Perseverance is a soft skill you must cultivate, regardless of your career choice. While it’s easy enough to state this skill on your resumé, executing it seamlessly when trouble strikes is more difficult.
As a roofing contractor in Tennessee, James Kenton has weathered many challenges, partly caused by inexperienced roofers and partly due to factors he and his crew have no control over.
Roofing is nothing if not demanding; it requires a combination of physical labor, out-of-the-box thinking, and—you guessed it—perseverance.
Below is everything Kenton wants you to know about ‘sticking it out’ in this line of work.
1. Weather the Learning Curve
Roofing isn’t the easiest adjustment for a new roofer. It has quite the learning curve and has scared off the best of us. But guess what? So have many other new endeavors. Once you have picked up roofing as a career choice, put up with it, at least through the initial stages.
Decide if you want to keep doing it after figuring out the complex material options available for metal roofs and the many techniques dictating this practice. Once you persevere through these initial struggles, the rest should feel as easy as pie.
See this as a test: If you can weather this initial storm, you can put up with anything, whether it’s related to roofing or life in general.
2. Adapt and Help Adapt
After figuring out the ins and outs of roofing work, you should be familiar with what we’re about to mention next. Hint: It has to do with residential architecture.
Rough framing is the second step in a new construction. If you’ve ever built a house from scratch, you’re probably aware that it comes after the builder installs a temporary foundation.
Then comes rough framing, which can take a month or two, and includes the skeleton of a house. It includes the roof, walls, and flooring and can take much longer than two months if the weather takes a turn for the worse.
Roofers work under the open sky. Therefore, they are vulnerable to the summer heat, the winter chill, and the occasional rain, storm, or hail. While roofing may stall in rain, snow, or hail, roofers must take extra measures to ensure these elements don’t enter the house through the roof.
They must adapt to adverse weather conditions to meet deadlines. If that’s impossible, they must help other construction workers continue working by ensuring the half-complete roof remains impenetrable. The work must go on, after all.
3. Physical Training Helps
Roofing is physically and mentally taxing work. It comes with all the pitfalls of construction, such as climbing ladders, carrying heavy equipment on precarious structures, and working in awkward positions.
James Kenton is no stranger to these challenges. He’s seen all of that and more during his 30-year-long roofing career. The only way to persevere through these tasks is to maintain physical fitness through high-resistance and strength training exercises.
4. Overcoming the Architectural Obstacles
Roof construction is replete with architectural challenges. Metal roofers must work around a complex architectural design, limited roof access, and existing old and deteriorating roofs.
Take roof retrofitting; it’s the technical term for installing a new roof over an old roof to add strength and durability to the latter. Thus, roofers must work with a roof that’s falling apart.
Persevering in this context entails the following:
Find creative solutionsTroubleshoot problemsComplete the project successfully.5. Never Stop Learning
Metal roofing constantly evolves, with new practices replacing old ones in years instead of decades. Roofers must keep up with industry advancements, regulation changes, and newly introduced safety practices.
Here, you must persevere by investing your time and effort in continuously learning, growing, improving, adapting, and being open to new technologies to stay competitive in metal roofing.
6. Efficient Time Management
Roofing projects are a time-sensitive undertaking. They have tight schedules and strict deadlines that may as well be set in stone for all the damage not meeting them inflicts on a roofer.
James Kenton has changed how he goes about roofing exponentially, but the one thing that has remained the same is efficient time management. It has surely been an adjustment, with new regulations making it even more difficult for roofers to do a straightforward job.
You must persevere and strive to meet deadlines by doing the following:
Avoiding distractionsCoordinating with team membersFocusing on work during work hours.7. Surround Yourself with Like-minded People
It takes a village to erect a roof, so why should you persevere alone? Your will might be a force to be reckoned with, but it can only get you so far without similar forces banding together to complete the job.
Hire people not because they come with a glowing recommendation or years of experience but because they share your beliefs and love metal roofing as much as you do. You can only make a living off your passion and perseverance if you are surrounded by those who share that drive.
Persevere in the Metal Roofing Field Like James Kenton
James Kenton has never been averse to taking risks. He was brave enough to leave a thriving business in Massachusetts and start over in Tennessee. His secret ingredient was perseverance in the aspects mentioned above of roof construction. If you’re considering a serious career in this construction aspect, learn how to persevere, especially during the initial stages, and everything else will naturally fall into place.
Follow Kenton on Twitter to check out his next big adventure in Nashville.
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