2023 Commercial Contractor of the Year: Greenwood Industries

At first blush, Greenwood Industries looks and sounds like it could be a Fortune
500 corporation, a legacy company with a long history of innovative
success, or a vehicle for ambitious future growth that includes an
international footprint. 

It could be all three — and more —
according to the commercial roofing company’s leaders, Owner and
President Dave Klein and Chief Operating Officer Matt Brown. But the two
long-time business partners and life-long friends say, at its heart,
Greenwood is simply a roofing and waterproofing company dedicated to its
craft while finding solutions regardless of perceived limitations. 

Barely
in business for three decades, the Worcester, Mass.- based enterprise
installs all types of commercial roofing, as well as architectural
metal, green roofs, and waterproofing, as well as a robust maintenance
and service department. Upon developing a niche for historical projects,
crews also provide intricate masonry restoration and repair.

“We
always felt like we should never limit ourselves as a company to one
type of work,” Klein said. “When you get into the roofing business,
you’ll find guys that just do shingles, or just do EPDM, or only do
built-up very well,” he added. “For us, it’s always been that mindset:
there’s no reason we can’t train our guys and learn what needs to be
done; so, if it can be done, we can do it — and that’s always been our
approach.”

It’s working. 

For nearly three decades, the
company has grown a reputation for tackling tough jobs, whether they be
historic buildings throughout New England or cutting-edge architecture
reinvigorating metropolitan aesthetics in thriving downtowns. 

In
recent years, Greenwood’s more than 900 union workers have executed
award-winning workmanship on some of the most complex and innovative
building designs across the Northeast, both in rural communities and
within large municipalities. The company has also worked on historic
icons, including Boston’s Fenway Park.

Greenwood’s
consistent success and shrewd expansion moves within the last few years
allowed the company entrée into the rarified Top 10 of RC‘s
2023 Top 100 List — generating $218 million in revenue, a company
record. The staggering revenue achievement equates to an overall
increase of 28%, which the company attributes to factors including an
increase in market share through regional expansion and a robust backlog
of projects. 

Amid the success and demonstrated growth,
Greenwood’s leaders always found ways to give back to their community,
their employees and the industry overall — making the company RC‘s 2023 Commercial Roofing Contractor of the Year.  

Blue Collar Origins

Klein
didn’t always think he was destined for roofing, even though his
grandfather, father and uncle each had roles with different roofing
companies in and around Worcester. The city’s central location in
Massachusetts helped foster its growth as a manufacturing hub with solid
blue-collar roots, which often gets overlooked given its size —
population 206,000 — because it exudes a “small-town” feel, as Klein
described. 

Though he worked in the family trade, Klein enrolled
at Syracuse University to pursue technology. Still, after a few
internships that offered him a taste of the future, he realized that
roofing was worth pursuing. He worked with his father, George, for a few
years before the stock market collapse of 1987 brought about tough
economic times, only to be made worse after his father fell ill, leading
to the company’s closure.  

A few years later, Klein established
Greenwood Industries on his own, sort of; alongside him was Brown, a
friend dating back to grade school who he worked on roofing projects
with throughout high school and college. 

Brown graduated from
Bates College in Maine, where he studied political science and played
football. He honed his business skills, earning an MBA in international
business from Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Helping Greenwood
get off the ground, Brown worked closely with Klein’s mother, Linda, the
firm’s chief financial officer, in the company’s office. 

“When
we worked for Dave’s dad, he had Dave in the field and me in the office,
and that’s kind of how we ran it when we started this business,” Brown
said. “If he had a plan… he never said it to us, but he just knew back
then that it was how it should go.” 

Despite his business
qualifications and experience, Brown may not have “officially” joined
Klein’s burgeoning company had it not been for the founder’s “lead
foot”: Klein received three speeding tickets during the previous year,
which under Massachusetts law meant surrendering his license for a
month. 

“He said, ‘Hey, can you drive me around for 30 days?’”
Brown recalled. “And I did, which was fine when we were on the road, but
I had all this time in the office with nothing to do, so I just started
doing things a young business [required].”

They weren’t small
tasks, either. Brown drafted a formal business plan and the company’s
first official safety plan, quickly proving his worth well beyond the
chauffeur role he “excelled at,” Klein quipped. It was Klein’s father,
who was brought on board to offer wisdom and vision, that insisted they
hire Brown full-time as he started to field other job offers.

The
two have maintained that loyal friendship while working as partners,
developing their method for success and becoming leaders in the
community known for their professionalism. The pair earned Worcester’s
official “Key to the City” earlier this year. They were each also
recently named “distinguished alumni” of the Worcester Public Schools.
Greenwood is currently completing roof work on the pair’s alma mater
high school. 

Setting Itself Apart

Right
away, Klein recognized the unique potential for Greenwood’s growth by
capitalizing on Worcester’s central Massachusetts location, leveraging
its proximity to other New England population centers, including
Hartford, Conn., and Providence, R.I.

Staying true to Klein’s
mantra of remaining open to all types of roofing projects helped
Greenwood earn its earliest jobs, as did a commitment to union-oriented
projects. Klein said the amenability to work variety and union
participation was essential in their market, which then led to more
commercial roofing opportunities and a steady pool of trained workers.  

The
company started winning high-profile jobs and matched them with
high-quality installations. Awards from different roofing organizations
and other groups in the building trades soon followed. Greenwood was a
2012 NRCA Gold Circle Award Winner and claimed the NACIAA Award for wall
cladding installations on the University of Connecticut campus at
Storrs.

Another notable award came last year when Sika Sarnafil
recognized Greenwood’s work as a 2022 Project of the Year for
sustainability on Boston University’s new Center for Computing and Data
Science building. 

The innovative design is meant to look like a
stack of books, which meant multiple levels of work, each requiring a
“portion” of a roof. Architects chose a multi-level vegetative roof
system designed to capture and repurpose rainwater that reduces storm
run-off while insulating the building at the same time. 

As a
native New Englander, Klein is also incredibly proud of work completed
on the historic Massachusetts State House and iconic Fenway Park, both
in Boston. Greenwood crews have always traveled for jobs, but with
recent acquisitions in New York, are expanding its reach. Crews recently
completed a signature project under challenging circumstances –
reroofing of the Carrier Dome at Syracuse University.

Greenwood
also recently installed roofs on several urban infrastructure and
historically significant projects in New York, including LaGuardia
Airport’s new Terminal B, the JP Morgan Library and Museum, Central
Park’s iconic Tavern on the Green restaurant, and Google’s New York
headquarters on Pier 57. 

Brown said it’s a matter of opportunity and not fearing the moment. 

“We’re
pretty fortunate because we’re in a market where people are daring,
architecturally,” he explained. “They want to be on the cutting edge,
providing environmentally-friendly and aesthetically-pleasing buildings;
it’s a pretty cool market.”

Recent Moves

Greenwood’s
growth strategy has ventured beyond traditional roofing. Realizing no
other roofers in the area offered waterproofing services and masonry
restoration together, Klein set out to be the first, looking for a local
company to partner with or acquire. 

Fortuitously, he and Brown
found the opportunity in 2018 with The Waterproofing Company, an
organization founded in 1906 but without a succession plan under its
previous owner. Now, all waterproofing and masonry work is offered
in-house, with Greenwood gaining the capacity to provide a complete
“building envelope solution” to customers wanting those services.

To
drive growth and improve productivity, Brown said the company has
implemented several initiatives in recent years, such as adding
estimators at every level of business and branch location and increasing
the pipeline of future projects, allowing it to respond quickly and
effectively to new opportunities. 

The company also doubled down
on inventory management, helping to navigate roofing’s supply chain
crisis that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. As material prices began to
rise, Brown said they increased warehouse space and bought critical
supplies in advance. The gamble wasn’t cheap – going from $2.5 million
in inventory to $8.9 million during the height of the crisis. The move
ultimately paid dividends by allowing Greenwood to maintain sufficient
inventory levels to keep projects on track while other contractors
stalled out. 

“This tactic was critical in our ability to meet
customer expectations and complete jobs on time and within budget,”
Brown said. “Overall, these steps enabled us to achieve our growth and
productivity targets and continued to deliver value to our customers.”

Those
moves and the variety of work the company has undertaken have all
contributed to a high level of optimism about Greenwood’s financial
prospects for this year and beyond. While the materials shortage has
since subsided in commercial roofing, existing inflationary pressure has
also been kept at bay because of its existing supply inventory. That
fact, along with a healthy backlog of projects, will keep crews busy
well into next year, helping Greenwood maintain its competitive edge. 

Innovation
isn’t slowing down, either. Greenwood crews are now installing a roof
system at a first-of-its-kind music building at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Brown said crews are working on
the entire “exterior skin” of the building: masonry, air barrier,
waterproofing and some green roofing.

Though it was just a short
time ago, Klein said that looking back, he believes navigating the
supply crunch was a demanding time for the company to maintain its
record of success. 

“It was our most challenging time, no
question,” Klein said. “We had a big backlog of jobs, and normally,
that’s good, but not when you can’t get materials and prices are rising
quickly; we had to work with distributors and manufacturers to get
products fast and … that ate away at our margins.” 

During those
trying times, he said it reminded him about how the system worked in his
father’s company when roofers ordered materials well in advance of need
and warehoused them.

“I had to get everybody on the purchasing
team and the operations team and basically said that we have to do this
like it’s 1970; we were going to have to do things differently,” he
explained. “And we did.”

The company has since transitioned back to on-demand delivery as supply concerns waned. 

One
area of roofing that hasn’t waned is the acquisitions market. Fueled by
private equity, both Klein and Brown said they expect contractor
consolidation to continue in roofing, at least in the short term. And
neither is shy about scouting for opportunities to grow in such an
active acquisition marketplace. But, each agreed any future prospects
must be “the right fit.”

“These larger firms that have (private
equity) money behind them, they’re operating – for the most part – with
someone else’s money, and they’re on a much more aggressive path to
growth,” Brown said. “We’re doing this with our own capital, and we
can’t outgrow our personnel, so we try and find the next piece that fits
really well with what we’re trying to do.”

It is easy to say when “trying” is euphemistic for excelling.