Things continuing to look up for CentiMark
Courtesy of CentiMark
Tim Dunlap, president and CEO of CentiMark, grew up in the business founded by his father, Ed, learning from the ground up.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
In a photo from 2018, CentiMark founder Ed Dunlap, left, with his son, Tim
Courtesy of CentiMark
CentiMark employees at work on a roof
Courtesy of CentiMark
CentiMark, the largest roofing company in North America, has its headquarters in Southpointe.
CentiMark specializes in commercial and industrial roof construction and flooring.
Tim Dunlap is proud of CentiMark, the Southpointe-based company his father founded and which the son now runs.
“We are the largest roofing company in North America, and could be the largest in the world,” the firm’s president and CEO said from corporate headquarters along Grandview Circle, which does provide a grand view of the mixed-use park.
“Things are going extremely well,” he added. “Every year, we continue to get bigger.”
CentiMark, a private company, specializes in commercial and industrial roof construction and flooring. It is a sizable operation with about 100 offices in North America, a payroll around 3,500 and a $100 million commercial flooring division called QuestMark. The firm is a pacesetter in its industry.
And what a pace it has been in recent years.
Tim’s father, Ed, may not have envisioned the heights this enterprise would hit when he launched it in 1968. CentiMark, according to Tim, topped $1.122 billion in sales in 2022, a 12% increase from the previous year, when the firm bypassed $1 billion. And through this May, he added, sales were up 15% from 2022.
“This is the third year in a row we’re working on being a billion-dollar company,” he said.
Unlike many businesses, CentiMark came out of the pandemic unscathed, and actually gained momentum, according to Dunlap. “If anything, it had a positive impact on our business,” he said.
The company was deemed an essential operation, not subject to Gov. Tom Wolf’s edict to close “non-essential” businesses during the initial months of the outbreak in 2020.
“We never had to shut down anything,” Dunlap said. “The first couple of weeks, people panicked and it was a little hectic, but things smoothed over and it was business as usual. There were supply chain issues, but we had the financial ability to buy materials and store them in warehouses.
“We’ve been very lucky. We’ve had no layoffs.”
The company, in the meantime, continues to innovate. In early July, it launched a technology called CentiVision, a roofing configurator that, according to the corporate website, “allows our customers to work in unison with the CentiMark sales team to configure an existing roof assembly, show defects, develop a proposed roof assembly and add safety and finishing details to the roof.”
CentiMark’s start more than a half-century ago was not as auspicious. Ed Dunlap, who grew up outside Cleveland, began his career with a firm based in that city. Then he was transferred to Pittsburgh, where, he told the Observer-Reporter in a 2018 story, “it was like coming home.” His paternal grandparents had left Ireland to settle in Western Pennsylvania.
Dunlap later opened a janitorial products operation known as Northern Chemical Co., situated in a cramped office along Route 51 in Pittsburgh. The business sat next to a creek infested with rats, who visited occasionally. Ed moved that endeavor to Venetia Road in Peters Township, and eventually to an industrial park in Bethel Park.
The CentiMark brand was born in the interim, in 1987. Nine years later, the company became one of the first tenants in Southpointe when it relocated to its current hillside complex.
Ed Dunlap’s brainchild not only has grown into one of the top roofing contractors anywhere, it has been a philanthropic endeavor of repute. Ed, an Upper St. Clair resident who died in July 2022, established a policy that endures to this day: provide relief for hurricane-damaged or weather-disaster situations in the United States. The company also has assisted human services agencies, supported programs benefiting schoolchildren and other social-service interests.
Dunlap also made significant financial contributions to St. Clair Health’s Emergency Room in Mt. Lebanon, and he and his wife, Anna, were major benefactors in the development of the St. Clair Health Dunlap Family Outpatient Center. The naming of that six-story structure, which opened in 2021, was a tribute to the couple.
Tim Dunlap has followed the company’s tradition of giving. “Tim has continued the philanthropy, and sometimes exceeds what his father had done,” said Kathy Slencak, the company’s public relations manager and a longtime employee.
Now the son is in charge of a North American operation that he, truly, grew up with. Tim was 8 when CentiMark launched, and handled casual jobs there into his early adolescence. He worked for his dad through Thomas Jefferson High School, becoming a full-time employee two weeks after receiving his diploma.
“I started June 17, 1978,” he said. “I began working with the roofing and flooring crews, learning from the ground up, and did a number of jobs. I was very well-versed in the business. Dad was very steadfast that I wouldn’t be just the boss’ son. I had to work hard and then some.”
Slencak added: “Employees respect him so much because he did those jobs.”
Tim has embraced many duties over four decades-plus, and eventually succeeded his father. The Peters Township resident was promoted to president and CEO on Feb. 1, 2021 – 2/1/21 – when Ed was founder and chairman. Father and son worked within close proximity for 44 years, a familial and professional bond that enhanced CentiMark.
“We’re all different,” Tim said. “He had his strengths and weaknesses, and I certainly had my strengths and weaknesses. But we worked together so long that we were able to complement one another.
“Dad was more on the sales side, the big picture. I’m a little more conservative. But that worked.”
After an inauspicious beginning, things have worked out well for CentiMark.