If you like alphabet soup, the metal roofing industry should be right up your alley. It can be quite confusing to wrap your head around the acronyms swirling around in trade magazines and on their websites.
Depending on where you do business, there are some you should know. It’s valuable to look into associating yourself and your business with. All associations offer benefits. You have to weigh if the cost of membership is worth it.
Metal Roofing Magazine offered three national organizations in our industry the opportunity to explain their benefits to roofing contractors. The Metal Roofing Alliance, Cool Metal Roofing Coalition and the National Roofing Contractors Association responses are printed here.
Why join the MRA as a contractor member?
by Tom Black, MRA executive director
I’m often asked by contractors — “Why should I join the Metal Roofing Alliance; what’s in it for me?”
Before I provide the answer, I always ask a question of my own — Why are you in the metal roofing business? Unless you’re independently wealthy and simply enjoy walking on roofs in the hot sun, you’d probably answer that you’re in this business to make a profit. Isn’t that why any business exists? To make money.
A key to success and making a profit is growth — without it, your business is doomed to flounder and fail. How you define growth may vary from year to year, but it most certainly means finding more leads, signing more customers and perhaps increasing the number of installation crews.
The Metal Roofing Alliance was designed to help you to grow your business and make more money. And, we have a proven track record of doing just that. For a very small investment, MRA contractor members get the benefit of a national marketing campaign and website (www.metalroofing.com) that generates thousands of qualified leads that turn into buyers each year. In fact, MRA leads have generated $1.2 billion in contractor sales in the past five years alone.
If your metal roofing business has all the customers and jobs it will ever need, you don’t need to join the MRA; however, I haven’t met one contractor that fits this description.
National marketing power — Lead generation program
MRA promotes the advantages of metal roofing through national broadcast, print and online advertising that reaches homeowners in your target markets. For example, MRA’s TV spots typically run on HGTV, DIY Network and The Weather Channel, among others. The campaign also includes search engine marketing on Google and Yahoo! as well as banner ads and public relations outreach. As an MRA member, you can benefit from this impactful program for a fraction of the cost of doing it on your own.
All of our marketing efforts are designed to drive consumers to our website, www.metalroofing.com, where they can access the Find-A-Contractor feature that puts MRA member contractors in touch with potential buyers.
MRA leads represent engaged, interested consumers who are serious about making an informed roofing choice. Research has proven that homeowners who visit the MRA site are highly likely to install metal roofing. And, MRA’s outreach program is very effective at bringing them to the table.
Benefits of joining MRA
MRA offers three different membership levels, Bronze ($400), Silver ($1,000) and Gold ($2,500), with varying benefits to meet any contractor’s needs. Gold and Silver MRA Contractor Members receive leads generated through the Find-A-Contractor feature on MRA’s website. All contractor members also are listed on the website.
In addition to supplying targeted leads, all MRA manufacturers offer free or low-cost training to contractors who will be installing their products. For even more training, member contractors can access MRA’s Online University, which includes comprehensive education programs presented by successful metal roofing contractors.
Finally, as a member, you can use MRA’s professionally developed advertising materials in your own local marketing efforts. A consumer segmentation kit also is available to MRA members to allow you to identify the most “metal friendly” households in your market areas.
To join now, or to find out more about the MRA, visit our website at www.metalroofing.com, or call our contractor liaison, Alli Parsons at 410-539-6900.
Cool Metal Roofing Coalition
Providing resources for industry professionals and promoting market growth
The construction marketplace is changing dramatically as clients demand more energy-efficient buildings. Metal roofing can meet these demands, but the increased attention to a product’s sustainable benefits can place additional pressure on contractors, architects, building owners, specifiers, codes and standards officials and other stakeholders to quantify the “green” benefits of metal roofing when compared with other materials.
The Cool Metal Roofing Coalition is committed to providing educational resources for these stakeholders, keeping metal roofing competitive through research and monitoring building codes, among other activities.
The Coalition provides a wide range of information on its website, www.coolmetalroofing.org, including:
- Industry Resources — In addition to a Cool Metal Roofing Forum where users can post information and receive answers to specific questions, the website also provides practical information on:
- Energy tax incentives for metal roofs that are important for contractors and manufacturers.
- Metal roofing credit opportunities under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System.
- Building envelope research results that quantify the energy-saving benefits of metal roofing, including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Department of Energy Low Slope and Steep Slope Cool Roof Calculators.
- The “Whole Building Design Guide” from the National Institute of Building Sciences.
- Results from new developments, research and case studies to keep industry professionals informed about state-of-the-art advancements.
- Research to increase the competitiveness of metal roofing — research in the areas of energy-efficient metal roofing systems and cool metal roofing performance are funded and coordinated by the Coalition with entities such as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Because the Coalition includes several organizations, resources are shared, making research projects more feasible than if undertaken by individual companies. As a matter of practice, national laboratories are better positioned to collaborate with an association rather than with individual companies.
- Monitoring of Building Codes — It has been said that nothing keeps a product out of a market more than a code that says you can’t and nothing opens up a market more than a code that says you can. The Coalition looks out for the interests of metal roofing’s properties, performance characteristics, and selection criteria in codes, standards and green building initiatives in order to keep its products competitive, a critical function for both commercial and residential metal roofing applications.
The Coalition has been successful in these areas:
- The Coalition worked with the California Energy Commission to ensure the 2008 California Title 24 Building Energy Efficiency Standards were adopted with prescriptive methods that were acceptable to the metal roofing industry.
- Coalition members worked with the Cool Roof Rating Council to ensure that 17 “Color Families” were included in the CRRC’s Product Directory in lieu of thousands of individually registered metal roofing colors, saving the industry hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Coalition meetings with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency resulted in metal roofing products being included in the CRRC and Energy Star cool roof directories for use in compliance with green building rating systems like LEED.
- Coalition members monitored the development of “voluntary” green building rating systems for the Green Building Initiative, Green Globes and the USGBC’s LEED, as well as green building standards such as ASHRAE 189.1 (Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings) and the International Green Construction Code.
- Coalition Members — The Steel Market Development Institute, a business unit of the American Iron and Steel Institute; the Metal Building Manufacturers Association; the Metal Construction Association; and the National Coil Coating Association.
More Information — Mark Thimons, P.E., LEED AP-BD&C, SMDI director of construction sustainability, mthimons@steel.org.
What does NRCA do for its contractor members?
The National Roofing Contractors Association was formed in 1886, when a group of enterprising Chicago roofing contractors figured out there was value in working together as they rebuilt the city, following the Great Chicago Fire that occurred fifteen years earlier.
While the industry has changed — dramatically — since then, the premise of NRCA’s existence has not: working together, members of an industry can effect greater change than they can working apart.
At NRCA, there are three areas of core activity that dominate the agenda: education and training, technical services and government relations. Each is a demonstration of the power of people with similar interests working together.
Education and training
NRCA members understand that employee training and development is a key activity for any successful roofing company. So, NRCA now offers a full array of training programs, offered as public classes, as customized programs or in an online format. Topics range from an online “Roofing 101” course, for entry-level workers, to a variety of health and safety materials to a full-day program on rooftop photovoltaic system installation. In addition, NRCA is now offering two certification programs — one for workers who use torches in the course of their work, and the other for individuals responsible for the installation of rooftop photovoltaic systems.
Technical services
NRCA produces “The NRCA Roofing Manual,” a four-volume set of best practices for roof system design and installation. The Manual is a collection of the best thinking in the industry; one of the four volumes is updated each year to make sure the publication is current with industry trends. The Manual is used as the basis for contractor licensing in some states and is commonly referenced in roofing specifications and details.
Importantly, the Manual includes an entire section on metal roofing, complete with sample specifications and details, and information on proper installation.
NRCA also does an incredible amount of work behind the scenes, working with codes and standards bodies to ensure the best roofing practices are properly accounted for. And NRCA’s technical staff, all with years of roofing experience, offers a great resource to individual members with particular problems or questions.
NRCA’s technical activities extend into new materials — not only assessing them, but being sure they conform to the best roofing practices. One recent example is the move to rooftop photovoltaic systems; NRCA has published a manual on the topic, has ensured that rooftop PV is considered to be part of the roofing chapter of the building codes, and has worked with testing agencies to determine which rooftop PV systems meet current code requirements.
Government relations
NRCA maintains a presence on Capitol Hill with four staff members there; they work on a combination of legislative, regulatory and political programs. Issues we’ve worked on lately include making sure new health care regulations are reasonable for our members; seeking a practical solution to immigration issues; trying to find common ground with regulatory agencies — including OSHA — on some of their new rules; and supporting candidates for federal office through ROOFPAC, NRCA’s political action committee.
There’s more, of course
Those are just the core programs. In addition, NRCA always tries to find ways to add value for its members, and some recent examples include arrangements with companies like Choice Hotels to extend discounts to NRCA members; developing a sophisticated “contractor search” function on its website (www.nrca.net, visited by thousands of consumers each month); and providing information through daily electronic newsletters, a monthly newsletter and a monthly magazine. NRCA also conducts valuable survey information, on market trends as well as on roofing contractor financial performance and industry wages and benefits.
In conclusion . . .
NRCA brands itself as “the voice of professional roofing contractors,” no small undertaking. Our mission is to make our members better at what they do and at the same time to make our industry more professional in all it does. The very best way to achieve those big goals is with the ongoing involvement of the best and brightest people in the roofing industry. For our first 125 years, we’ve had those, and we look forward to carrying on that tradition for the next 125 years — and beyond. MR
More information — Bill Good, NCRA executive vice president, wgood@nrca.net
