Insights From the Guy Who Grades Our Work

00:00:01] Jordan Biggers: We tell our guys the number one thing we do when we get up on a job for the first time is say nothing and just listen. And if I get up on a job and I don’t hear anything but the generator humming, nobody’s hooting and hollering at each other, nobody’s even talking to each other, and everybody’s working, then I know what I got.

[00:00:20] Todd Kavanaugh: Hey there and welcome to under the Roof, the official podcast of Baker Roofing Company. Todd. I’m Todd Kavanagh.

[00:00:27] Matthew Elban: And I’m Matt Elbin. And we’re here to connect the dots between field and office leadership and crew values in action.

[00:00:34] Todd Kavanaugh: In each episode, we dive into the stories, lessons and updates that matter to our team.

[00:00:41] Matthew Elban: From safety and career growth to company milestones and good old fashioned storytelling, it’s all about living out what makes Baker Baker. Let’s get into it. Hey there and welcome back to under the Roof, the podcast where we look at what’s really under the roof of one of the oldest and most experienced roofing contractors in the industry. I’m Matt Elbin.

[00:01:03] Todd Kavanaugh: And I’m Todd Kavanaugh. Every episode, we sit down with the people that actually do this work, whether it’s crews, leaders, partners, customers. Today we’re going to actually do something a little bit different.

[00:01:16] Matthew Elban: Our guest today is Jordan Biggers. Jordan is managing director and General manager at Southern Roof Consultants, based out of the St. Petersburg, Florida area. Southern Roof Consultants does not install roofs. They work for the building owners. They assess condition, they write the specifications, they run the bids, they inspect the installations, and finally they sign off at

[00:01:38] Todd Kavanaugh: the closeout, which means in plain terms, Jordan is the guy who grades our work. Jordan, welcome to under the Roof.

[00:01:47] Jordan Biggers: Thank you guys for having me.

[00:01:49] Matthew Elban: Yeah, I’m excited to get into this, Jordan. So I always ask a question at the very beginning. Everyone knows this question. What is the last book you read and what stuck with you from it?

[00:01:59] Jordan Biggers: You know, it’s funny because it goes to your last podcast. One of my neighbors, believe it or not, is a third party marketing consultant that we use quite a bit. And he wrote a book called AI Nuggets for the Common man, and his name is Devin Hertz. And I read that book. It’s a short read. It’s like 55, 60 pages. But it is something in our current market that AI is being thrown around and used in just a multitude of ways. And we had some staff members go out on a limb and try to use it, and we found some of the pitfalls of it. But we’ve also Been able to use Copilot and Claude and some other types of AI. So that’s the last book I read. I used to read a lot more as a younger man, if that makes sense, which it typically doesn’t. But with three kids and the responsibilities I have now, I don’t get a chance to read as much as I’d like to.

[00:02:52] Matthew Elban: I can understand that. It sounds like a good read though. I’ll probably be picking up a copy of that myself.

[00:02:56] Todd Kavanaugh: Yeah, it sounds a lot more approachable than like some of the ones we’ve heard. Thinking back on like John’s and like the War Underneath or something and how copper mines influence geopolitical landscapes in South America, this is more approachable.

[00:03:11] Jordan Biggers: If I was going to read, I probably would read something like that because I have a degree in American history. So that kind of useless knowledge is something that I definitely like. But I felt like I’d take a few minutes and use something more applicable.

[00:03:23] Todd Kavanaugh: That’s a great segue, Jordan. So I’m really curious, you know, we’ve gone through this before with other guests, like their roofing origin story, right? Nobody, probably most people don’t start out thinking I’m going to get into commercial roofing. So I’m curious, how does somebody that has that history degree find themselves up in commercial roof consulting?

[00:03:44] Jordan Biggers: Nobody gets into the roofing industry by choice in most cases. I got a was that kid in high school who was a decent athlete and got a chance to play some college football in first semester, said hey, you have to pick a major. What do you like? And so I’ve always been interested in history and just the structure of government and kind of how, how historical societies influence our current society. And so I said, hey, I’ll do history. And about my senior year I realized that either A, I go get a PhD and become a professor, or B, I need to abandon what I went to school for and find something to do in the real world. And my dad had owned a roofing company as a kid, Anchor Roofing that was based in Ellington, Florida. And in college I actually worked with my uncles doing preventative maintenance for prologis in Orlando. Fricking drove in a panel van every day down I4 from Tampa to Orlando and we were a three person maintenance contractor. And so roofing has kind of been in my blood and I went the long way. I only played football for a single year at FAU and proceeded to go to four other schools before I got a degree from University of South Florida. And I interviewed with roofing Contractors right out of college. Because honestly, that’s kind of the last thing I did that actually put money in my pocket. And I knew that there was not a lot of college educated people in the roofing industry. But I also didn’t really fathom how a college degree would help me in roofing. But I ended up lucking out and having an opportunity to go work for a company called Empire Roofing. They were opening an office in South Florida. I got turned down for three local roofing contractors, but the fourth across the state gave me a nod and that’s how I got in. I mean, my father helped found Southern Roof Consultants many moons ago, and he did not want me to be in the roofing industry, to be very honest. But I realized that if you put your nose to the grindstone in the roofing industry, you can make a good living for yourself. And so the rest is history, I guess.

[00:05:50] Matthew Elban: So speaking about history, the history training, does it actually show up in the work? And I guess part of me thinks what you do is forensics on buildings. Right. Trying to look at the, figure out what happens to it. How do we get to where we are working backwards. So does that help you out, your history degree?

[00:06:07] Jordan Biggers: Very much, Matt, I’ll be honest. Like a history degree, One of the things you have to do in a history degree to be successful is evaluate large amounts of documentation and take small important pieces out of them. And one of the main facets that our company serves for our different owners is acquisition due diligence. And that is very in line with doing a research paper on somebody. You get handed over just more documents than you could ever want. And a lot of it has nothing to do with the roof. But you go through PCAs and things like that, and you do. It’s a very good perspective. I mean, we don’t get all the answers, we get a lot of information. And we’re tasked with kind of putting together the puzzle from a variety of pieces and then providing an owner with a recommendation of what the puzzle looks like currently. So I think being able to kind of go through massive amounts of information and focus in on particular things that are really the drivers we’re looking for, never really kind of put a lot of thought into it. But I do think that there’s a very clear parallel to what I did in school, believe it or not. Yeah.

[00:07:11] Matthew Elban: I think I’ve got two kids in school now. And one of the things that I’ve always thought about college education is sometimes you’re learning how to learn at that point. And your degree is not irrelevant, but whatever your degree is, you are learning how to learn. And the older you get as you grow up into an adult and we want to do a career, we all use those facts. What we learned when it comes to learning how to learn.

[00:07:33] Jordan Biggers: So and learning how to deal with people, I think is one of probably the biggest things. Getting a liberal arts degree get to meld with a mixed bag of folks. You know, I wasn’t an engineering major with that kind of strict parameters on the people that are to that type of degree. So learning how to deal with people in the commercial real estate industry has probably been the most validating thing of college for me. Because you do get a whole host of backgrounds that all have kind of the same problem. And if you understand how to approach people, you can usually reach an amicable outcome just by being personable with folks. And I feel like that’s probably one of the things I gained the most in time of my life.

[00:08:13] Matthew Elban: So. Yeah, that’s a good point. Let me switch gears for a minute. So before the consulting side, I think you did some estimating for a roofing contractor. And I’m curious, what does an estimator actually do all day that most people wouldn’t guess?

[00:08:29] Jordan Biggers: I think an estimator is probably the scientist of the roofing industry, if you will. Because to be a good estimator, you’re not just understanding what material costs are and things. I got the fortune of working underneath a guy named Terry Collette, who was one of the senior most estimators of Empire. I think he’s been there over 40 years now. And at that time, and I think maybe to this day, they used a souped up spreadsheet that he designed. And I have four production crews in South Florida. And I could tell you that crew a could install 12 lineal foot of base flashing in a day, more than crew B. And I could tell that crew D superintendent was a little lax because his material orders versus what he was bringing back to the shop. There was big discrepancies. Like we were very tuned into the labor side because material costs are commodities, they fluctuate. They’re kind of a standard across the board from an estimator. To be a good one, you have to know what the production rates of your crews are at the different facets of putting that roof together. How quick did they lay field, how quick do they flash and fabrication of sheet metal and stuff like that. There’s a lot of guys who are really good at banging out a roof and really bad at taking it into the end zone when it comes to finishing out details and finishing out sheet metal. Being a good estimator, we were kind of able to tie all that in because as an estimator, obviously you want to win the work, but you don’t want to win the work to take a loss on the job. So it’s a thin line. And I think for what we do as a consultant, I have four guys on my staff that were all senior estimators at different roofing companies because we’re constantly. Our budget becomes actionable when our client either buys a building or decides that they want to execute a roof replacement that we’ve been budgeting for them. So we use a very powerful BI powered dashboard that we input all of our bid results in. And very similar to what I did at estimating 20 years ago, because when we were done with a job, we would download with our crews and we would really refine our estimating spreadsheet based on their production of that job. And so I kind of kept that mantra along for our current company because we averaged 275 to 350 roof replacement jobs a year in multiple states and multiple varieties of roof. And so probably for about the last six years we’ve been documenting every roof replacement we do with about 12 different characteristics. And we built out a BI powered dashboard for them. So it really helps us as we emerge into different markets or we’re tasked with budgeting large quantities of buildings. We rely heavily on that.

[00:11:14] Todd Kavanaugh: It’s almost like you become a bit of a behavioral scientist too, right? You mentioned they’re the scientists of the roofing industry. And it seems like more based on some of the labor fluctuations, not a commodity pricing of material. And you have to understand the behavior of people.

[00:11:29] Jordan Biggers: You do. And in geopolitics to a certain extent too, because depending on where that project is, it presents different hurdles. If you’re doing a job down in Miami, well, if you need to do the job in a couple of weeks, you’re not doing it because it’s a five week permit process versus doing something in Bahalia, Mississippi. You can go get a permit tomorrow afternoon with $500. So understanding where you’re operating and what those pain points are is very important in what we do because we’re constantly asked when I know the roof’s going to cost about this much, but when can it be done? In order to know when it can be done, you have to know when it can start first. And that doesn’t hold true in every geography that we Operate. I think in this past year we’ve done roofing work, whether it’s evaluations or projects in 44 states, something like that. So it’s a big spectrum and there’s just such a wide variety of things, both characteristics of the roof, but also just where you’re actually working. We’ve been getting into a lot of union, non union scenarios and some small municipalities and stuff and just all those things do go into understanding cost.

[00:12:39] Todd Kavanaugh: So that brings up, I’m curious, so when you are estimating that means you spent your days figuring out what work costs and where the money in the job is and then you switch sides. You mentioned like evaluating 290 to 350re roofs a year to the evaluation on the other side of it. And you have this BI dashboard, we have this saying that we use here sometimes internally is hard to read the label from inside the bottle. And so was there something that you learned when you stepped outside of the bottle, no longer a roofing contractor, but a roof consultant, that you kind of learned about how roofing contractors operate? When you’re reading from the outside, does that make sense?

[00:13:23] Jordan Biggers: It does. And you know, I think when you’re working for a company, you have a way, that company’s way. And when I stepped back and started consulting, I saw that yes, roofing is roofing, but everybody has their own approach to it. And I think I did learn to be able to kind of weed through certain contractors based on how they operate. How do they look at a job? When I have a pre bid, do they send a guy with a pocket protector, a guy with hot asphalt on his boots or a salesperson? You start to understand where that company is from their first representation at a pre bid meeting. And then, you know, when we issue an addendum or something to that, do we have crickets with no questions or is there someone who’s got a 50 bullet point itemized list of clarifications and questions they need? You do get to see the different operational flows, the different roofing contractors. I think the one thing that I’ve seen over the last decade is we were always at Southern Roof, very big about in house production crews, companies who controlled kind of soup to nuts, all their employees. And we’ve seen the shift to sub labor over the last decade very heavily in a lot of good firms. And I think my experience at Empire was all in house work. One of the things I learned is that and it was always a stigma, all those guys just sub everything. But in reality, if you have the infrastructure in Place and good subcontractors. You can be very profitable and produce very good work using that. That’s probably one of the biggest things I learned because I just wasn’t exposed to it working for that company and never really was high enough up at a reaping company to understand the procurement of sub labor and kind of what that relationship really was.

[00:15:16] Todd Kavanaugh: Do you feel like the fact that you got to experience being a 

roofing contractor first, rather than just stepping straight into consulting, kind of gave you some special insight in terms of that enabled you to be a better roof consultant? Like you mentioned, I think you have four. They were senior estimator guys on staff at different organizations. Do you feel like bringing in roofing contractors into the consulting business actually enables you to serve your customer better?

[00:15:45] Jordan Biggers: A hundred percent. I would be a fraction of what I am now if I did not have that experience. And I was real lucky at Empire because I was like employee number three. So I had to wear a lot of hats. And I can’t be an estimator if you don’t have anything to estimate. So when we first started out, I got to run service crews. I got to be a superintendent. You know, some days I’d tear off with the guys because a couple people didn’t show up. And so I got to really immerse myself. And what I would say is probably the hardest place to put a roof on, which is South Florida in the summertime, learning how to roof down there one roll at a time. I flooded out a cardboard box manufacturing facility in my first four months of working. And I remember the shoes I was wearing, the khaki long pants I was wearing. Like, I remember that day. It will never leave me. And so acquiring those skills the hard way and those experiences the hard way have really helped me evaluate if we’re going to do a job in South Florida with a contractor, what is their experience down there, or if we’re going to do a job up in the Northeast, Is it a guy from Atlanta, or is it someone who’s got their teeth working in, you know, the winter climates up there? So having that experience is. I would be a fraction of what I am if I didn’t. Because really, we’re kind of unique in the industry, I think, in the sense that we don’t hire people who have not been roofers in our critical component, like our field inspectors, our office staff that are critically reviewing reports that are going out, or our team that does any of the construction management stuff. Like, everybody is coming from a roofing background because Essentially we’re an extension of the roofing contractor and owner. We’re the middleman, if you will. And so having a little bit of understanding on both sides of the aisle has been very helpful for us.

[00:17:32] Matthew Elban: So this question is kind of a two parter. If I look at what I want to get here, what happens at a party when someone finds out what you do for a living?

[00:17:41] Jordan Biggers: Depending on whether I like you or not, I’ll either say I’m in the roofing industry or I’ll actually say what I do because it is kind of niche and it’s unique. Fortunately, my dad procured some small clients many years ago that are now very big. And if someone wants to understand what I do, I tell them I manage roofing capital for privately traded private equity groups and publicly traded rates and see where it goes from there. If they don’t know what a REIT or private equity group is, then the conversation usually ends. But in reality that’s kind of the best way I describe it is that we manage roofing capital, both operating and replacement.

[00:18:22] Matthew Elban: I think that’s a fair answer. So your title actually includes rro, which is the second half of my question. Can you explain what that is and what it means on an actual job site?

[00:18:33] Jordan Biggers: RO stands for registered roof observer. I think there’s 13 of us on staff now that have their RRO. So it basically qualifies you to be a third party, non biased observer of a roofing project and provide actionable observations. One of the things when you get your RO is delineate between you and the contractor, like what is your role in the project? And really your role is to report and observe, you know, essentially a fiduciary on the roof for the person who’s paying for it. It is very helpful in understanding the ebb and flow of the project and depending on what you see in the field, who needs to be notified, who needs to take on action to correct it, who’s a responsible party and things of that nature. But a lot of our bigger knee development clients, prologis, E groups and stuff like, they typically require that any of the quality control inspections that are done on their jobs be done by a registered roof observer. RRC is kind of that next step, the registered roof consultant. That’s a much more challenging test to take. And we’ve had a couple guys take it in the past that were unsuccessful. We’ve had a couple guys take it that were. But I think it does bring validity to your statements, especially when, when they’re not good, when they’re bringing up issues that are not easily corrected. To know that the person bringing them up has the qualifications to evaluate that stuff and provide clear, actionable direction once it’s determined brings a lot of value to that.

[00:20:10] Todd Kavanaugh: Yeah, so say I own a building and my roof is being replaced and I have a facility manager that walks that roof maybe twice during the job. And in another scenario an RO is up there. You walk it as an observer, what does an RO see oftentimes that a facility manager maybe doesn’t.

[00:20:30] Jordan Biggers: That’s a very good point. And I think it’s the RO mixed with someone who has experience of putting down roofs. Perfect example. I had a project, we’re still in the midst of working on it, six year old roof. We were not involved with the installation. The roof was done in like December of last year. But when my field inspector went up there, who is an rro, when he came back and showed me the pictures of cold welds, pretty symmetrical 10 foot in a field lap. I could tell very quickly that the generator was cycling over and that something was stopping wattage or amperage to the robot. Because there’s no way on on earth to get symmetrical cold welds every 10 or 12ft running a field lap, I would see go up on a roof. In your scenario where a facilities manager would go out and see some patches on a lap, I may go out there and go, why are there t patches on this lap every 10 foot on center on five rolls that were all done in the same day. I’ll go look at the next day and realize, okay, they need to get a new generator or, hey, the guy running the robot, he’s not cleaning the wheels on the robot. There’s debris stuck underneath the lap. Or they’re not cleaning the laps before they’re actually running the robo and they’re getting false welds. I think it’s a mixture of being an rro. RRO really gives you the basis point of the reporting side of it, to know how to clearly communicate with the owner, the gc, whoever you’re working for. It’s the roofing knowledge mixed with that provides a pretty good combination to be able to evaluate something that you were not a part of the installation of. That’s where like our firm does not do quality control inspections outside of new construction for a job that we didn’t write the specs on. So we typically always know what the intent of the specification was. But when we go do due diligence, we’re coming in blind. Maybe we get an address, maybe we get a treasure trove of data. But either way, we were not involved with the installation of that roof. So, to your previous point, Matt, we are kind of forensic type investigators trying to figure out was this a good application, was there some small nuance issues, or was there a systemic problem with this roof that’s going to linger through the life cycle of the roof?

[00:22:45] Todd Kavanaugh: I can imagine even on that scenario, Jordan, that you mentioned an FM seeing symmetrical welds, thinking that’s probably the way it ought to look. It’s symmetrical. Right. And so they might miss out on that core knowledge and that historical understanding of how that generator works and how the robot on the roof welds.

[00:23:05] Jordan Biggers: That’s a good point. One of the things my guys look at a lot, and we just hammer to the guys, the roofers that are doing jobs for us. Everybody understands symmetry. And if you get up on a roof and you have 25 ACV AC curbs to flash and five of them are flashed one way, five are flashed another, then you understand that it wasn’t a homogenous crew. We tell our guys the number one thing we do when we get up on a job for the first time is say nothing and just listen. And if I get up on a job and I don’t hear anything but the generator humming, nobody’s hooting and hollering at each other, nobody’s even talking to each other, and everybody’s working, then I know what I got versus going up there and seeing somebody screaming at three or four guys and people running around frantic. A crew that knows how to put a roof on, everybody on that crew should know their responsibility and their role. And when we see that in the field, that just lowers our blood pressure immediately because we know that the guys who are installing the roof know what they’re doing, and everybody has their piece of the pie to focus on.

[00:24:10] Matthew Elban: Yeah, it’s interesting. A lot of the stuff that you’re talking about are the things that are not going to be obvious failures. There are going to be things that might show up in year five or six, but you’re going to see them based on what you’re talking about in the install or you can see something down the road while it was installed. Obviously that crew didn’t maybe know what they were doing or they weren’t. Like you said, a homogenous crew. So certainly interesting to think about it like that.

[00:24:35] Todd Kavanaugh: I’m a data guy, and I was just having this conversation with somebody an hour ago, and the things that scare me most in data are the silent failures rather than the loud failures. Silent failures are the ones that you can’t notice unless you’re really looking and they’ll really bite you in the end. As opposed to the big broken spreadsheet or database, which is an obvious failure that you can fix.

[00:24:57] Jordan Biggers: The way we represent our clients, to your point, Matt, that is exactly what we’re looking for. Because we don’t do due diligence kind of ad hoc. We do due diligence for our existing clients. And most of our existing clients are REITs. So they’re very long term owners and operators of industrial commercial properties. So if we don’t identify that issue that’s going to manifest itself in year five, in year one, boy, that skeleton’s gonna come flying out of the closet a half a decade later. We’re still gonna be associated with the property, our owner’s still gonna own it, and we’re gonna get the question of why are you guys just telling me about this now? It’s a lot easier to say, hey, this isn’t an issue. Perfect example, we just looked at some properties for a client in Orlando. Not bad roof installs, but they just t barred everything around the perimeter of the building. And there was maybe 16 inch area where the membrane fractured as it would turn the 90 into a gutter trough. Not a big issue, probably a $200 repair. But down the line that is going to be a systemic issue because that condition is present on nine of the 13 buildings are acquiring. And so where it’s not a year one immediate need, we bring that to an owner’s attention on day one so that it’s visible from the day they acquire the building and they have a business decision to make.

[00:26:18] Matthew Elban: You’re flagging the issue and saying, hey, right this minute you probably don’t need to worry about it, but it’s something you need to know about because in year three or four of owning these, you’re going to have a bunch of these starting to hit.

[00:26:29] Jordan Biggers: And that’s where ownership hold period is huge for us because we do represent a multitude of clients that have different strategies with these property. And I mean, these properties are financial vehicles for our owners. Some of them want a Lexus to drive it until the wheels fall off. Some of them want a $3,500 hunk of junk that just gets them to work and back. And so we really try to understand before we go into an acquisition setting, what is the anticipated hold? Is it a three or four year hold? Because if it’s A five or six year problem, we’re not that concerned about it. Versus hey, this is a perpetuity hold. We’re going to put this into a fund and we’re going to own it for 25 years. Then it may make sense in year one to address a problem that wouldn’t manifest to year five so that it never manifests. So we have some of our longer term owners that will spend a large amount in capital on the very front end in a proactive manner where we have some clients that’ll say thanks for bringing that up but if it ain’t a problem, we’re not fixing it yet. And just based on their strategy and whether they’re willing to take a retrade at disposition time for something like that or if they feel like it’s actionable enough to execute capital on the front end.

[00:27:40] Matthew Elban: Yeah, I guess it’s a good comment to make too that just because someone doesn’t fix, we have a lot of customers that don’t necessarily fix the remedial stuff we might call it immediately. And that doesn’t make them a bad owner. Right. Or a slum lord, so to speak. And that that makes them someone who understands what their business is and how they’re going to operate within parameters of their business. And you guys have understood that about your clients as well?

[00:28:03] Jordan Biggers: Oh, you’re 100% correct. And we deal with one client that deals with defaulted commercial backed mortgage security debt. So they essentially are a default lender that special services the note on a property. And so we see a lot of colorful things when we evaluate those properties. We had a situation where a building department came out and threatened to literally condemn about 40 buildings on a multi family complex because they said they got some reports from residents that the living conditions were so bad in that case the owner’s hands were forced. If they wanted the space to be occupiable, they had to do a bunch of work. But there again, it’s really all about understanding your client and what their needs are for those particular properties. Because otherwise the same recommendation people pay us for our opinion and our opinion has to be based on what is their solution, what are they looking to achieve with that property. And the same set of physical deficiencies identified in the field may have two very different recommendations from us depending on how they’re going to hold the property.

[00:29:10] Todd Kavanaugh: Jordan, I’m curious. You’ve talked a lot about your relationship with your client, your fiduciary relationship to them and some of these clients that you’ve had for decades for A long time. I’m curious if we flip it a little bit, talking about your relationship to contractors. So, and a lot of these contractors I imagine you work with again and again, and you want to have a good, positive, functional relationship with them that gets your client what they need at the end of the day. But you also need to hold a hard line with those contractors to ensure that you’re providing the best service for your client. How does that dynamic work a little bit?

[00:29:45] Jordan Biggers: It’s a very good question, and it’s a very unique dynamic. Sometimes we’re kind of the guardian custodian of the bid grouping based on our client. Just saying, hey, SRC, give me three or four guys for this project in St. Louis, and let’s spit it out. Other dynamics, we have clients that have synergies with certain contractors, and they’re asked, you know, hey, we use these four or five guys. You pick three of them. To your point of your question, it is a thin lot because we do a lot of work throughout the United States, and certain contractors can operate better in certain geographies and not operate as good in other geographies. And so that’s probably from our national clients is one of our big things. Baker Roofing is a great example. You guys have great coverage in probably from the Atlantic Ocean all the way up to the Mississippi and even into Texas. I mean, you guys have done projects for us in Green Island, New York, and in Brownsville, Texas, and you guys are fishing up a couple in Boca and Tallahassee here in Florida. But Quincy King is kind of our point of contact with you guys, and you guys have always been very transparent. I had a project in Saline, Kansas, and Clincy’s like, yeah, I don’t know. It’s a little bit of a stretch for us right now, but knowing the capacity of the contractors is, I think, one of our secret weapons. We’re very transparent because we have a good relationship with our contractors. And if we have a large portfolio of roofs that need to be replaced, we don’t want to bring someone to the party who didn’t bring any party favors, who doesn’t have the bandwidth to execute the job within the parameters that the job needs to be executed it in. And I think over the years we’ve learned that being transparent with these contractors and understanding what their capacities are. And for the flip side, don’t dangle carrots that don’t exist. Everybody needs to bike the carrot, otherwise they’re going to quit chasing it. And so we are very loyal to our contractors. The contractors that do a good job for us, we do want to bring them into new opportunities with other owners. If we have good experiences with them on other projects with other owners, it just bolsters SRC’s brand and those contractors brand. Not to say that we don’t get new contractor influx because we do. But we are very, very loyal to the guys who’ve done good jobs for us. And that just comes with being transparent on both sides of the aisle. Construction’s construction things happen. But when we know we have a partner on the other end, that’s just going to be very transparent with any kind of issues. That’s really what we look for in a roofing contractor.

[00:32:23] Todd Kavanaugh: Jordan, it’s so interesting because Jerry Hahn, our guest from our last episode, essentially said the same thing. We had asked a question, what will sour a relationship with a service provider with you quicker than anything else? And he said a lack of communication and transparency or some version of that. He’s like, you can mess up, just be honest with us, you know, let’s get it straight. But just be honest and open and transparent. Communication, communication that just seems to be like this constant whenever we ask a question in that space. It’s transparency and communication is what people want.

[00:32:56] Jordan Biggers: One of the things we implemented about six years ago is at a pre construction meeting we established a distribution list for that project that includes our client, applicable contacts from the contractor, applicable occupant contacts, and there is a daily email sent every single day by the awarded roofing contractor to notify that distribution list whether work is taking place or whether work is not taking place. And they provide an aerial image with a highlighted area of where the day’s work is going to be. And you’d be amazed. It’s a simple one line email, you guys send it out. Baker is working today. Here’s a little aerial image of where we’re working with that affirmation in constant communication just completely separates the thought of not knowing what’s going on. I think the fomo, the fear of missing out on important things is a real thing because if you don’t have that transparency, it’s just human nature to think someone’s cutting a corner or something like that. But when you’re constantly in front of it with communication on a daily basis, it gives a customer just a comfort level that can’t be made in a weekly report or a bi weekly update. It’s just a constant reminder of hey, we’re doing our job, we’re here every day.

[00:34:12] Matthew Elban: Jordan has been really good. I Have a question to complete the shift for just a moment. You’ve been on a lot of roofs? I’ve been on a fair share, but not as many as you have. What’s the strangest thing that you’ve ever encountered on one?

[00:34:25] Jordan Biggers: Wow, that’s a. That would be a question. Over a few drinks maybe, but I’ll be honest with you, seen a lot of interesting things. Just encountered something in the last month that I’ve never seen before. Had a fleece back fully adhered TPO installed over a built up roof over a concrete deck. And when my inspector came and gave me a call, I was on the roof. He said Jordan, I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s these little things that look like golf balls underneath the membrane, everywhere, all over and they’re very symmetrical. And he had not been inside the building yet. Come to find out that the tenant that occupied this space through bolted giant all thread with nuts to hang equipment inside the building and literally hammer drilled through the concrete deck through the built up roof, jammed a piece of all thread through the roof and put a nut on top of the washer. And then a few years later they installed a fleecebag TPO over everything. So this building had about 900 bolt heads and nuts up underneath the membrane that over the five year period started puncturing holes through there. That was a first for me. Who in their right mind would think laying a piece of membrane over 900 bull heads is a good idea is beyond me? But roofing, seeing interesting things on the roof is one thing, I’ll be honest. One of the cooler things about our job is the stuff that’s inside these buildings. You would never imagine the stuff that’s in an industrial warehouse. I mean I’ve seen the Beatles Mystery Machine, I’ve seen a Batmobile, I’ve been inside a Apache attack helicopters friggins those things that they train, forgive me, the term is alluding to simulator or. Yeah, simulator. Thank you. So we did a roof for a company called Aero Simulator and their job was to develop simulators for Apache attack helicopters and different versions of helicopters that were not built yet so that by the time they were built pilots would know how to fly them. And I worked in enough with the guy who ran the thing, I got to jump in one. And so you have driven by the building think they were selling widgets like you would have never known. And I think that’s one of the cooler things about this job is when we start reroof project knowing what’s Going on inside the building is almost as important as knowing what’s going down on the roof. Because that customer inside the building holds the cards. They are paying rent, which creates revenue for our owner and really starts the whole cycle. So understanding what’s in these buildings and getting to find out what’s in these buildings, it’s probably one of the cooler things about this job I’ll agree with.

[00:37:02] Matthew Elban: That’s one of my favorite things, is the people that you meet, the relationships you develop, and then the places you get to go and the buildings you see and what’s inside of them. And my strangest thing I ever found, a roof. I was brand new at Baker and I was training in the Charlotte office for about a week, probably my second or third week at the company. And we go up on a roof and it had an overhang and under where it was covered in tpo. And there was somebody living up there. He had run electricity on the back of the building, had a TV up there, a couch, a dresser. He was up there when we got up there. And all I could think to myself was, I need to say, excuse me,

[00:37:39] Jordan Biggers: pardon me, I need to, pardon me,

[00:37:40] Matthew Elban: I gotta do an inspection.

[00:37:42] Jordan Biggers: We have had a guy. We had a prologis building in Orlando that Universal Studios occupied. And this was back several years ago when the Harry Potter stuff was all the craze and this building was housing Harry Potter chocolate bar. You might as well have thought they were double top secret nuclear scientists in a room. They thought these chocolate bars are worth more than gold. And a gentleman, a homeless gentleman decided to scale the wall mounted ladder and pitch a tent on the roof. He didn’t want his tent to blow away, so he jammed the tent stakes through the roof. And that was the only reason they discovered that there was someone living on their roof, was they started getting some roof leaks. Like you, Matt, the roofer went up. Fortunately, there was nobody present at the time. But yeah, this is a first. There’s a tent jam through your roof. The tent stakes are your leak here. Which forced Universal to put some security measures in place to keep the gentleman off the roof. But it is interesting the stuff you’ll find on buildings.

[00:38:43] Matthew Elban: That’s funny. All right, so Jordan, before we go big picture, I have to ask, can you turn it off? The answer is I can’t. And that question is this. When you walk into a grocery store on a Saturday, are you looking up?

[00:38:57] Jordan Biggers: Oh, yeah, 100%. My kids think it’s funny because we’ll be traveling somewhere. I’m like, I Put that roof on. That’s my building right there. That’s a Blackstone owned property. And so no, it’s hard. It is. Especially in this day and age where we deal with a lot of catastrophe situations for our clients and so we have to be accessible Saturday, Sunday, Labor Day, whatever it is. And yeah, I’m always looking up, man, I made my living and stuff on that roof. So that’s where my focus is.

[00:39:25] Matthew Elban: Yeah, my wife gives me a hard time about it too. Pass up. She said, didn’t you install that?

[00:39:31] Todd Kavanaugh: I’m just a marketing guy. I’m always like opening the drapes at a hotel and looking down, you know, or at the airport or whatever.

[00:39:36] Jordan Biggers: And I had a mentor teach me a long time ago if you’re looking for people to call on as a sales guy for roof and drive around and look at the property sign. So I always. It’s funny, someone told me that 21 years ago and nowadays some, most owners won’t publicize who owns a building, but in some cases they do. And I always find myself looking at real estate signs on Nukon development, just see who’s active in the market.

[00:40:02] Todd Kavanaugh: So Jordan, from your seat, I’m curious, I think about what I hear in terms of, let’s say on the Nukon side. I think it’s representative data center going up and the percentage of the contract for roofing is like really inconsequential compared to some of the other trades. And now shift a little bit to existing buildings. Why does a roof end up being one of the most consequential capital items in a commercial portfolio, but most people file it under maintenance. Is that something that you see and experience? I’m curious, can you speak to that a little bit?

[00:40:36] Jordan Biggers: Certainly. When you underwrite the acquisition of a property over kind of a 10 year hold, which is pretty industry standard for commercial industrial buildings, typically about 52 to 54 cents of every capital dollar over that 10 year period will ultimately be spent on a roof. Whether that’s operating maintenance or whether that’s a full replacement. There’s really nothing else that is a cost impactful that touches the total square footage of a building’s footprint. You may have a parking lot, you may have to paint a building, but nothing necessarily touches everything like the roof does. And it is unfortunately out of sight, out of mind because it’s up on the roof. It is the fifth wall. It’s not something people look at, but especially with higher end occupants, your FedEx is, your Amazons, your Kuna Noggles, your panel Penis. These big conglomerate maritime shipping companies and stuff, the products that they house are not theirs and they are essentially third party shipping. A multitude of people’s products that they’re insuring are kept in a safe, waterproof, watertight environment. And when that roof starts to impact the operations inside of a building, it becomes a big issue and an issue that can’t be necessarily swept under the rug anymore. And a lot of our clients have been in that position where they didn’t underwrite capital for a roof and all of a sudden need to. And the way that affects the NOI on that property is sometimes, depending on when it happens, unrecoverable. If a roof pops up in year eight of a ten year hold, you don’t have but two years to recoup that spend. And a lot of times you can, depending on what the pro forma is on the deal. So it is a big focus. It’s interesting. Our clients hire PCA firms to go look at all the building components when they do an acquisition. But they also hire our little firm because the roofing is that important and it can’t be just melded into all the other NEP and phase one environmental because it is so impactful to their bottom line that they’re willing to spend an extra four or five thousand dollars above and beyond their PCA firm to specifically look at the roof. They don’t hire plumbers to go look at the plumbing, or electrical guys to go look at infrastructure with electrical, but they hire us. And it’s because it is that big of a needle and every building has one. Every building doesn’t have a giant truck court or every building doesn’t have a giant facade that needs. But every building has a roof.

[00:43:11] Todd Kavanaugh: Do you feel like every owner gets that? I mean, I imagine not everybody is doing that level of due diligence. Your clients are, Todd.

[00:43:20] Jordan Biggers: They do. If they’ve been burned before, if they’ve been able to navigate through the ranks and never have been stuck in that scenario I laid out where they have no choice but to replace a roof in year eight and have no way of recouping that money before that fund matures or before that whole period expires, then yeah, they’re kind of ignorantly bliss. But it only takes one time. I told the client about 20 years ago, they were hiring us habitually to do inspections and new regime came in and they said, hey, we’re just going to have the PCA firm do it. And the next building they acquired they needed a roof replacement. And so they Acquired the building, they hired our firm to design the roof, and There was a $1.23 million delta between the number they had and the lowest bid. After we designed the roof and I told that client, I said, you could have paid us $1.2 million and we could have done due diligence until 2040 for you, and you’d have never spent a dime more. So all it takes is one time to have a big miss like that. And people see the validity of having someone specifically look at the roof.

[00:44:28] Matthew Elban: So think about a couple options, right? You got repair a roof, you can restore it, maybe a restorative coating, you can recover it, you can do a full tear off and replace. Well, if there’s already one in place or something. But how do you decide and what evidences do you need in hand to defend that decision to the person who’s actually holding the budget?

[00:44:47] Jordan Biggers: Is a great question. And what it is in reality, it’s that whole period. If we understand that a client is going to hold a property for 20 years, then we need to look at it in a lens of what is the best way to get this roof to perform for 20 years. Is it replace it in year two or three and have a new roof that we can operate through that period, or is it a four or five year hold period? Is there something less than a full recover or replacement? Is coding an option? One of the things we have to have in our hands is an accurate leak understanding. Like one of the things we developed about five years ago is a proprietary roof management software platform that we have a multitude of our clients on, and banker roofing is on the platform as well. And essentially we have a portal that our clients can log in and see all their roofing information, but also report leaks. And understanding the leak volume on a property really tells you, in my opinion, which way you need to go from a replacement standpoint. We’re not advocates of coding leaky roofs because more often than not, coding is not going to solve that problem. But if we have a 25 year old metal roof that has a very low leak volume and the panels are still in good condition, coating that type of roof to get an owner five or six years and get them outside of their hold period is a very viable way to spend $3.50 a foot instead of $5.50 a foot versus putting that coating on the roof that is leaking, that does have two roofs that doesn’t perform, but for two or three years, and then all of a sudden now an owner is faced with doing that tear off in year four or five and have already spent the money on the coding. So look at it in a life cycle. If I can get an owner to spend 100% of a replacement in year one or two and maintain that roof through their whole period versus spending 50, $60,000 in repairs and then four years later replacing that roof, they just spent in a five year period 130% of the replacement cost where they could have just spent 100% up front and then been able to have a very low level maintenance operating budget for the remainder of the life of that roof. So it really all stems though. What is that client trying to do with the asset? What is their whole period?

[00:47:11] Matthew Elban: I like that. Jordan. This has been fantastic. And one for fun. Before we let you go, we started with the history degree. So let’s end there. Give me the roof you’d most like to have inspected in history. Anything, any era. Well, what roof would you want get on to inspect it?

[00:47:29] Jordan Biggers: I’d probably say the Cysteine chow.

[00:47:31] Matthew Elban: Let’s set a date. Let’s get that on the calendar. I’d love to. I’d love to go do that with you.

[00:47:35] Jordan Biggers: Might be a little red tape to jump through to get up on that

[00:47:38] Matthew Elban: roof and we could figure it out.

[00:47:39] Jordan Biggers: We actually just picked up the Catholic Arch Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine as a client and I’m very interested in that because I always wanted to do historical restorations and stuff and they have some buildings that were built in the 1700s, so, you know, it’s going to be cool. But I say one of those old churches would probably be something I’d like to get on.

[00:47:59] Matthew Elban: That’s awesome.

[00:48:00] Todd Kavanaugh: Sometimes I wonder when I travel and I. There’s a. There’s 

a cathedral in Vienna called St. Stephen’s Cathedral. You’ve got to look it up. The tile work on it is phenomenal. Crazy pattern on this roof. And I was wondering who’s qualified to fix that? Who’s qualified? You always wonder, like the Sistine Chapel, who do they call when it leaks?

[00:48:18] Jordan Biggers: What a repair account to have, man. And it just shows you the technology that some of those guys had with rudimentary tools was just fabulous.

[00:48:26] Todd Kavanaugh: I always like to wrap with this one last question to know a little bit more about you. Jordan, is what is on heavy rotation right now for you? It could be an album, it could be a podcast, could be something you’re streaming. But I’m just curious, like, what’s on heavy rotation for you?

[00:48:40] Jordan Biggers: I’d say a little more of the island vibe where we live. So my son has been big into stick figure and slightly stupid lately, so that’s kind of on the rotation. But we mix it in a little more Gwalin and stuff too. That’s probably the short list of our playlist lately.

[00:48:55] Matthew Elban: I like it. I’m always writing these down and going to listen to them later myself, so thanks for the recommendation. Jordan hey, thanks for joining us today. That’s it for this episode of under the Roof. Big thanks to you, Jordan, for the conversation. Frankly, not many contractors would have wanted to host and we’re excited to do that with you and had a blast. So thank you.

[00:49:13] Jordan Biggers: Oh, it was a pleasure. I very much appreciated the conversation with

[00:49:16] Todd Kavanaugh: both of you guys, but it’s awesome, Jordan. I really appreciate it. And remember, we always like to close with this one. It’s our mission statement from over 100 years ago. We shall do good work out of profit if we can, at a loss if we must. But always good work. Thanks and see you next time. That wraps up this episode of under the Roof. Thanks for joining us and being part of the Baker roofing family.

[00:49:45] Matthew Elban: If you liked what you heard, share it with your crew, hit the follow button and keep the conversation going wherever you work.

[00:49:51] Todd Kavanaugh: We’re here to keep you informed, inspired, and included because the more connected we are, the better we work together.

[00:49:59] Matthew Elban: And as always, we’ll leave you with this. We shall do good work at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must. But always good work. See you next time.