Who Can Protect Your Assets? - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Dawn Ciocca from WTI. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Megan Ellsworth: Have you ever had a question about your roof and didn't know who to turn to for answers? Are you interested in learning more about one of the most important aspects of your home? Not to fret, the AskARoofer Podcast is here for all you home and building owners. Join us as we talk with industry experts, roofing contractors, business owners, and more about all things roofing. And remember, AskARoofer.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back. My name's Megan Ellsworth.

Lauren White: And I'm Lauren White.

Megan Ellsworth: And this is the AskARoofer Podcast. We are so happy to have on the show today, Dawn Ciocca. And Hi Dawn, how are you?

Dawn Ciocca: Hi. Good. Thanks for having me, Megan.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. So why don't you just go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Tremco?

Dawn Ciocca: Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is Dawn Ciocca. I have been with WTI for going on 24 years in May. I started my career off in our roof inspection production department doing data entry. Through my years in this group, I was the logistics coordinator. I did dispatching, receiving for all of our inspections. I was a supervisor of this team and then the manager. And about 16 years ago, I had moved into our manage asset group as a program manager. And in this role, I managed over 18 national accounts of my own. All of them were very different in size and services that we were completing for them. In 2015, I was promoted to the manager of our manage and asset group, and our team consisted of approximately eight people. And in May of '21, I was promoted to the director of enterprise accounts. And I'm proud to say that since then, the team has grown by 69% and is currently responsible for managing over 160 million square feet. So our team is part of the Weatherproofing Technologies group, which is a service division of Tremco Roofing, Tremco CPG.

Megan Ellsworth: Cool. Wow. 69%. That's amazing.

Dawn Ciocca: Yeah.

Lauren White: Great. So today we are talking about managed assets groups. And let's just start off with, why does building maintenance matter?

Dawn Ciocca: By performing building maintenance, you're protecting your capital investments and extending the life of your roofs and building assets. So there's many benefits of building maintenance, such as compliance with building codes, local laws, following warranty guidelines and cost predictability and budget planning to name a few.

Megan Ellsworth: Very cool. Yeah. What does typical building maintenance involve? What should building owners look to maintain?

Dawn Ciocca: Yeah. Building maintenance is we would do repairs to incidental tear, splits and brakes throughout the membrane, edge metal flashing, repairs to incidental openings or split flashing strippings, sealing of exposed fasteners, resealing of intermittent voids and termination bars and counter flashing. All of the maintenance that we would do would also include housekeeping, so removal of the debris throughout the roof at the drains as well as the gutters. Also, resealing of intermittent voids and metal projections. It's not going to cover your major repairs, but maintenance items on each roof.

Lauren White: And how often should building owners have maintenance scheduled for maintaining their building and keeping it in tiptop shape?

Dawn Ciocca: Yeah, the NRCA recommends maintenance at least twice a year. However, most manufacturer warranties only require annual maintenance be performed. Our recommendation is always customer specific. If you have a lot of trees that surround your buildings, our recommendation would be to perform housekeeping and maintenance at least twice a year. But most of our customers perform maintenance annually, which is again, a requirement in most of those manufacturer warranties.

Megan Ellsworth: And with building maintenance, is this something building owners need to take care of themselves? Or who can help them with this, WTI maybe?

Dawn Ciocca: Yeah, they can call WTI. They can call one of our Tremco reps. Our Tremco rep will make a recommendation on if that annual or biannual maintenance should be completed. All of that work again is going to be done through our service group, Weatherproofing Technologies Incorporated, and we have over 700 field technicians nationwide.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow, that's amazing. Wow.

Lauren White: So we started off, you told us that Tremco has a managed assets group. Can you just expand on that a little bit more and tell us what that means? What all is involved? What a building owner can look forward to with this?

Dawn Ciocca: Sure. Yeah. So our managed asset group, it's an extension of our sales team who helps support our Tremco and WTI customers by streamlining all communications into one central person, one of our program managers. This customer that we are managing, they vary in size and complexity. Some are national accounts with facilities nationwide, others are local accounts that are in one region. So a program manager would be assigned as a resource not only to the customer, but to our rep and all of our internal teams. The program manager is responsible for that execution of all tasks for that specific account and making sure that all parties involved in that process understand the requirements and their role in executing that work. When we get a new national customer, we have a kickoff call that includes all the main points of contact at each site. And during that call, we would review what the service is that we're completing and the scope of work that's part of that agreement.

That way, they have a better understanding of what we're going to be doing when we come to their facility, including on how we plan to execute that work. So again, they know what to expect when we come. We also hold a internal kickoff call to include all of our internal people, our field technicians, our roof advisors, our administrative team inside, all the people that are responsible for executing on that work. And depending on the size of the account, we may have multiple resources that we assign to one account such as dedicated construction managers or additional program admin support as well.

Megan Ellsworth: That's great. So this next question is WTI owns the building for a year, no matter the condition. Can you explain that a little bit?

Dawn Ciocca: Yeah. So we have a service which is called a one-year TPW, and the TPW stands for Tremco Performance Warranty. So this is where WTI will come out and complete inspections that include the roof maintenance and housekeeping, as well as roof leaks for up to one year. And this service is offered to our new customers of Tremco and WTI. And over this period of time, it allows that customer to know what they have and for us to develop a budget plan for them that will help them make long-term decisions on where to get best long-term investments on what they have.

Lauren White: So with an inspection, what can a building owner expect from this? Maybe it's an annual or semi-annual inspection of their building?

Dawn Ciocca: So they can expect with our team for somebody to be assigned and to help them throughout that entire process, and to deliver what's expected. We'll be communicating throughout the entire process so that building owner will know at all times what step of the process that we're in. Much of what we do for these accounts is customizable. We're able to be flexible to meet whatever their need is. They can expect to come out of the inspection knowing much more than what they imagined they needed to know about their roofs. And they will also come out with a roadmap of the next steps on how to protect their assets.

Megan Ellsworth: I love that. I love the visual of a roadmap. That's great. I feel like as a building owner, that would be so helpful in understanding everything that you need to have checks and balances for in a building. That's great.

Dawn Ciocca: Absolutely.

Megan Ellsworth: So how is this information tracked? Do building owners have access to it, like you said, the roadmap?

Dawn Ciocca: Yes, they do. They do have access to it. They will have access to it through our online roof management system. This is the database where all of these inspections will be housed. We've got the ability to house all of their warranty information in here. All of the data that we're capturing throughout this inspection is [inaudible 00:09:44]. We can export it out of the system. Again, it's customizable to meet their needs, but yes, they will have access and there is no limit to the number of users and there's no fee associated with that access.

Megan Ellsworth: Yay. We love free knowledge.

Lauren White: So what happens if, worst case scenario, a building has a leak or suffers water damage after maybe a storm or if just something on the roof wasn't done correctly in the first place? Does Tremco managed assets help with those repairs and navigating that process with the whole water leak situation?

Dawn Ciocca: Yeah, absolutely. Tremco, WTI, we can help with that. Through our TremSource service offering, our TremCare Gold or our one-year TPW service, those customers have access to our 24/7, 365 call center where all of their roof leaks can be reported. And with that, those leaks will be dispatched out to one of our WTI technicians to go to their site to investigate and repair. Any work above and beyond a leak repair would be written up as scope outside of a leak call. And all of this would be managed by that program manager. They would be at the center of that process handling it from the point the leak was reported all the way to the final billing.

Lauren White: And those three branches that you mentioned, is that separate from the Tremco managed assets group or all encompassing?

Dawn Ciocca: Yes. So our group will get involved if one of those services is sold. So we have multiple services, inspection services starting from an OLI, which is just a roof inspection to a TremCare, which is maintenance and housekeeping to that one-year TPW service offering that we spoke about. We also have a TremSource service, which is strictly leak calls. There's no maintenance, there's no housekeeping, it's just access to the call center 24/7, 365.

Megan Ellsworth: So going off of that, how do building owners get in touch with you or a local Tremco sales representative in their area?

Dawn Ciocca: Yeah, so building owners can go to our website at tremcoroofing.com. They can go to find a rep and select their state on that map. From there, they would get a list of all the Tremco local reps within that state, and it would list out what location they're responsible for. And so once they've identified the correct rep based on that location, they can select their name and all of their contact information will be there, including their phone number, email address, their professional profile, and a link to connect with them on LinkedIn.

Lauren White: Is there anything else a building owner should know about protecting their assets and managing their building that we haven't touched on yet?

Dawn Ciocca: I feel like you guys had a lot of great questions. I feel like we covered quite a bit, but the last thing I'll close with is I think it's really important for building owners to keep good records of their warranties and to follow those requirements of those warranties, such as the annual maintenance and the record keeping of the annual maintenance, as well as reporting any roof leaks they might have. So team up with us and we'd be happy to help you with this and any other need that you have.

Megan Ellsworth: That's fabulous advice. Record keeping is always so important. I know it's tough for some people, but you're so right. Very important. This has been such great information. Thank you for chatting with us and this has been fun. I hope you had fun here on the AskARoofer Pod.

Dawn Ciocca: I did. Thanks for having me.

Megan Ellsworth: Well, thank you, Dawn, and thank you Tremco for chatting. And we will make sure that we get our yearly maintenance on all of our buildings and we will see you next time.

Dawn Ciocca: Yes.

Lauren White: Thank you.

Dawn Ciocca: Wonderful. Thank you both.

Megan Ellsworth: Thanks for listening to the AskARoofer Podcast. Feel free to subscribe and leave a review. Go to AskARoofer.com to ask a question.