Episode Transcript
Kirk: Welcome to The Construction User 2.0, from The Association of Union Constructors. In this podcast, we explore the latest labor trends, industry insights, and important issues from the world of construction. Join us for conversations with industry leaders, subject matter experts, and innovative visionaries as we discuss how we’re building the world of tomorrow.
Today’s guest has been working in construction for over 40 years. After starting in the trenches, he built his way up to owning two specialty contracting companies in nine states. A multi-generational union guy, please join me in welcoming the founder of both thermal solutions and structure or scaffold solutions, John Stevens. Thank you so much for being with us today.
John: Hey, I'm glad to get on the call and talk a little bit about TAUC and the relationships that I've had the opportunity to not only garner, but to help expand and grow over the last several years.
Kirk: We're excited to have that. I always like to start off with an absolutely ridiculous question and just get us started in keeping it light. What is the last song that you had stuck in your head like out on job sites sitting on your desk, like the song that you couldn't break free from?
John: I'm a big Tesla fan. Believe it or not, I'm an 80s guy, so I'm hearing metal. But the one that probably rocks my world more than anything is AC/DC, Thunderstruck.
Kirk: That is a solid choice. That is a solid choice, and it is one that does tend to get stuck in your head.
John: Exactly. It gets the blood flow moving.
Kirk: Yeah. I don't know what I would have told you. I didn't think you were necessarily a Pat Boone fan, but AC/DC, hair metal, 80s, I don't know that I would have guessed that.
John: I'm pretty diversified. I can go bluegrass in a heartbeat or country. Billy Squier to Pat Benatar, to Motley Crue, and then we can go to Chris Stapleton and do a little bluegrass back to SteelDrivers, back when he was lead singer for SteelDrivers bluegrass. I'm very, very diverse in my music selections.
Kirk: I get that. I just want to start with some background for people that are listening. Tell me a little bit about your personal journey into thermal solutions, contracting, and how you came to own your company. How did you get to where you are?
John: That's a great question, Kirk. First and foremost, I've been a very blessed human being. I have a lot of mottos in my life. Probably my most used one is the harder I work, the luckier I get.
I started out in the industry in the early 80s with Johns Manville Insulation. Back in the early 80s, they had several contracting arms that no one did. They mined and manufactured insulating materials. They had 36 contract units across the United States. They were very big insulation contractors.
Of course, when the asbestos litigation hit in the early to mid 80s, that changed the whole dynamics for Johns Manville. Of course, they went into the Chapter 11 restructuring and everything. They're back strong as ever now after they got through all that, but they closed. They sold out and closed all of their contracting arms.
In the mid 80s, I found myself a young father, young husband. Needing to provide for my family, I went to work for a company called Ohio Valley Insulation, which was a small union contractor in Huntington, West Virginia. They did about $4 million a year in revenue, very small. But they did some industrial work, which really fit my niche. I worked for them.
They got new ownership. I've worked for them, and 95 new owners came in. We didn't really see eye to eye with the new owners, but I worked for them for another five years. In February 2000, I decided I could probably do better than they did.
I journeyed out and scratched out of the ground a company called Thermal Solutions Incorporated. I got incorporated in West Virginia. Shall we say the rest is history? We came out of the ground.
Within two weeks, I had 15 employees. Here we are 23½ years later, we average anywhere between 350 to 500 employees. We're in nine states, grown dynamically, and have an awesome safety culture.
If I would have told you back in 2000 that we would be where we are today, I would be a proverbial liar. I don't know that I could have dreamt it, Kirk, and to have had the opportunity to blossom, flourish, and grow. We have a footprint in nine states. Pretty much, Ohio being the center of that. I just absolutely love what I do.
I've been in the industry now for 40-plus years. I still have an excitement and a fervor to grow. Every day is a new adventure. I'm always still excited about that next purchase order and opportunity. Insulation is more of a specialty contracting craft, and service.
We had several jobs. We want you to do a coding job, we want you to do a scaffold job, we want you to do these other remodeling, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, man, I fought it for years, but I do insulation.
Four years ago, we formed a company called Structure Scaffold Solutions LLC. When we formed it, my wife taught high school for years, but she had a master's in business where she taught schools. She taught business, shorthand type, and all that, but she had a master's in business. I'm thinking, okay, you're retired from school, you're bored. You're the president of Structure Scaffold Solutions.
We got our woman of diverse status with that. Some of our bigger customers like US Steel, American Electric Power, were the people that were pushing us to become more diverse in our services we provided and become a bigger specialty contractor than we were. It's been an awesome bit, Kirk. We've really, really blossomed.
We have offices in Louisville, Kentucky. Proctorville, Ohio, Gallipolis, West Virginia with an outreach in Clairton, Pennsylvania, and Cincinnati, Ohio. It's just been an awesome experience.
Both of my sons are in the business. Nick, my youngest, is 32. He runs a lot of our manpower and our coding side. Dan, my oldest son, he's 42 and runs our environmental and our fireproofing division. My son-in-law runs a lot of our scaffolding division. It's just been an amazing, amazing ride.
Kirk: Listening to the beginning of that story, you started out the gate being union yourself. You came up through the program.
John: Yeah. Johns Manville was a union contractor. Our other contract divisions were union. Here's a funny little clip of how I got in the insulation business. I came out of school thinking, okay, I love insulation, I just want to be in the insulation business. Not at all.
I met this little girl from North Carolina, and we hit it off, dated there for several months, and ended up, decided, we thought we'd be better together and got married. Her dad was an insulator. This was back in the very early 80s.
The industry was pretty slow back then. Jobs were not as plentiful as they are today by a large margin. Long story short, the next thing I know, I'm working for Johns Manville working in the warehouse, loading trucks, delivering materials to job sites, and then I worked my way up through the ranks the years that I was there from the warehouse guy to the sales manager. I found my niche right there, Kirk. That's how I got it. It was a crazy industry.
Kirk: I want to latch on to that. You happened into this through your father in law, and you ended up at a union shop, so you're union 10 years, 5 years, 15 years later. In your story, you decided to break out on your own. Just to ask the super controversial question, so many of these small businesses, pro union or non union, why did you make yours a union shop? Because you were already in the union?
John: No. I think probably the biggest answer to that was one, yes, I did know the personnel because I've worked with them and the business managers. For example, I got both of my sons. It wasn't like they just came out with a silver spoon. I've started them in the apprenticeship program, both of them.
When they got out of college, both of them went right into the apprenticeships, and they learned the trades from the ground up in a four-year apprenticeship, which I wanted them to understand and know the industry. I want them to know the business. I felt the best way to get them to understand and for them to grow as individuals was to start at the bottom and work their way up.
My sons and my son-in-law went through a four-year apprenticeship program that taught them the ropes, the skills, and the trade that they would need to not only better themselves in understanding their day to day jobs, but to be able to grow. Not only hands on facilitate it, but also manage it where they find themselves today because they understand it. They understand the inner workings.
One of the big things about the trades is their expectations of their employees, their staff, their crews that they send out. These people have gone through not only drug testing, they've gone through 10-hour OSHA classes. Like I said, they went through a four-year apprenticeship working with journeymen out in the fields who are showing them 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years of their skills, and this stuff being shown to these young men and women to a place to where they can understand it and apply it once they get through this program.
That was my mindset early on. My very first opportunity to be basically shown to the union was even before I started in the installation trade, my dad worked for Armco Steel. Armco Steel had an underground drainage division. The first project that I got on in the industry, I was 18 years old straight out of high school. Armco had a big project in Chicago going under the toll roads in Chicago, I guess I-90 up in Chicago.
Back then, it was six or eight lanes wide. We had a 306 foot diameter tunnel to put underneath that toll road. My job was a mucker with a shovel in my hand, and it was rough work, but I'll never forget the day. I went up there, and I wasn't part of a union, my dad was. I went up there as just a laborer.
I'll never forget the day. I heard my dad. We always never do dad speaks. I heard him holler. He was up at the top of the pit. He said, hey, John, come out here. I come out there, and there's this Italian guy. He was about 5'6'', 5'8'' probably, a big Italian guy. It was as wide as he was tall.
He says, hey, boy, you're part of my union, and that fat finger pointed at me. I'm down about 40 feet below him in the pit, and I said, no, sir, I ain't. He said, you are now, come up. I went up. Hey, they deducted. Back then, it was $200, $250, or whatever it was, Chicago. I went up and signed the book. They took $50 a week out of my check till that was paid off.
I became a union laborer back way early on, early 80s. I got that in my blood. Hey, I was making $19. What do you think about this? In 1980, I was making $19.18 an hour, and then I was getting benefits on top of that. I thought I hit the lottery.
Kirk: I know people now that aren't making $19 an hour.
John: I hear you. When I came back to Ohio, I found out that the cost of living increases in Chicago. It's a lot higher than they were in southern Ohio. But to answer your question, Kirk, my union affiliation started early on. It was a lot of that because of the integrity of the people you got on the job sites.
Are they all perfect? Absolutely not. We ain't going to pretend that. Through the years, they're training through their expectations, the peer pressure in the industry and the unions. I like my odds.
Kirk: I agree with you. I'm going to add an interesting not off topic follow up. Obviously, we're The Association of Union Constructors, you know that. You're one of our members. We post things online, and we post different articles and things we see.
Over the last few weeks and months, we started getting a lot of these online trolls coming in and being like, unions are evil, unions are rip offs, or unions are blah, blah, blah. Every not expletive, but every dig you could imagine.
You're a business owner of over 40 years, two different businesses, multiple things. I can't even wrap my head around where that comes from. How do the unions benefit your employees? Why go union if there's so much vitriol against it? Where does that come from?
John: First and foremost, anyone that has been a union member or is contemplating to get in the union and why is because of their structured contracts. Guess what, June 1st, all carpenters just got a raise. Did all of it go in their check? No, but the majority went on their check, but the rest of them have gone into their fringes.
They're getting not only their medical, getting their vacation pay, or getting their retirement, that money on the check always looks awesome, especially when you're young, until you go looking at potentially retiring down the road, and you have absolutely zero because, oh, there was no one investing. There was no one taking money and laying it back for you in a structured environment.
I think that's one of the big benefits of young people or people that are out there that are naysayers. They're naysayers because of their individual stance. Whether it's a young, small business owner, they don't understand that he may be negative against the union because he goes out there, and he's got to compete against this union contractor. That union contractors got his ABCs and Ds all lined up. He comes out there, he puts a program together for that potential customer, and it's all lined out.
Wait a minute, you got your liability, you got your workers comp, you got your unemployment insurance. You have all these things in place because they're structured. They're in line with the industry, whether it be commercial or an industrial environment, and know that when you come out and then these employees are trained up, and they got all their PPE, oh, wait a minute, you don't have to stand over with a cattle prod to try to get them to wear their safety PPE. That's the big difference.
Anybody can go out here and start a business. But unless you're just going to do one job at a time, and you get somebody to stand over them and keep them in line, so to speak, then you're never going to grow the company. You got to have people to come out of this, where they have not only ownership in their industry, take pride in what they do, and take pride in making this infrastructure in America great again because it's basically been, for years, let go, there's going to be so much industry in the next 10 years just on infrastructure. The ship plants, the automated battery plants, automated cars, and everything, it’s phenomenal what's transpiring in our country right now in regard to growth.
Kirk: That is actually a perfect cue up for my next question. It's so much. You just said it, so much is changing. We've talked a lot about the past, how you got to where we are, and how everything has happened. So much is changing in every industry with battery plants, new roads, new construction methods, and new requirements.
What changes do you see coming on the management side? What do the contractors need to do to adapt? Construction has been relatively similar for a fairly long time, but it's changing.
John: That's a great question. But I think one of our biggest hurdles as owners, I'm a 40-plus-year guy, so I'm a baby boomer. I'm at the tail end of my career, let's face it. It's just sheer numbers.
The younger generations don't see things like we do. A lot of our baby boomers are retiring. They're going on to the next phase of their life. We have to really be focused. AI and a lot of this automation that's coming into play, I think we're going to have to grasp that to get the younger generations involved.
Where they're excited about doing this industrial craft labor work is because, hey, how many kids do you know come up with a joystick in their hand? How many kids do you know have a Sony, Xbox, or computer, who is so absolutely way ahead of us older guys? They grew up with it.
Kirk: I grew up climbing trees and getting scraped up and beat up. My kids' thumb-eye coordination is crazy. They have such different micro movements than I do.
John: Absolutely. I try to keep an open mind in regard to that. Going to our IGI events is a great opportunity for contractors to get out there and see what is coming. You might as well belly up to the bar and drink the Kool Aid because whether you like it or not, it is here.
Whether it be drones, whether it be robotics, whether it be exoskeletal, there's just so many things out there that are going to change the absolute footprint and face of our industry. I'm excited about it, but you really have to have an open mind right now.
Kirk: Actually, you nailed it on the head. I'm not, in any way, trying to get all promotional, but that exact concept is why. For IGI this year, which you brought up for our Industrial Grade Innovation Expo, we're subsidizing apprentices coming.
Bring your junior, bring your young guys. Bring them out, so that instead of just, like you said, the old guys, the boomers, and the management coming, no, we need to encourage that next group to embrace what's coming as well because you can't fight progress. It's like fighting a wave, you're going to lose.
John: I'll tell you another thing too. I'm speaking for myself here, but I also know that there's a lot of guys out there. We have got a lot of really, really, really good seniors, owners, upper level management in our top group. There are some absolutely geniuses in the industry in our groups. I am proud to be part of those individuals because you learn.
Before we get off, I want to talk about our networking that I've had the opportunity over the last 15 years, 20 years. My point I was going to make is that we have to let go. Us senior guys have got to let go. We have been so prone and so geared in holding the reins so tightly and doing it like we've been doing it for the last 20, 30, 40 years. We have to bring the young talent in.
I'm telling you, whether male or female, there is so much young, very brilliant talent available out there. We got to let these people sink or swim. There's going to be some that sink, there's going to be some that swim, there's going to be some that fumble. We're going to have to let them find their way because we have to start spreading our wings and let them spread their wings while we sit back, try to cheerlead, and maybe point them in the right direction.
Kirk: What I'm hearing here is that I get to meet both of your sons and maybe your son-in-law at IGI this year.
John: We've been trying to bring them into that mix. For example, last year at the IGI, I was at IGI, and my younger son Nick was in Savannah, Georgia at another conference for the installation trades. It seemed like there were plenty of opportunities.
There is absolutely touching on that, and then I'm going to bring it into the networking part of this. When I first joined TAUC, I've seen the Thomas J. Reynolds Safety Award in one of the fliers. I was never part of TAUC prior to this. We applied for the safety award.
I want to say it was in Atlanta, Georgia, or I can't remember, maybe like a Reynolds plantation. I remember in Georgia, but we applied. Me and my wife went. Really, I went to play golf and the surroundings. We went and got our big safety award.
I always kept applying and kept applying myself to the folks. TAUC has become my number one networking resource for any and all conferences and boards that I've been affiliated with, one of the most rich, involved individuals that not only share and give back, and have opened their arms up to me and my companies and my wife. It's just been an absolute treat to be part of.
The growth that we've garnered out of it, the benefits of improving our safety culture, the benefits of improving some of the things that I've learned, whether it be the IGI events or through our conferences, has just been absolutely priceless. That would be my biggest recommendation.
For individuals that are looking to help their company blossom and grow, if they really would research and go to one conference and see who the players are at this event, will absolutely come back and say, wow, I wish I'd done this a long time ago.
Kirk: Wow, that's quite the endorsement. I appreciate that. I will always say, and I've told this story of a few different times, my first date was almost two years ago on a Monday. That was the week of ZISA. Thursday was ZISA. After ZISA, I went out with some people, and you were one of them. You were one of my very first people.
You really helped me catch the fire of where I had just started working. I was sitting there with you talking about a lot of this stuff. I have definitely caught your vision of this place. I agree with everything you just said. It's an incredible organization.
John: Thank you for the compliment. I'm going to tell you something. You just brought up another point that I'm glad you touched on, Kirk, the Zero Injury Safety Awards. We have challenged our job sites, and here goes back to what I just said a moment ago in putting that seed out there, planting that seed.
We took that seed in the Zero Injury Safety Awards, the ZISA. That's held every October in DC and some of the most beautiful architectural facilities in the country, as far as I'm concerned. Absolutely gorgeous. I think last year was the National Cathedral, and then there's the building.
Kirk: The building museum before that, and then the air and space museum for a minute.
John: Yeah, absolutely gorgeous. What we've done is we've taken these awards as we come back and taken these to the job sites that received those. Think about this, the minimum requirement is 50,000 safe work hours.
Kirk: It's insane.
John: It's insane.
Kirk: It's incredible.
John: When you first read that, you say, well, ain't nobody going to get this, there's nobody going to get this. We have, this year, coming up, 12 zero injury safety awards that we're receiving well over a billion safe man hours. You think that if this doesn't get you fired up, your wood's wet.
Because of the return on that investment back to those employees on those job sites that are garnering this award, I just wish that I could have all those people there at that moment to receive these awards, which is impossible. It's just such an amazing event. It's an amazing accomplishment.
This was one of the things I posted on LinkedIn just recently. If you want to celebrate your team, and your team safety accomplishments register for this award, it's phenomenal.
I think one of the biggest things on safety that TAUC can do other than the Thomas J. Reynolds Zero Injury Award as well, which is phenomenal, but this showcases our industry. You said earlier, what separates the union from the rest of the world? One word, ZISA. Kirk, do you know how many millions of man hours…
Kirk: The number changes so much. It's in the tens of millions over the last 23 years. I've looked, and we've done audits of the numbers trying to make sure that we're having as accurate to the number of hours. When I've explained to other people, it's like, we're not talking about people injury free hours at a desk job. We're talking about some people that are doing truly hazardous work.
John: Some of the toughest work. We're talking about molten steel and a steel mill. We're talking about 10,000 kBW in a 1300 megawatt power plant. We're talking about rolling sheet steel down a galvanized line with red hot molten steel. You're up 20 feet in the air, and a man lifts doing a project while this operation is continuing to run.
We're talking salt of the earth applications. How many foxes are around that corner? And these guys are working safe, and they've engineered it where they can do it safely. They can have the correct PPE to protect them. All precautions put in place and the right training. Come on, man.
Kirk: Some of this stuff, I understand what they're producing, but when I hear some of the descriptions of how the work is done, I'm like, a horrible injury almost sounds just like collateral damage. It almost sounds like it should be expected with the things they're doing. They're like, no, we've done 1.8 million man hours, zero injuries. I'm like, that's incredible.
John: Kirk, let me share something with you. When the Golden Gate Bridge was built, they expected fatalities. As late as the 80s, when they would build a bridge over the Ohio River, over the Mississippi, or wherever, they expected one to three fatalities. A bridge? You think about it, it was okay. We're calculating those deaths in this job.
Kirk: Seriously. Honestly, the cost of doing business was human life.
John: We're going to lose one to three on this project. Today, we're going to do it safely or we won't do it. If we can't engineer it safe, our motto in our company, zero profit, for safety. If we can't do it safely, and we can engineer it safely, we're not doing the job.
Every human being on that project has stop work authority. Any person on that job can go out there at any time and say, halt, stop. That job stops. We're going to then take whatever is wrong, make it right, get it to where everybody is going in the same direction, everybody understands the risk, we engineer it safely, and then we move forward.
Kirk: There it is. I was trying to think of a good finalizing question to say, hey, what are your final remarks, but I think that's perfect. We have to put safety first. We have to focus on the future, like you said before, of letting go of the now and priming us for the next generation. I think those are all just stay safe, stay future focused. Is that the secret?
John: I'm going to tell you right now, it changed me as a human being. One of our other models we have in our companies, we are our brothers and our sisters' keeper. We are. Each person on that job has a responsibility to protect their co-worker. Everyone in our company shares that philosophy. We share celebrating life. If someone's hurting in our company, we try our best to reach out.
I'm going to touch real quick, one of the things that I brought back from Savannah, Georgia last month was some absolutely passionate moments, Kirk. I know you recall those. Justin Azbill with Milwaukee Tool and Josh Rizzo getting up on that stage and showing their compassionate sides of our industry, mental health, suicide prevention, drug rehab prevention, and things like that.
Do you want to talk about why you would be part of TAUC? Why would you be part of a union? We have compassion and absolute fortitude and strength together, and we can go out there and do the meanest, toughest jobs in the world, but at the same time love and care for each other, and be compassionate for not only our fellow man, but also excited about the growth of our industry and our country.
Kirk: Amen. I think that sums it up perfectly. John, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. I think there's so much good. I look forward to seeing you at IGI here in just a few weeks.
John: At some point, we got to have one part of our meeting at Kid Rock.
Kirk: From AC/DC to Kid Rock? I'm in.
John: I'm just saying, I was there for the first time and a little pissed off about it. I'm not going to lie. Last year, I went out for a two-day conference in Nashville. I have never been to Nashville. It blows me away.
One night, we were there at Kid Rock saloon. Oh, my God. I fell in love, dude. I've never seen so much talent in one little town in my life. It was an absolute blast. I was mad at myself. I had been there many years earlier.
Kirk: I'm looking forward to it.
John: Real quick, if I would have went in my 20s, I would probably be a rock star today instead of in the insulation industry.
Kirk: A less safe industry for it. I'm glad you didn't get bitten by the national bug.
John: Brother, I'm excited about what we do, excited about our partnership with TAUC and so many good people. The team there has just been an absolutely inspiring group of individuals that just, in my mind, raised the bar. I'm excited about our future, excited about what we can do to improve, not only the people, but also our industry, and try to become a better service provider for our customers out there.
I'm going to tell you something right now. If you're going with that perception of who we are, I think you're going to come out the other side a better person forward. I'm going to tell you right now, I told someone a while back. I told you earlier, we're in nine states. I said, if I could live a few years longer, I'd be like ZZ Top nationwide.
Kirk: I get that. I get it. Amazing. Thank you so much again, and we're looking forward to many more years.
John: Amen, brother.
Kirk: Thank you so much, sir. We will talk to you another time.
John: Thanks for the invite. I look forward to seeing you soon, my man.
