From mistakes to mastery, find out about Pitt Meadows Plumbing’s culture of learning
Rooted on Canada’s west coast, Pitt Meadows Plumbing (PMP) combines over 45 years of experience with a mission to lead the mechanical construction industry through innovation, collaboration, and a forward-thinking vision. A family-founded company, PMP is guided by its mission to build industry-leading teams and deliver solutions that shape the future of construction with integrity, continuous innovation, and a passion for excellence.
PMP’s current President, Steve Robinson, provides more comprehensive insights into the company’s operations.
“PMP was founded by my generation of brothers approximately 45 years ago. There are still two of us from my generation involved in the business, along with some younger relations and many other people who make a significant contribution to the business. As a major mechanical contractor, our services encompass plumbing, heating, and ventilating in our marketplace across the Canadian province of British Columbia,” he opens.
Across the wide variety of projects it undertakes, PMP strives to encourage state-of-the-art construction practices, which aligns with its mission to lead the industry in mechanical construction. “One of the primary things we firmly believe in is Building Information Modelling (BIM), a system that allows us to digitally build our plumbing, heating, ventilating, and sprinkler components for major projects ahead of time. We then produce as many of these components as we possibly can within a controlled manufacturing environment, rather than sending a bunch of unfabricated piping and duct systems to a remote location for on-site assembly. Through this approach, we create comprehensive packages that facilitate the systematic assembly of complex systems into a building as it progresses. The main motivation behind this strategy is our commitment to achieving a significantly higher standard of quality through manufacturing. Also, project-specific components are delivered in a far more efficient fashion, often arriving as larger preassembled sections instead of multiple smaller loads of varying sizes being sent to a job site,” Steve explains.
In addition to sustainability, PMP’s solutions are designed with ease of installation in mind, as the company strives to produce a new generation of systems that address construction challenges. “In a nutshell, we are aligning ourselves more closely to what a person newly entering the trade would look for. For instance, individuals who are tech-savvy and used to using smartphones may have a better grasp of digital layout, manufacturing, and scanning tools as well as robotic welders. It is almost like they have already acquired these skills during the first 15 years of their lives at home and find this environment familiar. However, transitioning to using a tape measure, learning to read it, cutting a piece of pipe with a manual tool, and then installing it may prove more difficult for them compared to digital methods. We acknowledge that people fall across a spectrum in terms of their comfort with technology. This is why our aim is to make sure that our systems cater to everybody and can be adopted by all individuals as quickly as possible, all the while allowing us to rapidly upscale the workforce’s skills,” Steve says.
Open communication
Introducing its staff to new skills and technologies is but one component of PMP’s company culture. Steve shares how the organization fosters a healthy and
supportive workplace by celebrating its employees’ mistakes. “While we pride ourselves on having a great culture, we work on improving it almost every day. We strive to create a workplace where we celebrate failures, not because we think mistakes are a good thing, but because it offers an opportunity to reflect upon them and refine our culture and practices. In line with this philosophy, we spend a lot of time reviewing incidents, whether they occur at a job site or in manufacturing, and openly discussing them. In fact, our most important goal is to ensure that individuals can learn from their mistakes, as we fundamentally believe that failure is a far more effective teacher than success. While success tends to make individuals think that they are infallible, failure serves as a humbling experience that motivates them to avoid repeating the same mistake again. Embracing this cultural approach encourages greater openness and communication among individuals to share and learn from what they perceive as failures,” he continues.
The company’s culture of communication and openness permeates through its services, where it once again utilizes digitalization to better serve customers. “Another key aspect that we discuss extensively is how the products we manufacture based on digital models can serve facility or building owners for numerous years, enabling them to envision what future modifications might look like. After construction, most buildings do not stay exactly the same for their entire lifespan, whether it is 50 or 100 years. Quite often, they undergo many changes due to factors like shifts in personnel or technological advancements. The latter can lead to instances where people realize that structures built 20 years ago may no longer be suitable for their intended purpose. Therefore, should an owner want to make modifications to their building, we celebrate the fact that our installations closely mirror the digital models. This enables individuals with the same tooling as ours to fabricate replacement pieces without the need to physically inspect the building’s concealed spaces beforehand. In other words, rather than going through a long process of on-site evaluation, we empower owners to confidently manufacture new pieces as they already know what the components above the ceiling look like,” Steve informs.
By integrating cutting-edge technologies, fostering a culture of innovation, and prioritizing sustainability, Pitt Meadows Plumbing equips both its employees and clients to lead with confidence in an ever-evolving construction landscape. Through its commitment to redefining mechanical construction with integrity, collaboration, and continuous innovation, the company is bringing its vision of the future to life.