In this episode of If Walls Could Talk, Tom Harris reflects on the last year and what it meant for the SFP community.

In the polyurethane foam insulation industry, 2022 saw the impacts of the global pandemic. Everyone was impacted by supply chain issues, material availability issues and labor shortages. The demand remained high for spray foam and high efficiency insulations, but we struggled to deliver.

Perhaps the transition to new, low GWP blowing agents contributed as some spray foam resin manufacturers struggled to develop a marketable formulation—but the COVID combination of raw material delivery issues, supply chain issues and lack of installer labor certainly challenged the industry like we’ve never seen before.

Jill Bloom chats with Trent Cotney of Adams & Reese LLC in this most recent podcast of If Walls Could Talk.

What is the scope with warranties? If your company is giving a workmanship warranty, you want to have a document that states what you are providing and what you are not providing.

One issue that Cotney discusses is if that a company wants to have a warranty that is transferable— whether it’s commercial or residential—do you want to extend that warranty if the owner sells to a new party. Regardless of what you want to do, you need to spell it out clearly in the warranty.

Cotney recommends that at a minimum, you inspect/review the warranty before you extend it to a new party. However, there are some states that mandate different conditions for transferability.

Adams & Reese does a lot of OSHA defense nationally, the most common the most used defense is what is known as unpreventable employee misconduct. As an example, if you’ve trained the employee but they just didn’t do work right that results in some sort of claim, as a result, is the company responsible? Cotney outlines what a company needs to do in defense of these cases. It’s important to have a disciplinary procedure in place that’s consistently applied.

In this last installment on our series on Fraud, Kyle Rea of Adams & Reese reviews a case study of a contractor in Texas. This contractor’s hard drive was hacked and ultimately the company raced to come up with a solution for the ransom the hackers demanded. How did it end? Rea outlines this horrific story in detail and outlines some practical advice for contractors that experience such a situation.

W&C would to thank Kyle for his commitment to this series.

Non-compete clauses are already one of the highest litigated areas in employment law, and it could be getting busier. The Federal Trade Commission is considering a new rule that would ban companies from issuing non-compete agreements with their employees. The impact for business owners could be profound, said W&C Legal Insights Expert Trent Cotney, of Adams and Reese.

“This is good for employees and mobility, but if you’re an employer paying top dollar for a C-level employee with access to a lot of different information, it’s going to be very interesting,” Cotney said.

Social media can be an important tool in a company’s image. Anna Anderson, CEO of Art Unlimited, shares some advice for contractors to incorporate into their LinkedIn activity. Her advice touches on how much to post, what to post and more in her discussion with W&C Publisher Jill Bloom.

Welcome to this podcast of If Walls Can Talk. Kyle Rea, of Adams & Reese, chats with us about fraud. Today we’re going to talk about the importance of having an Accounts Receivable Team or Accountant to help avoid fraud.

Kyle chats about what listeners can do in order to address the fraud we’ve been discussing in this series. What’s one major thing that can help them? Rea says having a reliable AR system and Accountant

How can an accounting team help you, and what are same major items of concern they should be focusing on?

What should listeners think about when hiring an accountant or AR team?

Walls & Ceilings magazine has selected its Contractor of 2022, Washington-based Alliance Partition Systems. This year’s winner was chosen by a panel consisting of W&C’s publisher, editorial staff and editorial advisory board. The goal of the award is to honor a contractor that employs the best industry practices, provides a good working atmosphere for employees and excels at both quality workmanship and customer service.