How Service Contracting Solutions’ innovative approach to staff development has fueled expansion
It’s been a busy 18 months since Construction Today last spoke to painting and waterproofing contractor Service Contracting Solutions (SCS). Giving an update on the latest developments is President of the company, Liz Perez-Lavin. “We are in the process of opening a new location,” she begins. “We’ve also made some structural changes on the operational management side of the business, and we are in the process of working on the structure of our sales team. The setup we had before worked well for the size of the company as it was, but as we grow and our teams expand, these changes mean that we can continue to expand in a sustainable way without creating undue stress for our people.”
Liz then reflects on the factors that contributed to the company’s impressive growth of 25 percent in 2024: “Last year was the product of our strategic vision which we put in place long before. Initially, we had talked about growing 25 percent by the end of 2025; we achieved that a year early! But we didn’t want to just grow for the sake of growing; we wanted to do it in our own way. We wanted to make sure that we hired the right people who share our values. 
“We really focused on developing our people and did this through training and development programs. We’ve emphasized the importance of soft skills, how we keep each other accountable, or help each other when there are mistakes or questions. The successes of last year represent everything that we have been working hard on for a long time. It meant that when the opportunities emerged in the market, we were able to fully capitalize.”
Career development
Jason Fike, the Vice President of Operations, embodies the benefits of prioritizing training programs as Liz points out: “Jason has been pivotal in helping us improve our development. He began in an estimating role, then worked in our industrial department and worked his way up to project managing and now VP of Operations.”
Jason then reflects on some of the broader benefits of this approach: “The more typical model in our industry is to hire experienced people with short-term goals in mind, to get through the next project, for example. This means the work can be very unstable. We hire to retain people; we want to keep them long term and train them to become the best they can be and provide them with all the opportunities we can.
“This approach helps attract people to the company. It’s something we’ve been developing and evolving for a long time; initially, it revolved around pairing experienced operators with new staff members so they can follow their lead and learn on the job. While this is a crucial element to the overall strategy, we realized that for our field leadership, the priority is always getting the job done and making sure the project remains profitable, and deadlines are being met. In response, we are creating our own internal training and development superintendent who, like our safety team, will operate completely independently from production. As a result, we have already seen a mindset change in our staff who have gone from seeing their role as just a job to now seeing the opportunities to build a good career.”
People and purpose
Liz then outlines the company’s ambitions for the year ahead – the focus on people development remains a central tenet to the plans. “Continuing to develop our new training role and establishing what the day-to-day activities of that role will be is a significant part of the strategy,” she confirms. “Another thing we want to build on from last year is some new estimating software that we have integrated. We want to train our estimating team as the technology, which utilizes elements of AI, improves over time, so if their role changes, they will still be able to contribute to the company in other ways.
“As we are actioning these changes and evolving our processes, we want to make sure that we are growing in the right way, not for the sake of a number. We want to ensure new team members are aligned with our values. It is also important when we are analyzing potential new markets to make sure that they align with our beliefs as well; some sectors are too cutthroat and not meant for us, as they don’t provide the opportunities to develop people. Securing the correct locations as we expand will be crucial as well because as you train people, you need to give them opportunities.
“Longer term, as we make sure our people grow with the company, we will also be looking to open a fifth location in two- or three-years’ time. We will also have a strong focus on identifying motivated people who want to continue to learn and progress through the company. We’re making sure we do this at every single level by providing training to our superintendents and project managers.”