When Dynamic Fire Protection Services was called to get the fire suppression system at Montrose Regional Health’s helipad back online, the job was important for an obvious reason.
Then it became personal.
Company founder Gordon Mull suffered a cardiac emergency while the helipad was unavailable. Instead of being flown directly from the hospital to Grand Junction, Mull had to be transported by ambulance to Montrose Regional Airport before he could be transferred by helicopter.
For the employees at Dynamic, getting the helipad back in service last August took on a new importance.
“We were trying to get the helicopter going, and it personally affected us that it wasn’t going,” said Ethan Mobley, vice president of Dynamic Fire Protection Services.
Dynamic completed the work and returned the helipad’s fire suppression system to service.
It’s the kind of work the Montrose company has been doing for two decades.
Dynamic Fire Protection Services is marking its 20th anniversary this year, having grown from a small operation run out of Gordon and Melinda Mull’s barn into a company with about 28 employees, 52 active projects and roughly 1,600 service locations.
The Mulls started the company after purchasing Riverside Sprinkler Company, a small fire protection business based in Dolores that primarily served residential customers in Telluride. Gordon Mull left his job with Arrow Fire in Phoenix and moved to the Western Slope to run the business.
In the early years, Dynamic had only a few employees and operated out of the Mulls’ barn. Mobley remembers a much different operation when he arrived in Montrose in 2013.
“They were in a barn,” Mobley said.
Even sharing computer files could involve saving them to thumb drives and physically moving them from one computer to another.
Mobley came to Dynamic with a background in architecture, urban design and engineering. He had previously worked for Arizona State University and later Michael Baker International, where his work included large projects for the Department of Defense and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Dynamic recruited him to bring engineering work in-house.
Around the same time, the company moved out of the barn and into its current Montrose facility. Mobley remembers the building needing plenty of work of its own before Dynamic could move in. It had previously been used to process fan blades, and the interior was covered in black dust.
His first task was helping get the building operational.
Since then, the scale of the business has changed considerably.
Dynamic now handles the design, installation, service and inspection of fire sprinkler systems. Its work can range from custom homes and apartment buildings to schools, commercial properties and large public facilities.
“Every project is different,” Mobley said.
That can mean figuring out how to route sprinkler piping through a new building already crowded with electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems, all while meeting fire codes and trying to satisfy architects and owners who generally don’t want to see the pipes.
The company employs two engineers and has separate installation, service and inspection divisions. That allows Dynamic to design and install a system and continue inspecting and maintaining it after construction is complete. The business employs about 28 people overall.
“You’re installing something that you hope never has to be used,” said Mike Hoerr, superintendent. “But if it does, you want it to function as it should and save people and property.”
Among Dynamic’s recent projects are the Montrose County North Campus which is still under construction, apartment developments and Montrose Classical Academy. The company also completed fire protection work on Montrose Regional Health’s ambulatory care center.
School projects can present a different challenge because of the short construction window.
Dynamic has worked on several school projects, sometimes having only a matter of weeks to design and install systems before students arrived.
When that happens, Mobley said, the company moves the project up the list and puts the people needed on it to meet the deadline.
Having enough skilled workers to do that has required Dynamic to develop many of them itself.
The company currently has eight active apprentices in a four-year program through the American Fire Sprinkler Association. Apprentices combine classroom work with on-the-job training as they learn the trade.
Experienced fire sprinkler fitters can be difficult to find in Western Colorado, Mobley said, so Dynamic has increasingly hired people without previous sprinkler experience and trained them.
Developing a worker into an experienced fitter can take closer to seven years when the apprenticeship and additional years of field experience are combined.
“We home grow our staff,” Mobley said.
The company’s apprenticeship program also reflects something Mobley believes will become increasingly important as technology changes other industries.
Much of Dynamic’s work still has to be done by trained people in the field.
“We don’t have robots that can install pipe,” he said.
The work involves more than putting pipe together. Fitters have to understand fire codes and the requirements for systems designed to protect lives and property.
For workers who complete the training, Hoerr said, it can also provide a well-paying career without requiring a four-year college degree.
Dynamic has also been able to retain many of its workers. Some employees have been with the company for more than a decade, including one who has worked there for about 17 years.
Mike Hoerr, the company’s superintendent, said having the right people in place has been central to handling the company’s workload.
Mobley said he tries to give employees responsibility over their areas rather than keeping every decision at the top.
“He’s an expert at delegating to us and then trusting that we’re intelligent enough to handle what he’s given us the role of doing,” Hoerr said.
Dynamic is also trying to make the growing workload easier to manage.
With roughly 1,600 service locations, the company is developing an internal app to organize information on properties, previous service calls, inspections and the systems installed at each location. The goal is to move records that once filled file cabinets into one system employees can access in the field.
At the same time, Mobley said the market around Dynamic is changing.
Larger companies have begun taking a greater interest in Western Colorado and acquiring trade businesses as the region grows. That means a locally owned company that once competed primarily against other regional contractors can increasingly find itself competing with much larger organizations.
Mobley said Dynamic’s advantage is that its employees live in the communities where they work.
“We raise our families here,” he said.
The schools, hospitals, homes and businesses where Dynamic installs and maintains systems are often the same places its employees and their families use.
The company is also going through a leadership transition. Gordon and Melinda Mull have announced their retirement, and Mobley said he has been running the company for about the past year. Details of the longer-term leadership structure are still being worked out.
For now, the company that started with wa few employees in a barn has a workforce of about 28, eight apprentices learning the trade and dozens of projects underway at any given time.
And much of its work will spend years unnoticed above ceilings and behind walls.
That’s generally the idea.
“We always say people first,” Mobley said. “If it does [operate], you want it to function as it should and save people and property.”
Justin Tubbs is the Montrose Business Times editor. He can be reached by email at justin@montrosebusinesstimes.com or by phone at 970-765-0915 or mobile at 254-246-2260.
