— By Sean Gillespie —
How to kickstart your branding cycle with a trusted painting contractor.
Over the past 2 years, keeping up with planned painting programs has been challenging. Deferring a planned program cycle is never a simple decision. But at some point, moving from deferral back into the cycle can feel like reinventing the wheel. You’ll need a good partner who can help you maneuver through challenges and positively impact your brand and budget!
Sean Gillespie, Harrison Contracting Company, Inc.
Kickstarting multi-site repainting programs is essential to ensuring consistent branding across each of your facilities, with the added benefit of making them aesthetically pleasing, safe and functional for both employees and customers. Utilizing a painting contractor who is already familiar and well-versed in multi-site repaint programs is a good place to start when looking for someone to handle your projects. More than a painter, you need a partner. Let’s go over a few things to look for in a contractor, and why these attributes will be helpful in putting your project in good hands.
Intentional Investment in Safety and Quality Assurance
The first thing you should look for in a painting contractor is how seriously they take safety. Following safety guidelines not only protects the painters themselves, but also your employees and customers. Contractors that are proactive in these efforts will conduct regular job site visits to confirm that all safety requirements are being followed, and will typically educate their teams on protocols, PPE requirements, operating machinery, equipment and more.
This goes hand-in-hand with quality assurance. It is not the job of the client to find mistakes or approach the contractor with bad news. An ideal painting contractor will review all the work being done and will proactively address issues immediately. They should have the experience and expertise to look over a project and, should there be any problems, have the diligence to approach the situation to quickly find a resolution.
Nationwide Network
It may seem more cost-effective to find a few different local contractors that may seem pretty flexible and offer low prices, but ultimately this can drain your operational efficiency and aesthetic continuity. Having a partner with the ability to reach across your network will help ensure that each of your facilities will have a consistent look and feel to properly maintain your branding. Additionally, someone who has national reach for your multiple sites should have solid relationships and interactions with various owners, paint manufacturers, fellow contractors and independent industry experts. The benefactor here is your budget and a more consistent customer experience.
Looks DO Matter
There’s that old saying, “It doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside,” but that’s not necessarily true; some would argue that how you present yourself is a direct reflection of your work. When you’re looking to drive your business image and branding, keep an eye out for a painting contractor that is doing the same. Painters can be associated with a typical ‘look,’ but there are some that put thought and effort into their appearance to distance themselves from it. Choosing the contractor that has a professional and clean appearance, who also intentionally invest in their reputation, can make a direct impact on how your multi-site cycle program drives your business.
Engagement…Not Just Execution = Partner/Painter
You’re looking for a commercial painting contractor that understands the vision of your brand, not a ‘yes man.’ Someone that has the knowledge and experience to help determine the right scope of work, as well as present the best methods of completing the project, can make a huge difference in the success of your repainting program. The EPA has also created strict guidelines geared toward reducing the environmental impact of paint products, resulting in new technologies and materials used to address these requirements. An experienced contractor can help you balance using the right materials, products and technologies to fit into your logistical schedule. It’s worthwhile to have a contractor that is comfortable enough to be realistic with you about materials needed, scheduling, deadlines and all other logistics associated with a project. Getting involved in the dialogue early on for your programs means that your painting contractor can partner with you on logistics for all the right reasons. Not only from a when and where perspective, but for the all-important ‘how’ as well.
Partnership is far greater than just painting. A partner has the experience you need and resources that can make a positive impact on your repaint program. That means the ability to ask questions and challenge status quo to find efficiency for you. A reliable and trustworthy painting contractor can be a critical and positive investment in your brand with the right inputs. A multi-site repainting program is no easy feat for some contractors, but if you find those that have an established method to their approach, national reach, solid industry relationships and initiative to handle or fix any mistakes, you may have just found yourself a partner.
— Sean Gillespie is director – strategic alliances at Harrison Contracting Company (HCC), a commercial painting and facility maintenance contracting company headquartered in Villa Rica, Ga., with divisional offices in Florida and Texas. HCC provides repainting/re-imaging programs and facility maintenance services nationwide, in addition to new construction painting across the southeastern U.S. For more information, contact Harrison’s director of corporate account business development, Chris Murphy, at [email protected].