Nearly a Century of Service Excellence

Roth Bros.
Written by Jessica Ferlaino

From its headquarters in Youngstown, Ohio, construction services provider Roth Bros. Inc. established a local presence and has since grown across North American. Offering roofing, HVAC, energy management and total facility management, Roth Bros. is uniquely and strategically positioned as the only integrated service provider of its kind.
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Roth Bros. has a long history and an even brighter future. The company was established in 1923 and quickly grew to be an industry leader. In 2011, it was acquired by Sodexo, which paired Roth’s decades of industry experience and expertise with Sodexo’s backing and national accounts. Today, Roth Bros. serves over one thousand clients.

“Roth is a diversified provider of services including roofing services, facility automation, remote monitoring, command center, utility incentive administration, HVAC construction and service. That business has evolved over the years from a roofing and sheet metal facility to a diversified supplier of all these services,” said Vice-President of National Sales and Business Development Steven Weiand. “Sodexo’s acquisition of Roth enabled Roth to do two things: number one, get a greater hold on national services as well as penetrate Sodexo clients, augmenting existing Sodexo facility accounts with Roth’s self-performance model of delivered services.”

It has adopted a two-pronged service model to deliver services of the highest quality to its vast client network. The self-performance model includes Roth’s field services and fleet. “We roll a Roth truck for the services, and we do that primarily in roofing, periodic maintenance and also HVAC service,” said Weiand.

The other facet of its service model is its affiliate network. A network of service providers is managed through a program called the Watchdog process. The Watchdog software program enables Roth Bros. to analyze and manage data related to labor, materials and any other communications externally submitted by its affiliates.

“Where we can’t reach – in remote areas or just because of the sheer quantity of projects – we’ll use an approved affiliate that we work with to take care of those locations,” Weiand said. Pre-approved industry partners are vetted to meet rigorous standards.

The company is at the leading edge of technology, innovation and performance. Performance is viewed as a shared value that mutually serves clients and the business’s own goals, however, “the client is number one and takes priority,” noted Weiand of the firm’s client-centric approach to providing services.

It is always available for its clients and ensures that facilities are staffed with experts at all times. Even in a client’s most vulnerable moments, Roth gives dependable and highly-responsive service, providing the client with peace of mind about their facilities and operations.

Weiand believes that it is the company’s people that differentiate it. “There is a lot of companies that can do roofing. There is a lot of companies that can do HVAC service and construction. I believe it’s the people at Roth that make a difference in what they can do for the clients.”

The company is a team of 450 employees, approximately half of whom operate from mobile trucks with the other half serving as administrative support. “Roth has a diversified portfolio, not only of services, but also of the way it serves clients, with what we call ‘tech in a truck’ as well as having the home support at the office,” Weiand said.

The company’s roofing services include asset management, maintenance, roof leak service, capital planning and design and roofing upgrades. HVAC/R services include preventative and reactive maintenance, capital planning, design/build construction and metal fabrication. Its services have been expanded over time to include building automation energy management systems, remote monitoring, command centers, building analytics and predictive maintenance.

The company has over 1000 clients, and some are nationwide companies with multiple locations, yet it can satisfy even the largest demands and has established a reputation for providing service to national accounts and clients with multisite locations. “Retail, university, hospitals – anybody with a multisite location is a very good client for Roth,” Weiand noted.

“We do have individual accounts, single location accounts, but they are not as prevalent as our national accounts. We service over 44,000 sites on HVAC service, and we service another 35,000 in roofing services. So, just between those two services, we touch nearly 80,000 facilities at all times, able to handle anything our clients may need in the way of our expertise.”

One of its high-profile roofing accounts is the United States Postal Service, and Dick’s Sporting Goods, Jo-Ann Fabrics and Travel Centers of America are some of the company’s well-known HVAC clients.

Roth Bros. is a one-source solution for clients’ energy conservation needs and works with clients to develop a comprehensive energy strategy. It creates customized plans and improves the ease at which clients can integrate green into their operations. It also has energy incentive programs, asset lifecycle enhancement services and infrastructure improvement services.

“On the roofing side of the business, we install green roofs, vegetation roofs, as well as the most up to date, most energy efficient products in the market that are used for installation,” Weiand said. This is also true of the HVAC side of the business, which uses products requiring the least amount of energy consumption, he says.

Roth has several LEED accredited professionals on staff. Additionally, its utility incentive administration division helps utility companies in the U.S. administer incentive programs that are dedicated to energy efficiency. “We actually do all the calculations, benchmarking and all the measurements and certification of duties around energy efficiency and demand side reduction,” said Weiand.

“We’re instrumentally involved in energy efficiency and sustainability, and as you may know, Sodexo is on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, so we take sustainability very seriously.” It is not only focused on sustainability and energy efficiency for the greater environment, but it also undertakes efforts to foster a positive internal environment and work culture for its people. Its employees are the heart of the company, so it is committed to health and safety.

“We have a very robust safety program,” noted Weiand. “Within Roth alone, we have a dedicated safety manager that only handles our safety policies and our job safety requirements and the safety of our vendors and the safety of our people. Within Sodexo itself, we have over 130 dedicated safety individuals to help make sure that our people go home safely every day.”

Safety is of paramount importance for quality delivery, and the key to both safety and quality is having a team of skilled, trained professionals to deliver those services. “We believe that hiring the best people is really a matter of producing the best quality programs: safety, services, delivery of your product. If you do all of those things well, you are going to naturally draw the best talent in the industry,” said Weiand. “We’re best-in-class in what we do every day: safety, processes and the people.”

“We pride ourselves in our people, and at the end of the day, our people are our greatest asset. We don’t really manufacture anything, so to speak, and we don’t really own anything. It’s really our people delivering service that is the primary mover of our economy.”

Whether talent is selected or developed internally, it is the people who uphold the Roth name and reputation day to day, so the company has remained focused on both talent development and improving the client experience. The company has performance initiatives for its employees to help them to grow within their personalized plans for development.

“We really are a people business, and it’s a [business-to-business]-type business environment. It’s really about our people connecting with our clients, thinking about those clients as if they were sitting in the clients’ chairs,” Weiand explained.

The company has had a wide-reaching economic impact. “The value proposition isn’t only about growing Roth’s business and Roth’s people, but, remember, we are touching over 1000 other companies with their affiliation with us, so it’s not just growing our economy, it’s also about growing many other economies,” said Weiand.

“We really touch clear across North America, providing services, providing jobs and providing opportunities. So at the end of the day, it’s not just about our 450 employees that we touch, but we touch thousands of employees every day with the companies that we affiliate with,” Weiand concluded.

Roth adds value for clients and in doing so, continues to grow as a service provider of choice. As the company approaches its one hundred year anniversary, its diverse roofing, HVAC, energy management and total facility management solutions provided by a strong team of professionals means it is sure to remain an industry leader for another century to come.

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