Part I: Brian Miller, Product & Installation Training Manager, Cornerstone Building Brands
Brian Miller has been actively involved with PEPA over the last two years.
“When I moved to Cornerstone’s training department two years ago, I got involved with VSI and PEPA,” Brian said. “I became a VSI-Certified Trainer through PEPA’s Installer Program.”
Brian may be a relatively new face in the PEPA community, but he’s no stranger to the home-building industry. He has over 20 years of home-building project management experience, including single-family homes, townhomes, patio homes and nursing homes, and close to 15 years of experience working with home-building material suppliers and manufacturers.
Brian works at Cornerstone’s Pittsburgh office, not far from where he was born and raised.
“My first home was not more than a mile from (Pirates legend) Bill Mazeroski,” Brian beamed proudly.
For those unfamiliar with baseball history, baseball Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski is immortalized in Pittsburgh lore for hitting a “walk-off” home run in Game 7 in the 1960 World Series against the New York Yankees. As Co-Chair of the PEPA Installation Central Work Group (ICWG), Brian would love to make a similar mark on the polymeric exterior products industry’s workforce development efforts. And he believes that he has the experience and passion necessary to help the ICWG reach new heights.
“I started my career doing hands-on project management for single-family homes and worked my way to multi-family home production,” Brian explained. “That became my forte. Then, 84 Lumber approached me to sell their installation services. Training was an essential part of my work.”
Today, Brian’s work for Cornerstone focuses on product and installation training. “We train onsite at the distribution level, but most of the training takes place in the classroom,” Brian said. “If we’re working with a big home builder, we’ll go onsite but focus on training and not helping these guys finish their jobs. We’re not micromanaging the project.”
According to Brian, the primary goals for the ICWG are:
- Re-write the Installation Manual and re-brand it. “We want to get people in the habit of saying ‘vinyl siding installation training under PEPA,’” he said. “This is important because we want this Manual to serve as a template for future training materials for other PEPA member categories. We want them to feel included in our commitment to workforce development.”
- Bundle the most current and relevant installation resources. “We’re also reviewing all the information and deleting the old and dated materials, including the building codes and stats change over the years.”
- Take all the information PEPA has collected over the years and organize it in the correct folders and buckets. “The current collection is scattered, but we’re getting better at moving the right material into proper categories,” he said.
Teaming Up to Reach New Heights
In addition to utilizing his own skills and experiences as Co-Chair of the ICWG, Brian is excited to team up with fellow Co-Chair “Coach” Rob Balfanz, Vice President of Siding, Home Improvements, and Workforce Development for Progressive Foam Technologies, a PEPA member company.
“Rob and I have a great working relationship,” Brian explained. “Rob was one of my teachers when I was working on my certification.”
Brian emphasizes that he and Rob share high standards and never settle for the status quo in building the workforce development program.
“The one thing that we do a lot of at Cornerstone is continuous improvement, including training,” Brian stated. “More of my training is facilitating. [Cornerstone’s Senior Leader] Eric Cotterman and I attend several annual training events. Cornerstone asks us where we want to go and what we want to be so we can keep up with the latest technologies and embrace them. I can then train others who may be resistant to these new developments.”
Thanks to this continuous improvement focus, Brian believes he can inspire trainees, especially with hands-on training.
“We do a lot of experiential training, so they are learning with their hands and hand-eye coordination and not just looking at a PowerPoint,” Brian stressed. “If the training’s not fun, they’re bored and don’t learn anything. With our approach, they learn and get excited about how we can help them improve performance and career potential.”
We look forward to seeing the ICWG hit many Mazeroski-esque championship home runs during Brian Miller’s tenure as the Co-Chair. Stay tuned!
