Russ Kimball is beginning his second two-year term on the SMACNA-WW board. He is a member of the Residential Labor Committee and General Labor Committee, and chair of the Education Committee.
This is his first board term, but he has been a member of Education Committee for almost 20 years and has served on several national committees in a variety of issues.
Kimball is also an Everett Rotarian, Chair of the Scholarship Committee, which gives away about a quarter million dollars each year to deserving high school seniors in the Everett School District. He is part of SMACNA’s Residential Peer Group, a consortium of nine companies that meets at the national convention and keeps in touch throughout the year to support one another.
Kimball owns Evergreen State Sheet Metal Inc., which includes Evergreen State Heat & AC at the Everett branch, Evergreen Eastside Heat & AC at the Bellevue branch, and Evergreen State Electrical Services at both locations. The company specializes in residential retrofit, light commercial service, maintenance, and general retrofit.
Kimball entered the sheet metal trade 21 years ago when he bought the company from a broker. “My first day on the job was my first day in the industry,” he says. Over the years there have been many challenges and changes, but if there is anything he has learned it is to stay nimble and know the true value of one’s business.
Success in this area means striving to understand what good looks like when it comes to employees, customers, vendors, and all other professional relationships.
“Too many folks accept poor performance and mediocrity because they do not know what good looks like,” he says. “Many of them also delude themselves into thinking they understand but they really do not.”
Part of this means truly understanding what a company’s costs are by dividing overhead by labor hours to know the full burdened loaded costs per hour.
“Know your billable efficiency by department in which to factor your break-even labor cost,” Kimball says. “Understand each department’s ability to cover their share of overhead based on field labor hours worked. Understand the risk-return relationship of our industry, which is second only to the restaurant industry in terms of owner risk. Targeting 10-12% return on all jobs and departments after overhead is paid for is more than reasonable for the risk we take.”
He also urges contractors to truly understand the value they bring to the customer within specific niches. Although this will be different for all companies, it should be the focal point in which to target the right customer—and to understand who is the wrong customer.
“Make sure your sales force understands this as the primary sales tool in identifying the right customers,” Kimball says. “Know that the sales process is about how much information you can get rather than the amount of information you can give—and make sure your sales force knows this and practices this.”
He also recommends having a robust process to schedule and track all sales leads and how those leads were obtained.
Of course, staying on top of it all means tackling some of the industry’s challenges, the most important of which is outside prevailing wage and major jobs in the downtown Seattle corridor.
“We have non-union competition paying their workforce a third of what our journeymen make,” Kimball says. “Evergreen State’s markets are fully in these areas. To compete we need to be ‘smarter than the average bear’.”
This means selling value, being productive, building great skills—both in the office and in the field—targeting the right customers, and not wasting time on the wrong ones.
“It is the only way to survive,” Kimball says. “This wage cost delta will only expand over time. We need to be ever smarter on how we approach business to survive.”
As in all industries, technology continues to be a challenge and an opportunity. “In my sector, many of us are just now getting into electronic service dispatch,” Kimball says. “Mastering this tool and ridding the office of paper will be essential for survival.”
The move toward ductless from central heating and cooling is also growing. “There are still many who do not like what they feel are unsightly indoor units, but that is rapidly changing,” he adds. “Ductless will revolutionize our industry, so every company needs to get on board that train.”
SMACNA has a great deal to offer contractors as they navigate opportunities and challenges, namely labor relations and business training in equal measure.
“I hope to effectively represent the residential and light commercial sector,” Kimball says. “There are not many of us, and to survive in a largely ‘non-union world’ we need to have a robust plan to support these members—not only in Western Washington, but nationally.” ▪
