KPOST Roofing & Waterproofing by North American Constructors Journal

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KPost Roofing & Waterproofing :

Still Growing Strong

KPost provides turnkey roofing solutions and services to high-profile customers across an array of sectors. Written by Kevin Doyle Produced by Stephen Marino

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ndustry powerhouse KPost Roofing & Waterproofing staked its ground as a leading commercial and residential contractor early on by providing high-end customers such as the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys with turnkey solutions and services covering the entire building envelope.

calling us and asking if we could put a silver star on their roof or use blue and silver shingles. We couldn’t do that, but we realized there was a real void in SafetyQuality-Value elements in the residential side of the business for somebody with the capacity to meet the needs of the residential client. To date it has really paid off.

CEO Keith Post, President Steve Little and CFO/Safety Officer Jayne Williams founded the company in 2003 when they brought together a core group of roofing professionals with more than 300 years of accumulated industry experience.

“We have the largest base in North Texas and we always have work. Consistently getting your 40 hours a week in, or more, isn’t a problem,” he continues.

Today the team consists of more than 400 employees, including 60 specialized crews, with unmatched experience. The company added a Residential Division four years ago, generated $67 million in annual revenue for 2020 and before the negative impact from the Covid-19 pandemic to the roofing material supply chain, the company was on pace to do $72 million in business for 2021. It was named Roofing Contractor Magazine’s Roofing Contractor of the Year in 2017. “Bigger isn’t necessarily better but we really have earned a pretty decent reputation,” says Little . “Because of our relationship with the Cowboys, we had consumers

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Little certainly understands the value of branding. Upon completion of its signature installation of a fixed membrane Keith Post

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KPost Roofing & Waterproofing | 5 “We’re innovative. We use a lot of technology in the field and in the office. We view ourselves as a very sophisticated Sub-Contractor working along the lines of a General Contractor.” - Steve Little, President roof system over the Cowboys’ $1.2 billion Taj Mahal in 2009, KPost entered into a formal partnership with the team, allowing the company to add the Cowboys’ iconic blue star prominently to the KPost corporate logo. That was and continues to be a game-changer. The company derives great benefit from it membership in regional and national industry associations Keith Post Steve Little

such as Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), TEXO, the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA), the Midwest Roofing Contractors Association (MRCA), North Texas Roofing Contractors Association (NTRCA), American Subcontractors Association – North Texas (ASA), National Women in Roofing (NWIR), Regional Contractors Association of Texas (RCAT), and Regional Hispanic Contractors Association (RHCA).

Prime Time Projects The company’s Metroplex location provides easy access to interstate highways and DFW Airport. Its designation as an essential business at the start of the pandemic allowed it to maintain its general processes and procedures. Globe Life Field: The company completed its work on the new home of the Texas Rangers – a public-private partnership between the club and the city – that cost twice as much ($1.1 billion) as AT&T Stadium but took just two-thirds of the time to execute. KPost joined

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with General Contractor Manhattan Construction on the 1.8 million-square-foot facility executed on a fast track to guarantee it opened in time for the regular season. Facebook Data Center: KPost has been involved in this project for several years and recently wrapped up work on a $200 million addition. According to Data Center Dynamics, the addition adds capacity for cold storage of information rarely accessed by users. When it comes online next year, it will be one of four such Facebook facilities around the world, supporting 2.74 billion active users. It is being built to LEED Gold specifications.

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Texas Instruments South: This relatively straightforward $15 million project involved tearing 30-year-old roofs off buildings that housed a semi-conductor plant and headquarters during the pandemic. “Each of those three projects had all sorts of challenges,” states CEO Keith Post, a Texas roofing veteran of more than 40 years. The company has also worked on a Google Data Center, Cisco Data Center and four Amazon Fulfillment Centers. “The market place has really shifted to industrial and distribution from office and we’re heavily involved,”

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KPost Roofing & Waterproofing | 8 Little points out.

Day To Day Given the company’s connection to the Cowboys, it should come as no surprise that football parlance is ingrained in the culture. Little, for example, is regarded as the head coach and says “the offense secures the business, the defense executes the business and the special teams do whatever is needed in a support role.” “We’re innovative. We use a lot of technology in the field and in the office. We view ourselves as a very sophisticated Sub-Contractor working along the lines of a

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General Contractor. It’s a business, not just a roofing company,” states Post. The three founders have all been in the industry since the mid-1980s. COO Dusty Smith joined the senior management team in 2018, adding his 30-plus years of experience as a General Contractor to the mix. The company has started a Level 10 Management Team of individuals ranging in age from their mid thirties to mid fifties and utilizes Gene Wickman’s book “Traction” as a guidepost for job-specific training and retention. “They were all incubated here,

KPost Roofing & Waterproofing | 9 having started in various positions. The 400 employees we have were hard to find and the turnover rate of 20 percent in the field is typically on the labor and young apprentice side. When [companies in other sectors] pay $15-$18 to start and work in air conditioning, it’s difficult to find people when ours are working on a roof ranging from 30 degrees to 150 degrees depending on the weather,” Post points out. Post and Little are part of a peer group that discusses and shares Best Practices. They have formed career ladders & KPost University (KPU) that helps those new to the industry to better understand the

opportunities that are available to them. “For us, it’s about people culture, vision and revenue and changing as the next generation comes along. We’re keeping the momentum going in whatever huddles, halftimes or practice sessions that we have. We’re all one team,” Little says. “Dusty Smith understands what our clients want before they ask the question because he comes from a background of 30 years of building from the ground up.”

Safety Measures Jayne Williams CFO/Safety

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officer states, “KPost carries a .52 modifier rating on $15 million of annual operational payroll, an insurance indicator that it is an exceptionally safe company. Truly it is a number that is hard to wrap your head around for a company whose employees are working on roofs or hanging off buildings every day.” The company has on staff one

bilingual Construction Safety Health Officials (CSHO), three bilingual CERTA torch trainers that teach roofers the proper use of torches, and one OSHA 500 bilingual trainer. The focus company’s is that all employees receive the proper training to complete each job safely and efficiently, regardless of how long that takes and how much it may cost.

“For us, it’s about people culture, vision and revenue and changing as the next generation comes along. We’re keeping the momentum going in whatever huddles, halftimes or practice sessions that we have. We’re all one team.” - Steve Little, President www.kpostcompany.com

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Little credits Williams for her role in developing and overseeing the company’s program, “Under her guidance, the company has received the coveted Safety Star Award and both Gold and Platinum Safety Step Awards from ABC as well as Elite Contractor status from the Midwest Roofing Contractors Association.”

Managing COVID The initial effects in 2020 Covid pandemic added another layer to the challenge of staying safe. Little says the company responded beautifully, both on its five-acre campus with 400 workers and approximately 200 company

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vehicles, and at the numerous job sites it has been managing, such as remedial sites with occupied buildings and the controlled chaos of new construction sites that could have up to 2,000 contractors and employees working on any given day.

our software so they could communicate better and for the transfer of information to and from the job site. We found that because of the efficiencies we gained through COVID our entire company became more efficient.” Post says.

Common-sense measures – such as locking down the campus to non-KPost employees, wash bins and hand sanitizers added to all trucks and power and hand tools cleaned twice daily – continued until May 1 of this year.

Unfortunately, in May 2021 the entire roofing industry was hit with serious material shortages because of the international and domestic transportation issues and shortfall of raw materials to make products.

“We had to upgrade some of

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“Material availability has changed from 2-3 weeks to 5-7 months”

KPost Roofing & Waterproofing | 13 Post states in exasperation, “This will greatly impact construction and fellow contractors across the nation.”

The labor shortage remains an acute area of concern across the entire industry. Construction Dive reported in early July that National Home Builders of America data analysis showed the median age of construction workers to be 41. “On the specialty side and the sub-contracting side, it can be even more difficult,” Little points out.

owners put the most dollars in after they build the building.” One piece of advice Little would pass on to the younger version of himself? “I would not grow as fast. We were very blessed to have the success we have had but we also grew way too fast and had to pump the brakes a couple of times. We were fortunate to have really great people and Keith, Jayne and I got out of their way,” he concludes.