INVESTING IN PEOPLE By / Natalie Bruckner Photos courtesy of 617MediaGroup
“Surround yourself with the best people and treat them the way you want to be treated.” This is the business philosophy that Kevin Gill Sr, president of McCusker-Gill Inc. in Hingham, Massachusetts, has lived by since he purchased and incorporated the company back in 1991—and it’s a philosophy that has served him well. In less than 30 years, Gill Sr., the recipient of the 2019 SNIPS Sheet Metal Fabrication Contractor of the Year award, has managed to build the largest sheet metal operation in the Greater Boston area. “The McCusker company was owned by another mechanical contractor, the Fred Williams Company, and most of the sheet metal work it performed was direct for Fred Williams,” Gill Sr. explains. “When I purchased the company in 1991, we had around 10 employees.” In its first year of business, McCusker-Gill did around $1.2 million in revenue, and a year later, the company was awarded a project at the Boston Public Library. “That really put us on the map,” Gill Sr. says. “It was worth about $450,000, which would probably be a couple million dollars today. We purchased our first coil line in 1993, and by 1995, we had become the largest sheet metal contractor in the Boston market according to working hours logged.” The company quickly outgrew its 7,500-square-foot facility and moved to a 25,000-square-foot facility just south of Boston. “We experienced considerable growth during the dotcom bubble, when we remained the largest sheet metal contractor in the Boston market by a considerable margin,” Gill Sr. says. A few years later, in 2015, the company once again outgrew its facility and relocated to a 60,000-square-foot facility where Gill Sr. introduced a new coil line along with several other new shop and office upgrades. 4 » Partners in Progress » www.pinp.org
Today, the company averages approximately $75 million in annual revenue, has a staff of around 200 employees, and remains the largest sheet metal contractor in the Boston area. One ingredient to the company’s success is its progressive approach, as Gill Sr. believes in investing heavily in new products, technologies, and systems. However, the area where Gill Sr. invests the most is people. Whether that’s indirectly on the production side, with new production equipment to ensure staff have what they need to manufacture ducts as efficiently as possible; on the safety side with investments in new equipment and training; or, perhaps most importantly, directly in time, by listening to staff and ensuring lines of communication remain open from their very first day with the company. “We invest a lot of time and resources into the apprentice recruitment process and really try to identify the best candidates for apprenticeship,” Gill Sr. explains. “Throughout the apprenticeship program, we proactively try to pair apprentices with mentors that can help them learn the trade. We rotate them through the shop and field, and also through different types of projects to help them get exposure to all types of work. We solicit feedback on our apprentices and try to identify the next generation of emerging leaders. We invest a lot into the development of those apprentices, including sending them to many of the leadership, supervisory, and foremen seminars that SMACNA offers.” As a result, the company sees little to no turnover. “We treat our employees very well because we believe good morale is vital to our success,” Gill Sr. says.
