A mechanic, a biologist, a UPS guy, and a rocket scientist walk onto a deck. It’s not the start of a bad joke – this is the future of deck building in America.
Jason Katwijk, Kyle Bannister, Phil deLeon, and Robin Lopez are four young, up-and-coming professionals in the deck-building industry, from four very different backgrounds. Together, they serve as a great example of the future of an industry that, according to a host of almost daily news articles, seems to be facing a serious shortage of young blood.
The National Association of Home Builders surveyed young adults 18 to 25 years old and found that while 74 percent said they know what career field they want to pursue, only 3 percent of those were interested in the construction trades. More disturbing, 63 percent of undecided young adults said they wouldn’t consider a career in the trades no matter how much it paid. It’s clear that leftover sentiment from the Great Recession, less focus on trade and vocational schools, and fewer apprentice programs have taken a toll on the industry.
But despite all the doom-and-gloom reporting, there are some young decking professionals across the U.S. who are keeping the industry alive. They’re savvy. They’re successful. And they’re here to stay.
Unlikely heroes of the trade
One of the threads tying these young professionals together is their unlikely back stories; none of them saw themselves working in this industry. Take Robin Lopez, 37, owner of Summertime Deck and Dock, in Florida, for example. Lopez is essentially a rocket scientist. He spent years in a vault as an aerospace engineer designing top-secret propulsion systems. An offer to help a co-worker repair his dock after three hurricanes in 2004 turned into a booming business.
“On nights and weekends I built that dock and I fell in love with actually experiencing weather rather than sitting in a windowless room,” Lopez said. “I loved getting to see how much I’d accomplished at the end of the day.”That was 13 years ago. Today, at age 37, Lopez runs two crews building docks out of Orlando, Florida, with a waiting list seven months long of homeowners wanting his services.
Then there’s Jason Katwijk, a 28-year-old deck builder in Olympia, Washington. He left his father’s construction business at 18 to work as an auto mechanic and thought he would never look back. “But, I ended up watching the clock every day, waiting for when I could leave – I just had less enjoyment at work than when I was outside building decks,” Katwijk said.
A Christmas season with too many jobs and not enough crew members brought Katwijk back to his father’s business, Deck Builders Inc., and he’s never left. At 28, Katwijk now runs his own crew and much of the business.
“I come to work every day and I just love what I do – it’s cool to take something from ground zero and in a short amount of time, I’ve built this amazing deck that I know is going to be around for 20-plus years,” Katwijk said. “As a mechanic, I was stuck in the same building, staring at the same cars every day, and it got boring. Now, any given day, I’m staring out at Mt. Rainier or over a lake or over someone’s million-dollar view.”
As he travels doing educational workshops, Katwijk meets other young contractors, and he said there is a recurring theme of unlikely backgrounds. “I met one contractor in Seattle and this guy saw his friend working in valet parking and he said, ‘Hey, why don’t you come work for me building decks?’ The friend says, ‘Okay, it’s better than what I’m doing now,’ and now they have a very dynamic business,” Katwijk said.
It’s a familiar story for the young pros currently in the industry. Kyle Bannister, 31, left his father’s building company, Bannister Homes and Decks, in Bothell, Washington, to attend college. But when he graduated with a biology degree, Bannister couldn’t find a job that would pay him enough, so he went back to building decks.
“A lot of kids today don’t see deck building as a career; they think they have to go to college to have a great job,” said Phil deLeon, 35, who was a part-time UPS employee with no construction background before going to work for Jason Russell, industry-renowned as Dr. Decks, 10 years ago.
Keeping the craft alive
In acknowledgment of a current view that the building trades are not a viable career option, industry groups are taking steps to ensure the future of the crafts. Last year, Fine Homebuilding launched the #KeepCraftAlive campaign to attract, support, and retain those interested in entering the building trades. Heather Gibke, Senior Marketing Manager for Informa, the group behind the upcoming Remodeling/DeckExpo/JLC Live Show October 25 to 27, said that campaign was the inspiration for the Emerging Professionals networking event at this year’s show. The event seeks to bring young and new members of the building trades together with veteran industry experts to inspire, encourage, and help troubleshoot.
“There’s excitement right now from some of these younger guys in the industry – a renewed desire to lead, but they’re not always quite sure how to do it,” Gibke said. Gibke said there’s work going on behind the scenes to get top students from high schools and vocational schools to the 2017 R|D|J Live Show and raise funds to provide scholarships for people going into the vocational crafts.
Who are the decking pros of tomorrow?
One thing is sure – to attract a new generation of building professionals, the building profession has to evolve. So based on our interviews, here are five things we can say about the next generation of decking professionals:
1. They want to be challenged
The deck builders of tomorrow are not interested in building the same deck over and over. Robin Lopez called it “disappointing” and Jason Katwijk had this to say: “When a client asks us to design a deck, I always do three drawings – one that is the deck they think they want, and two decks that I want to build. More times than not, they choose one of the ones I design. It doesn’t cost much more to go with my designs and the customer gets such a better product.” These pros want the decks to be custom, they don’t want them to be completely square, and they want them to be big – Phil deLeon’s last project was a 3,000-square-foot deck.
2. They want to be creative
When people dismissively say that Phil deLeon is in construction, he corrects them. He is a craftsman – somewhere between a carpenter and an artist. One of the ways these pros present their artistry is through their choice of materials. Most of the contractors featured in this article choose composite over traditional wood decking, because of its low-maintenance, vibrant color options, and versatility.
“We want to push what the industry is doing and get away from cookie-cutter decks,” said Jason Katwijk. “That ‘lick’em stick’em’ stuff is an insult to what I do. I’m a professional deck builder. People think, ‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ then they see what we really do and their jaws drop.”
3. They want to be the boss
Not satisfied with just laying boards, these emerging professionals want to tackle more parts of the business, including design, customer relations, marketing, and project management. One of the best things that happened for Kyle Bannister was going to work for Decks by JRW, in Oregon, for a year, gaining new business-building skills and bringing that back to his small family shop.
“It’s fun to see how good I can be and how much of a profit margin I can achieve by doing things well,” Bannister said. “It’s like a game I play with myself – how high can I set the bar?”
4. They are tech savvy
Most of the pros we interviewed say they advertise exclusively online and that social media is increasingly important. Phil deLeon said he and Jason Russell have gotten all of their jobs over the last year through the Dr. Decks’ Instagram account – a profile that went from 3,000 followers last year to more than 33,000 this year. And the tools these guys use to design, present, and document their builds are cutting edge. From 3-D design software to GoPro videos that time-lapse an entire five-month project into five minutes, technology is a part of every step of the project.
5. Please don’t call them “millennials”
They’ll admit, it’s hard to find good help these days. Most of the young people who join their crews see it as an intermediate job between semesters or on their way to something better. It’s the ones who stick around for three or four summers who start to understand what this industry is all about.
“I know that I’m technically in that millennial generation, but I do not identify with them,” said Kyle Bannister. “It’s difficult to find people of that age that are excited about doing the work and will do it well day-in and day-out. I really get on to them about that.”
