It’s been a pretty remarkable couple of years for Sector 1 Construction and Renovations Ltd.
The company is owned by Sandon Weber of Estevan and it provides general contracting, encompassing full interior and exterior work on residential and commercial properties. They also do remediation and restoration work following sewer backups, floods and fires.
May 1 will mark their seven-year anniversary, but much of the growth has come recently.
“The first five years or so were very slow and steady,” said Weber. “It was just me and one or two employees, basically. So I was on the job site every day, and then doing the paperwork and quoting evenings and weekends.”
Early last year, they started getting more and more calls for work, and so they hired additional staff. That growth trend has continued.
He now stays in the office on a regular basis, and he had to hire full-time office workers to keep up with the work.
Weber cited several reasons for the company’s success: attention to detail and quality work, consistency in their jobs and an ability to handle additional jobs.
“It allows us to serve more people,” said Weber.
After the price of oil dropped in 2014, Weber saw an increase in the number of construction companies in the area.
“At the same time, in the last year or so, there’s been a number of people leave town or get a normal job or do a few different things with their business venture. It’s been a few different things culminating at once, basically.”
They want to make sure people are happy with their work.
Estevan area residents are starting to take notice. During the recent Estevan Mercury Publications’ Best of Estevan Contest, Sector 1 was selected as being the readers’ favourite general contractor, and best for home improvements and kitchen renovations.
The company has eight full-time employees and five sub-contractors on a near-full-time basis.
Sector 1 has also had the opportunity to work with local businesses, which has provided a lot of mentorship opportunities. Weber admits he made mistakes early on in his business on a number of fronts, and he suspects that it’s common with upstart entrepreneurs.
“So the last couple of years, being able to lean on other local businesses who have been in the community for 20 years or 30 years has been helpful to us as well, to be able to work with other local trade partners or vendors and get their wisdom or advice on how to operate a business successfully, even if it’s in a down economy.”
As for the COVID-19 pandemic, it started affecting their business in the middle of March. Construction companies like Sector 1 have been declared as essential services, so they have been able to remain open, but that doesn’t mean their work continued without interruption.
At the time when the pandemic arrived Saskatchewan, Sector 1 were working on larger interior jobs, and one in particular was in a building that was considered a high-risk of COVID-19.
They had to halt their work on those projects indefinitely.
Then they needed to take a few weeks to reschedule the next few months.
“We focused on all of the exterior work that we had booked, and we’re just trying to move through those faster now, because we have more manpower or workforce paying attention to the exterior side of the business.”
They had to briefly lay two people off, but those people were brought back within a week after Sector 1 finished rearranging their project schedule. And they never had to shut their doors completely.
“We had to put policies in place like everyone else for more stringent cleaning and sanitization. Even if we’re outside on a job and the social distancing, we’ve had to make sure we run smaller crews. Usually on exteriors we’ll try to have a crew doing the roof and a crew working on the siding, so now we’re not doing them at the same time. We’re keeping it separate with smaller crews.”
They’ve had to ensure customers are aware of new policies and procedures, and a couple of projects have been rescheduled, but people are still pretty happy with the service Sector 1 provides.
