As I look back at the year 2024, I want to start by thanking our customers, supporters, and of course the STI team, for making this our best year, and quite an exceptional one.
Our significant growth this year can only be explained by the relationships of trust built over the years, and the value added that we bring our customers. As they become more successful, they need to rely on a team that understands firestopping as well as their own businesses in depth. And they need to know that the people they are dealing with will be there for them when they need them.
That’s where our STI philosophy of fiercely protecting the jobs of those who do their job pays off over the long term. In our 34-year history, we have not had a single layoff! As a result, the level of knowledge and experience that the STI team has at all levels is unmatched and is a key differentiating competitive factor that becomes bigger every year.
On that subject, we were extremely sad to lose Kelly Mason this past November. Kelly was an amazing person who did wonders for STI and is leaving many fans and friends behind, starting with me. He joined us 1997 (27 years ago!) and played a significant role at every stage of our growth, particularly over the last 15 years in the healthcare vertical. He not only became the voice of STI, but, more importantly, a highly knowledgeable and respected expert on firestopping matters and beyond.
Those of us who knew Kelly will also remember him as a man of many talents. His singing was legendary, as were his jokes and teases. His level headedness hid a strong drive to excel and to win – which he did over and over again, as he mentored top teams in and out of STI.
But this sad note should not overshadow the many accomplishments of this year, of which I will cite just a few: a new website with a more powerful search engine; new versions of our Firestop Clash Management (FCM) and Firestop Locator (FSL) software that are nicely integrated and help users plan jobs and document them better; additions to the EZ-Path family, particularly the 24” cable tray retrofit device; launch of the SpecSeal Firestop Block, long in the making as we wanted to get a much cleaner formula and a higher performance product than what’s presently available on the market, as well as many small tweaks to products, in response to customer requests. And we have some very exciting new products in the works for next year!
As the thought and technology leader in firestopping, we take seriously our obligation to advance the state of the art as well as the state of knowledge in the firestopping industry and feel it’s our mission to share our knowledge with everyone. As the saying goes: “An educated customer is our best customer”. So, in 2024, we trained over 23,500 people in between live training sessions in our offices or in the field, and webinars. The subjects covered were as varied as Compliance in Healthcare Facilities, Mass Timber Construction Firestopping, Interior Finish Firestopping, Perimeter Fire Containment Systems, Firestopping IT Infrastructure, Restoring STC Through Proper Firestopping, What Architects Need to Know, Understanding Firestop Engineering Judgments, and of course, 6 sessions of our FIT2 Trainings. In total we covered in depth 21 different subjects, some more than once. Most courses carry CEU’s. We were privileged to train contractors, distributors, facility managers, engineers, architects, inspectors, and, of course, salespeople.
In closing, let me thank all of you who are helping STI get more successful every year, and wish you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season and wonderful new year.
This article, by Charbel Tagher, President, originally appeared in the Fall Wrap-Up 2024 edition of The Burn.