Kal-West Mechanical Systems was first founded in October 1987 by John Davina. In November 2018, John was ready to retire, and Kal-West transitioned to a new employee ownership group consisting of John DeFehr, Terry Smith and Keith Pearce. Terry joined the company in 2010 as a journeyman plumber and quickly moved to position of Foreman. John Defehr took a similar path, also starting in 2010 working his way to a Foreman position. Keith, on the other hand, worked as a sales representative for one of their suppliers. For six years, Kal-West was one of his largest clients, and from the outside he had always admired the company for their quality of their work and their ethical way of doing business. “Out of all the clients I worked with, I always thought Kal-West stood apart,” Keith remembers. “The company always had a special reputation and that was always something I wanted to be a part of.” When they first took over, Keith, Terry and John all had their sights set on getting bigger, and they all had ideas for how to achieve that: “When we first took over, we knew we had the opportunity to grow,” Keith recalls. “The company took a pretty old school approach to project tracking and data storage, and we saw an opportunity to modernize and streamline some processes.” “But our vision was not to make drastic changes,” he clarifies. “The company had been successful for a really long time and there’s a reason for that. It was important to maintain the quality and the culture that built the company. For example, we have exceptional leadership in our field staff, and our company has always given them the autonomy to make decisions. We didn’t want to mess with that.” ENGINEERING CONFIDENCE INTO EVERY BUILD Proud project partner to Kal-West Mechanical Systems, delivering mechanical pipe joining solutions and services. Visit Victaulic.com for more information. THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
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