Board of Directors Trustee, SMACNA-Western Washington Board of Directors
Although today he is the president of one of the region’s most successful and well-respected mechanical construction, engineering, and service companies, Rick Hermanson didn’t set out to be a business owner. For Rick, it all began with a simple love of building.
Hermanson has been actively involved in SMACNA-WW board of directors since 1998, serving in a variety of leadership positions including Labor Management, Budget & Finance Committee, Legislative and Political Action, and Board of Trustees. He is also an MCA member and was on the SMACNA JATC Committee for 14 years from 1998–2001. Giving of his time throughout his career, he was previously involved with SMACNA’s first Seismic Bracing Standard committee, and served as president of SMACNA-Western Washington during the 2010–2011 term.
Hermanson Company began as a sheet metal contracting business started by Rick’s dad, Jerry Hermanson. Today, it is a full-service mechanical contracting company with project experience in healthcare, life sciences, office building, data centers, high-rise residential, and industrial projects in the Puget Sound area. Most importantly, it has been a family legacy through which Rick Hermanson found his life’s work.
Counting the years he swept floors as a young teenager at the shops where his father worked, Hermanson has an impressive 51 years in the sheet metal industry. He began his apprenticeship at the age of 19 and started out at the shipyards as a sheet metal worker at that time.
“I’ve always loved building things and working with my hands,” he says of his attraction to and longevity in the industry. “That said, I’ve stayed in the industry because I’ve had the opportunity to help build Hermanson Company.”
In 1979 his father started the company, and when he was in his mid-20s Rick Hermanson worked there as a foreman. When he was 32-years old, he asked his father if he could start to learn the business side of the company, and his father agreed.
“He started me in project management,” Hermanson says. “I worked for a salesperson, managing his jobs, and I worked my way up through most jobs in the company. It seemed like by the time I got comfortable in one area of the business, my father would move me to another.”
Hermanson went from project management to estimating, engineering, managing larger projects, marketing, and business development.
“I think I was 45 when they made me president of the company, and two years later I asked my dad if I could buy the company. A group of partners and I did that in 2000.”
Growing the company from a sheet metal contracting business to a mechanical contractor was an exciting challenge. Today, Hermanson Company provides full mechanical construction services to some of the most recognizable companies in the area—from aerospace to tech—as well as to public works and commercial development.
Technology, especially as a way to bring value to clients, has always been an area of business development that has interested Hermanson—in the mid-90s he and then-colleague Bill Nolan built a project knowledge internet tool that amalgamated the work and communications between contractors, designers, owners, and all other stakeholders on a job.
“We called it the Product Knowledge Centre and it was very simple, but ground-breaking at the time,” Hermanson says. Nolan built and further developed the software and created a new company—Buildingi—that now serves Fortune 500 companies around the world.
“Technology really does bring value to clients when you have fast-paced projects and need to get everyone communicating,” Hermanson says. “Today, we apply an ever-expanding roster of technological tools to make our business more efficient and to create new ways to collaborate with our design and construction partners. It’s exciting.”
As a part of the SMACNA board, Hermanson says he believes in the value the association brings to the industry with training, grooming, and embracing the workforce and leadership. “It goes back to bringing value to the client,” he says. “It is always about the client.”
As far as his own mission, Hermanson hopes to bring to the board a passionate and knowledgeable voice that consistently has the best interests of everybody in the sheet metal industry top of mind.
His best advice for words to live by are simple: enjoy what you do. It makes everything fun.
Learn more about Hermanson Company at hermanson.com/
By / Jessica Kirby
