The Ventilators

It was one of the most challenging projects Dan Beer and his team at Ridge Sheet Metal had ever tackled. AgCanada commissioned the company to provide all the HVAC and ductwork for a new, high-tech laboratory designed to study infected animal carcasses. These scientists were going to be dealing with everything from mad cow disease to the most volatile of the influenzas: avian and swine.

It meant Ridge Sheet Metal had to install welded, stainless-steel exhaust manifolds and high-efficiency particulate air filters to prevent the airborne spread of disease. Mistakes in the ventilation system could have been disastrous.

Beer, the company’s project manager and lead estimator, explains that there’s a lot on the line for a company that provides industrial, commercial, and institutional ventilation and custom fabrications.

“Your conduct during the project is important,” Beer says. “And we like to be part of the solution. You want to plan ahead and try to foresee the challenges and problems you’ll be facing before they become monsters.”

High performance is a part of the business for Ridge Sheet Metal’s six partners: Beer, Mike Vinter, Mark McLaren, Brent Wesnoski, Brian Kuzak, and Joe Kalinich. The British Columbia-based company has been providing its cornerstone, “Great service and value,” since 1977—a bragging right that has resulted in repeat customers accounting for a full 80 percent of its business.

Thirty-four years later, the company is still at it. And the partners aren’t sitting on back on their heels. They’ve placed a high importance on being at the forefront of the industry, which can be seen in their membership in the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association. “We’re serving as trustees and directors on various boards, so our hands are in the industry,” Beer says. “We’re proactive and involved.”

Ridge Sheet Metal’s high level of involvement—and its six-partner committee—has paid off magnanimously in dividends of creative success. “At the end of the day, six dumb people do better than one genius,” Beer jokes. “As a group, we’re able to achieve so much more than an individual. That’s the rewarding part of working together.”

The company is chest-deep in innovation, too. Ridge Sheet Metal is currently testing a technology that allows workers to electronically create their designs in virtual space so that they can test and conserve their resources more efficiently. The technology is to building what a flight simulator is to an air strike: a low-risk way to make sure everything works.

“It’s going to change contractual relationships between the players,” Beer says. “It’s a very big revolution in the way buildings are built.”

Although it’s a technology that has been at the disposal of architects for some time, it has only partially come on-stream for contractors, and some say its full implementation is a few years away. But it has major potential to allow smoother, cheaper, and more integrated planning.

Such techniques are indicative of a “measure twice, cut once” mentality, and it’s evidence that, above all, the folks at Ridge Sheet Metal are committed to accuracy. Because when you have a team of scientists depending on you to prevent a major biomedical fallout, you have to be.