After more than a decade and a half in the industry, you might think that you would be coasting on cruise-control. That is anything but the case with Tom Frederick and Ryan Laughlin, and what they've achieved with PLM Paving & Concrete.
"I've been here for seventeen years now," said Frederick. "We've done nothing but grow and exceed expectations. Every year we seem to get better and better. I can't say enough about our crews and their work. Teamwork is huge for us when it comes to our sealcoating crews."
Laughlin believes it's due to the investments that they've made over the years in their staff.
"We continually reinvest in our people," said Laughlin. "[Sealcoating] is one of the dirtiest jobs we've got, and the schedule can be grueling. You get up when it's dark, you get home when it's dark. Somehow our team gets out there and does better each year."
When asked how they felt about their teams being recognized by winning the award this year for Seal & Stripe: Large Job, Laughlin replied, "Winning, for us, is our quality. Winning means our customers are satisfied. It means we are doing all the other little things correctly to get us here."
The Winning Project
Over the course of the last ten years, Elmbrook Church has looked at PLM as the provider for their pavement maintenance needs. Every year they are working with the local faith community to provide construction services for their large, and heavily used property.
This year, PLM completed sealcoating for more than 50% of their facility's blacktop which came a total of 592,000 square feet of asphalt pavement, while additionally installing more than 7,500 pounds of crack sealant.
"While we've done a lot of work with them in the past, there's always people bidding against you, and there was definitely competition this year," said Frederick
"I think a lot of our approach with this customer comes from the trust we have established with them over the years," added Laughlin. "They know we are going to take care of them and be mindful of their needs, not inconveniencing them or their [congregation]."
The entire project took three days with a six person cleaning and cracksealing team, and a four person sealcoat application team.
As with any regularly used space, the timing for this project was a key factor in client satisfaction. While some local churches might be open one or two days a week for public services, potentially leaving several days a week for maintenance to occur without conflict, that isn't the case with Elmbrook.
"They have a church function every day of the week," explained Laughlin. "That's why they have half a million square feet of pavement! But Tom and his team had an excellent plan and they executed that plan to perfection."
"They are really busy, there is always something going on, and it's a large complex with different activities happening at any given time," said Frederick. "You can't just wing it, you have to phase it out right. Working around people's schedules, sure, but there are things that come up on the customer side and you still have to be flexible."
Getting The Job Done
While PLM has many machines and tools at their disposal, for this scale job, it took their biggest equipment.
"We had our heavy hitters out there," said Frederick. "We primarily utilized our spray bar set up. You can get a lot of square footage per hour. We have huge kettles too, but it can't be overlooked that our crews are very experienced. They come back year-after-year and they know what they're doing. That right there saves you more than you'd think."
While the larger crew cleaned, crack-filled, and prepped the surface, the smaller sealcoat team wasted no time following behind them. And when it came time, their in-house striping team took center stage.
"In some cases we use laser guided stripers, and they can do any kind of layout you can imagine," said Frederick. "The striping team has been with PLM longer than I have! They really know what they're doing, I can't say enough about them."
However, since this wasn't a new pavement project, they were able to quickly layout and stripe the parking stalls based on the previous layout. This project had approximately four thousand stalls that needed to be redone.
"One of the things that we've found is that lasers can sometimes deliver imperfect lines based on the grade or condition of the lot," Laughlin followed up. "As a company philosophy, customer experience is the primary goal. Efficiency even comes after that, and in order to deliver the best customer experience and the highest quality result, we are more than happy to sacrifice some of the speed of productivity."
Where The Road For PLM Goes Next
Both Frederick and Laughlin mentioned several times that what really sets PLM apart from other competitors is their ability to retain their employees over a long period of time. In today's labor economy, that's a huge achievement. Not everyone can say the same, and, when they talk about the future, it came back to this topic again.
"When talking about growth and the future, it helps tremendously knowing everybody's is going to be back," said Frederick. "Obviously, we have set-backs too at times, like anyone, but that's rare for us."
"It's all interrelated," explained Laughlin. "Our sales people aren't more important that our operators, and our operators aren't more important than our sales team. It takes both halves to win. We have people on both teams with twenty-plus years of commitment. Having that established depth makes a big difference. If you give experienced, talented people the right tools, then they're going to go out there and get more wins."
