Meet the Contractor - Dean Coombe

Dean, tell us about yourself and your career

I originally joined Vantage Roofing 8 years ago in the sales department, and over time have climbed the ranks. I started as a business development manager and climbed the ranks to operations director, then eventually managing director and for the past 12 months I’ve been the owner!

Tell us a little about Vantage Roofing?

Vantage Roofing has been trading for 15 years (not always under the same name) and we’re quite big. We took a decision several years ago to focus only on the domestic market. We are set up now to deliver not only a high standard of work, but an exceptional level of customer service and a great customer experience, which isn’t needed so much in the commercial and contracting world. We took what I think was a brave decision to play to our strengths and deliver a five star service to the average homeowner. We’re quite well known in the North East.

So you’re not a roofer by background?

I’m not a roofer no, but I’m also not the guy who’s going to be putting the tiles on your roof so there’s nothing to worry about!  I’ve always been in a managerial role in a variety of industries, where I’ve worked with and hired people who are qualified in something that I’m not. I surround myself with people who are great at what they do, so while I’m not a qualified roofer, I know what is needed from a skills and compliance perspective and hire the best roofers for the job.

I see it as a strength really, because I have the business and sales experienced needed to grow our company and take care of our staff. We have a very low turnover rate here, 90% of our roofers have been here 5-6 years so we’re doing something right.  We are also fortunate to be part of the NFRC and Competent Person Scheme and other bodies so we make sure we are up-to-date with the latest legislation.

50 employees, sounds a lot!

It is, it’s always around 50. I think we have 48 at the moment. Around 35 of those are working on the roofs, and the rest are in the office and running the business.

For your employees working on the roofs, how do you make sure that they keep their skills up to date?

We do make sure that all of our roofers keep up-to-date with renewals for their qualifications, which unfortunately can seem more like a tick-box exercise, but it has to be done. More importantly, we employ 2 contract managers, whose job it is to sign off every piece of work that is done. We’re quite fortunate that in conjunction with CPS, we do a lot of high value jobs, so we regularly cross that threshold where the value of a job requires a mandatory inspection. We’ve probably had more inspections from a Competent Person Scheme inspector than most.

We are very proactive when things come up. If anything comes back from an inspection as an advisory for example, we immediately put policies in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We all take huge pride in our work and the company, and anyone who doesn’t cut the mustard wouldn’t last very long here.

We embrace modern technology, so we have an in-house app where our site surveyors are able to upload photos and questionnaires are uploaded straight into our master system. I get progress photos via WhatsApp too, so we’re always tracking our jobs and the quality of the work live.

I noticed you share a lot of guidance on your website and social media. Can you tell me more about that and why you do it? It looks as though you invest a lot of time in it!

There’s a huge requirement in this industry to educate the general public. We feel strongly and get upset at times that the industry is not well liked or trusted. Which voted roofing as the least trusted industry, which isn’t good when you’re running a roofing business and trying to do a good job.

We think it’s really important to help people to differentiate between a good and bad roofer. Unfortunately we’ve been a victim of this for years, where someone will leave our employment because they weren’t up to scratch, and a week later we’ll see them up on a roof selling themselves as a company. We feel aggrieved to that, and we’re often competing against the non-compliant, non tax-paying, non VAT-paying, non overhead-paying companies and it’s a great shame. We find time and time again that these companies don’t stick around, and all those customers they did work for are left high and dry when the inevitable problems are discovered.

We want to fill that space and be known as a contractor that you can rely on. We’ll still be here next year. And we have insurance-backed guarantees giving additional security to our customers.

The more that homeowners know, the more educated that they can be and informed in making the right decisions about their roofing job first time, the better the industry will get.

It seems to be a common problem that customers have to pay twice and quite often reputable firms and CPS contractors are going out to customers and fixing the job they’d been rejected for.

It’s really upsetting. When you lose a job to price, and then the customer has to come back to you to have their work fixed, nobody wins. The customer is understandably untrusting and unhappy, and it’s a bad experience for our guys too. The customer is so disheartened that they just want it to be over and we can’t deliver the good experience that we’re used to.

You have been CPS registered contractors for a long time now. Can you tell me a little about why you joined and how it helps your business? 

Back in 2017 when I just started, a customer had flagged that they were expecting BRCC certificates and documentation after a job, and I didn’t know what they were on about as I was new. It took me on a bit of a journey, and I dug into what the Competent Person Scheme (or CompetentRoofer as it was back then) was all about. Vantage Roofing had been signed up for a long time without utilising the scheme properly, so I was able to make sure that we started utilising the scheme properly and we put every single job through the scheme that is covered.

There’s some education to be done too isn’t there for contractors about using the scheme? That you can use the portal for example to manage every roofing works, even if they aren’t put through the scheme.

Yes absolutely.

And you’re a member of NFRC too. When did you join and how does it help you?

We joined the NFRC a couple of years ago because I believe that skilled and competent roofers should be able to shout out about the great work that they do. We are a compliant and legitimate company, doing great domestic work and have nothing to hide. There are lots of us out there and having the backing of a big name like NFRC can only help us.

Has the Building Safety Act and the new requirements for contractors and individual roofers to demonstrate competency and compliance impacted the way you work?

The short answer is probably no. We certainly haven’t had to make changes to the way we work.  I think we see two different sides. If someone has a leak or an urgent repair, generally the first roofer who answers the phone will be the one they hire, with very little research or checking. However, because we deal with a certain market – generally 50+ professionals who are possibly a bit more savvy - they are doing their research and making sure they know what makes a contractor compliant and competent and are making sure they choose contractors who are affiliated with NFRC or the Competent Person Scheme and can demonstrate that they are compliant. As our work is purely domestic, we haven’t seen any other impact.