynolds and I'm back again from Roofer's Coffee Shop, here with the roofer of the month interview. We're so excited to be celebrating our July roofer of the month, Quality Roofing and Sheet Metal. Thank you so much for being here for this interview, Austin.

Austin Barnhardt:
Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Alice Reyolds:
Yeah. So can you please introduce yourself and tell us about your company?

Austin Barnhardt:
Yeah, my name's Austin Barnhardt, vice president of Quality Roofing. We're located in Bozeman, Montana. We are a third generation roofing contractor and currently celebrating our 50th year of family ownership.

Alice Reyolds:
Congrats, that's exciting.

Austin Barnhardt:
Yeah.

Alice Reyolds:
So what type of services does your company provide and what's your specialty overall?

Austin Barnhardt:
So we are primarily a commercial roofing contractor with mixed end, high end residential. We do a lot of work in a resort town called Big Sky. Big monster Resort homes up there. We've seemed to find a niche in that market. Specialize in EPDM, TPO, standing seam metal roofing and below grade waterproofing.

Austin Barnhardt:
We also offer a full service sheet metal shop that we fabricate all types of metal flashings used throughout the building envelope process. This is great because it allows us to customize every standing seam roof we do from fabrication of the roof panels to fabricating all the necessary flashings needed for each job. Especially when you're working far away from your shop, it's kind of nice to be able to know that you can have those things fabricate what you need and not rely on outside sources to... Shipping and all that stuff too, that comes with all that. So it's kind of nice to keep everything in-house.

Alice Reyolds:
Absolutely, yeah. With everything that's going on, I would think that's a huge benefit.

Austin Barnhardt:
Yeah, definitely.

Alice Reyolds:
Cool. So can you share something special that your company celebrates?

Austin Barnhardt:
I guess first and foremost, I mean we're celebrating the fact that we have employees at this point. Everyone in our valley's having a really hard time finding the workforce and we've been lucky that we've had a core group stay with us for, a lot of them have been here eight to 10 years, and we were able to pick up a couple more for the summer work. So we're happy that's that's happening for us.

Austin Barnhardt:
I mean, it's been hard the last five years to get a crew built up to allow us to finish our contracted work within the season. And so this year, we're really looking forward that we could actually kind of be somewhat caught up for the first time in a long time, which is great. And we're also excited about all the new faces we're getting, I mean, from all the genders that have been applying. It's been typically a male dominated workforce and we're getting females coming into it and that's been a great addition to it.

Austin Barnhardt:
And we celebrate the families. We're family owned business so we have no problem allowing our workers the time off they need to go to family events because we feel that's very important as our company. A family man myself, we want to be there to support your family growing up and yes, work is important, but having families important as well.

Austin Barnhardt:
And this year, it's a big year celebrating that 50th year in business as a family owned business, so we're pretty excited about that. We're looking to have a gathering towards the end of summer, I think, and let everyone come out and celebrate that with us.

Alice Reyolds:
Cool. Yeah, that sounds fun and it sounds like you all know how to have retention. I think that's a really good point that celebrating your employees, that includes, or you should remember to include their family with that. And so they have a good, healthy work/life balance.

Austin Barnhardt:
Even like pre-COVID, the work... In Bozeman, where we're at, is a huge growing community and so it's just a constant battle of fighting other contractors and other everyone else, all businesses around is hiring and wages are constantly going up. And so the fact that we're able to get people in here that are dedicated and work hard, it's just been a real blessing for us.

Alice Reyolds:
Yeah. And it shows something, it shows that you all care about your employees. So that's so great to hear. Cool. So how do you define superior customer service at Quality Roofing?

Austin Barnhardt:
First and foremost, we believe honesty's key in all aspects of roofing. From the bid process to inspections, we're up front with our customers, want them to know what exactly they can expect choosing to go with our company and are upfront with them on what it's going to cost.

Austin Barnhardt:
And we try our best to stay within those costs. Sometimes the projects don't allow that to happen but we try to be as honest and investigate as much as we can upfront so they know what they're getting into and if the project doesn't fit our timeline or the expertise that we strive in, then we're going to tell them that, "Thank you for contacting us but this just doesn't fit our niche that we have or our realm of work."

Austin Barnhardt:
And so we would then help them to find another trusted roofer within our community that might specialize more in that than what we do and get them set up for that.

Alice Reyolds:
Honesty is the best route. And then why should homeowners and building owners work with Quality Roofing?

Austin Barnhardt:
We've been in the valley a long time. Our reputation is great and we know the climate and what materials work best in our climate. We've seen our valley grow tremendously in the last 10 years and have been there to weather that storm with all the latest building. And we try to be in the forefront of latest industry trends and believe in the value of associations and technology.

Austin Barnhardt:
I currently sit on the Western States Roofing Contractors' Board and Casey, the president of Quality Roofing, is a past president of the Western States Roofing Contractors' Association. Then we're also very involved in our local roofing association, the Montana Roofing Association, where both Casey and I have served as past presidents.

Austin Barnhardt:
And so we think that building a strong association helps build a strong roofing community and in the end returns a better product to customers.

Alice Reyolds:
Nice, that's so that's fun to hear about that and we at Roofers Coffee Shop love associations and working with associations. So thank you for doing that and thank you for being a Roofers Coffee Shop R Club member. We really appreciate it. Thank you for doing this interview and congratulations on being the July roofer of the month.

Austin Barnhardt:
Yeah, thank you. Again, it's been great.