As a commercial flooring installer, I always strived to attend every training session and seminar that became available. In 1993, I attained my Alberta provincial Red Seal Journeyman Floor Covering Installer certification and then proceeded to take commercial training courses from most of the major manufacturers. In 2004, I took over as instructor and developer of the Floor Covering Installer course at our provincial trade college, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). The course was in dire need of an overhaul, so I undertook the task of researching and collaborating with my contacts in the technical services departments of the major flooring manufacturers to develop a new, more modern curriculum for the course.
Calls began to come in for technical assistance from local architects and designers and from manufacturers such as Shaw, Mannington and Forbo for local installation-related issues in the Northern Alberta territory to assist with complicated job start-ups and troubleshooting. On one of those troubleshooting trips in the spring of 2012—a six-hour drive to a job in Northern Saskatchewan—I was with the Western Canadian sales manager for Forbo Flooring Systems, Chris Sokalski. We began to discuss the need for a commercial company with better trained installation crews and knowledgeable sales people who could recommend the best products for the end user applications and avoid many of the issues that we had to deal with on these troubleshooting trips.