With 80% of its annual sales volume in commercial and industrial ventilation, Poynter Sheet Metal is on a mission to diversify its revenue streams. The Indiana-based shop is targeting a net-reduction to 50% for ventilation, growing specialty metals from 10% to 20% and prefabrication from 10% to 30%.

The sheet metal shop founded in 2000 by Don Poynter, with ownership awarded to Joseph Lansdell in 2007, has doubled sales to about $100 million since 2014.

Essential to this process isn’t more labor; in fact Poynter has only employed a handful more people than it used to, and most of that is in support groups, not the operations team. The company has thin layers of management, with former shop foreman Nick West serving as VP of shop operations and Brian Neal serving as VP of operations. Neal previously led the entire field operations as general superintendent.

Lansdell attributes Poynter’s progress to technology: Both by buying the latest and greatest sheet metal machinery, and ensuring his staff is efficiently scheduled, trained and spending less time doing busy work with the help of webapps.

“We use the same digital technology for rental applications, purchase orders, even our estimating software is driven that way. It’s really not creating an extra task for somebody, it’s the same task they were doing with pen and paper,” Lansdell says.

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The SNIPS Contractor of the Year for 2021, Poynter Sheet Metal of Indianapolis, has doubled sales in the five years since moving to a new and well-equipped location. Here is how owner Joseph Lansdell and his team did it.