DECEMBER 22, 2009 ISSUE
Federal Training Grant Gives Carolina Timberworks the Skills To Expand
The staff at Carolina Timberworks—Jim Heaton, co-owner Chris Miller, Craig Kitson, Greg Calloway, Eric Osborne, and co-owner Eric Morley—are already masters of a wide range of precision carpentry skills, but a federal training grant administered through the High Country Workforce Development Board will give them critical training in green technologies that will help the company survive the economic downturn and grow new divisions.
Jim Heaton hand planes the end of a beam that will be used to construct a timber frame barn in New Jersey. “A lot of this handwork is hidden,” Heaton said. “It’s fine furniture on a grandiose scale,” said Carolina Timberworks co-owner and co-founder Chris Miller. The company has seen a significant reduction in business because of the economic downturn, but has won a federal training grant to help it expand its offerings.
Small businesses have always had to be agile and adaptable to succeed, but the Great Recession has upped the bar on small business survival, demanding agility and adaptability in conditions of dramatically reduced cash flow. Hundreds of small businesses across the country have already closed their doors, but a Boone-based company has come up with a diversification plan—and the money to pay for it—that the founders hope will not only keep the doors open, but also permit them to expand the business over time and hire more workers.
Carolina Timberworks, founded in 2003 by partners Eric Morley and Chris Miller, specializes in designing, crafting and installing traditional hand-cut timber frames—a type of post and beam construction. Timber framing is an ancient building technique in which precisely cut wood-to-wood joinery holds heavy timbers together with wooden pegs—creating a structure that is as strong as it is durable and beautiful.
While adaptable to virtually any kind of building—from homes to barns to gazebos—traditional timber framing is an unusually labor-intensive process because all the components are hand cut. And because it is such a labor-intensive process, timber framing is more expensive than other building methods. Along with other companies in the construction business, Carolina Timberworks’ business has experienced a significant decline over the past year, and as a result, half the company’s highly skilled workers had to be laid off.
Morley and Miller began brainstorming ideas for additional services they could provide that could pick up the revenue slack from the reduction in the timber framing business and also give them a foundation for developing additional divisions that would steadily grow and require more workers—lots more workers.
“We wanted to innovate and look for complementary businesses in which we could use many of the skills we already have,” Morley explained.
“We think there is a ‘new normal’ and don’t think timber framing will return to its previous levels for several years,” Miller added. “So we began looking outside the box.”
They came up with a three-pronged plan: train the company’s employees to be home energy auditors, train the company’s employees to install structural insulated panels and train employees to design and install solar photovoltaic (PV) systems.
Professional certification in these skills would open several new markets for Carolina Timberworks.
After conducting an energy audit of an existing home to assess the building’s inefficiencies, the company—working under its existing general contractor’s license and using the carpentry skills of its workforce—would be able to do the necessary remedial work.
Carolina Timberworks would also be able to design, market and install solar photovoltaic systems. But, as Morley pointed out, PV systems can be a waste of resources unless the building is energy efficient. By closing the front-end loop of performing the energy audits and doing the remedial work, the company would be able to market a complete high-performance photovoltaic system to customers.
Adding the ability to install structural insulated panels—high-performance building panels consisting of a core of rigid foam insulation between two structural skins of oriented strand board—would not only complement the existing timber framing business, but would also give the company new construction opportunities in the fast-growing market for energy-efficient and sustainable buildings.
In short, Morley and Miller developed a vision of positioning Carolina Timberworks as a single source for green, energy-efficient heavy timber construction. How does it all fit together?
“Timber framing, teamed with structural insulated panels and solar PV panels, is the most beautiful, green and energy-efficient method of building we know of,” Morley said. “And our thinking is that we should turn this bad business situation into something good by growing in new directions instead of sitting around bemoaning the downturn in economic activity.”
There was just one problem. The training is expensive, and the company’s cash flow didn’t permit such an investment.
But thanks to a federal incumbent worker training grant funded by the Workforce Investment Act, awarded through the N.C. Division of Workforce Development and administered through the High Country Workforce Development Board, Carolina Timberworks now has the $21,000 it needs to invest in the development of new skills and certifications that will not only give the company a chance to survive the downturn, but also will give it the potential to add full-time, good-paying jobs as the company grows its new divisions.
For Morley and Miller, Carolina Timberworks is more than a job. The company embodies their American dream of small business ownership in which each partner contributes his unique strengths to the operation: Miller on the design and production side, Morley on the sales and marketing side. And they haven’t been standing still. Miller is training in a new software application that will increase his speed and efficiency in designing building plans, and Morley has recently been elected to the board of directors of the Timber Frame Business Council—the only representative from North Carolina on the national board.
The partners’ guiding vision reflects their commitment to Carolina Timberworks’ reputation and to their customers: “Doing what we say we’re going to do when we say we’ll do it, and giving people a little more than they expect.”
And that philosophy, combined with training in high-demand skills that is being financed with federal dollars, will give Carolina Timberworks more than a fighting chance to weather the downturn.
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