Passionate about people, Thomas Industrial Coatings places safety and quality at its core
Established in 1991 by Don Thomas, Thomas Industrial Coatings (TIC) is a multi-certified industrial painting and coating contractor working across diverse markets like bridges and highways, commercial, locks and dams, marine, military, power and utilities, and water and wastewater. With a range of customized solutions across surface preparation, coating application, and access, TIC is well positioned to meet each project’s unique requirements while placing safety best practices at the forefront of any operation.
Initially focused on corrosion protection and painting services, TIC has grown significantly across the globe, having worked in seven countries and completed more than 3400 projects since its inception. Despite such impressive growth, Don Thomas has ensured that TIC’s unwavering commitment to safety principles and providing comprehensive training for its team remain crucial, enabling the business to consistently exceed client expectations with impeccable services.
Today, with Don still at the helm as President, TIC has cemented itself as an industry leader synonymous with reliability, innovation, and unparalleled quality. However, the company’s true value lies beyond its core services and instead in Don’s passion for people, both internal employees and the wider community. To learn more about this approach, we sit down with Don, who first begins with an overview of TIC’s evolution so far.
“TIC is based about 30 miles south of St Louis, Missouri, but we work all over the US, as well as currently in Japan and Guam,” Don opens. “We work primarily across the heavy industrial sector, on things like bridges, locks, and dams, but we also complete numerous projects for the Department of Defense. Our work is composed of three main services: surface preparation, coating application, and access solutions. Firstly, surface preparation is crucial to any high-quality painting and coating project, and we have the ability to prepare surfaces using abrasive blasting, chemical stripping, water jetting, lead abatement, and wet abrasive blasting (WAB).
“We also specialize in large-scale industrial coating applications using a variety of techniques. Our team has the technical expertise to apply high-performance coatings, to protect surfaces in almost every market, and to apply intumescent fireproofing. Lastly, we provide complex access solutions such as scaffolding, suspended platforms, and under bridge equipment to navigate challenging environments while upholding best safety practices.
“TIC has grown significantly since I established the business over 30 years ago,” Don explains. “Like any business, there have been challenges along the way. We plateaued at around $15 million revenue in the early 2000s, experienced a growth spurt around 2015, after which we struggled, and we rebuilt the company to its current position, where we’re on track to reach $70 million turnover by the end of 2025.”
Inclusive culture
Considering TIC’s impressive growth, especially for a company that started with a single employee, we ask Don for his reflections on what has made the business successful. “Early on, I knew I needed to surround myself with people far smarter than me, and I have built a team of incredibly talented and trustworthy people,” he shares. “In 2012, we made a strategic operational shift from having project managers who looked after an entire project from cradle to grave, to instead creating two teams: a Business Development team and an Operations team. This has set clearer expectations for both teams and enhanced our overall project management capabilities.
“We don’t just hire employees, but rather, we look for career-driven people who want to progress within the company, and we regularly engage with local high schools to encourage students to explore the trades as fulfilling career options. Company culture is constantly evolving, and I don’t believe in ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ tiers, instead treating everyone equally because each person’s role plays an important part in the overall business.
“Culture starts from the top, and I emphasize accountability, training, and confidence,” Don states. “We constantly talk about safety across the business, as I believe that if safety comes first, quality and quantity will naturally follow. I recently implemented a weekly Thursday meeting, which typically lasts around six hours, where we share the positives from each week, discuss the negatives and do root cause analysis to prevent the same thing happening again, and assess the progress of each project.”
Project portfolio
Turning to current operations, Don reveals some of the company’s ongoing and recently completed projects. “We’re currently doing fuel service work for the US Department of Defense at the Defense Fuel Support Points (DFSP) in Tsurumi and Hakozaki, Japan,” he says. “For these types of projects, we prepare the surface of the inside and outside of huge fuel tanks, removing old coatings and inspecting welds before applying the new coating.
“Closer to home, we’ve recently completed a project at Eads Bridge, the world’s first steel-truss bridge, as well as the Hoan Bridge in Wisconsin and the Huey P. Long Bridge in Louisiana. These projects were very technical and precise, and there was increased pressure due to the cultural and historical significance of these bridges.”
With Don’s principles clear to see, TIC will continue to flourish, providing coatings solutions across the globe while simultaneously building a positive company with dedicated employees. “I’m not getting any younger and so, I’m constantly thinking about the future of TIC, as I’d like the business to continue beyond my leadership,” Don concludes. “I’m incredibly passionate about the business but with three of my four children involved in our operations, I have comprised an exit plan that would allow us to continue to provide for our people and do the right thing by our customers and the wider community. In the meantime, we’ll continue to target slow and steady growth, ensuring we have the right people in the right places to see TIC enter its next phase.”