Meet Pavilion Floors of New England
Contractor: Pavilion Floors
Client: Healthcare facility
Project Type: Flooring Case Studies
How training helps one small businessman’s bottom line
Growth is measured in a variety of patterns, but one of the most telling is a company’s bottom line. For Pavilion Floors in the New England region, that bottom-line growth is directly tied to the ownership’s commitment to keep installation employees current on industry advances via a comprehensive training system.
To implement the training, Pavilion became a contractor of the International Standards and Training Alliance (INSTALL), and watched its income grow by 35 percent its first year. Then they doubled their business over each of the next two years. And they expect another 25-30 percent jump in 2008.
“We used to be a very small shop that ran six men and did only small projects,” explains Jamie Gilmore, president of Pavilion Floors. “But once we became an INSTALL shop, we were able to recruit sales and account managers, and obtain good quality installers who are trained to be more productive. We now run about 80 employees.”
And, through that training, Pavilion was able to expand its services from just carpet and resilient, to hardwood flooring.
Pavilion is making a reputation for itself in the healthcare facility industry, where the training of its labor allows for expert installations that require heat welding, flashcoving, rubber flooring and more.
At a recent jobsite, Pavilion was tapped for 300,000 square feet of a nora rubber sheet and tile installation at a local healthcare facility. Before starting, Pavilion employees underwent exclusive training from nora – who also is a partner of INSTALL, to understand the product and its optimal installation. Then, Pavilion hosted a team of experts from Sweden to train the employees in the calcium aluminate product, CombiMix. Pavilion is the only contractor in New England certified by CombiMix to use the product, and Gilmore said the one-on-one training was as invaluable as that exclusive certification.
“The future of the flooring industry is squarely in the hands of how well products are installed. Our customers are not going to stand for callbacks and repairs much longer on a product that was sufficient until it was installed,” Gilmore said. “We want to set an example and put training at the forefront of our business strategy.”
And customers are watching. Prior to the healthcare facility project, Gilmore said the customer inquired about the installation skills of Pavilion’s crew, “but they found that our men already were confident and trained in the product, and that set a great tone for the job.”
The INSTALL New England program also is partnering with Pavilion to implement a mobile training program to offer training on jobsites and at contractor warehouses such as Pavilion’s, to educate area specifiers and end users on the importance of using only trained mechanics.
“Everyone came together in the name of enhanced installation skills,” Gilmore said.
While the flooring industry struggles with uniform installation standards, Pavilion latched onto the INSTALL certification program, which tests for competency in resilient, carpet, and hardwood. Gilmore, who also is a member of the Labor Management Committee for the Floor Covering Industry – the governing body of INSTALL – said gaining the INSTALL certification is important, as more and more specification writers are including the recommendation for project managers to use INSTALL-certified flooring installers on new and renovation projects.
For more information about Pavilion Floors, contact Jamie Gilmore, President of Pavilion Floors, at 781-305-5444, via e-mail at jgilmore@pavilionfloors.com, or visit the company web site at www.pavilionfloors.com.