*This article was provided to the Vancouver Business Journal by Skanska USA Building, Inc.
Celebrating diversity, inclusion and culture in an organization not only creates diverse ideas and innovations but can also lead a business to success. For Daniel Miranda, a local metal fabrication contractor and owner of Vancouver’s Just Right Heating & Cooling, diversity is at the heart and soul of his company and the key to his success.
This diversity story starts with business, and maybe even more importantly, life mentorship. Companies and business leaders know a primary principle of success is to find and retain the most optimal teams of employees. When Miranda moved from Mexico to the U.S., he went to work and soon received an inspirational mentor in the company owner, a successful businessman. Shortly after, he began to model his business approach after his mentor and recalls a memorable lesson about building relationships. Miranda’s boss had him pick out four customers in need of replacing their aging or broken furnaces, to provide this service in-kind. The results were invaluable — that day, he learned how to develop and grow lifetime customer loyalty.
Miranda learned about the importance of mentoring from his mentor and he also learned business acumen.
He then decided to take the lessons learned in mentoring and his emerging experience further. Seven years ago, Miranda struck out on his own, launching Just Right Heating & Cooling, which precisely fashions metal ductwork on commercial construction sites. His business has grown steadily, along with his approach to being both a mentor and a mentee. Through the power of mentoring and prototyping, he cites larger companies such as Apollo Mechanical Contractors for teaching him new metal fabrication practices and how to use new and efficient technology to manage multi-step materials’ processes.
Miranda also learned to better place insulation within the ducts, drastically reducing waste from 40% to about 6%, saving process time and eliminating waste that would otherwise go into landfills. Through encouragement in mentorship, he acquired a new laser cutting table that speeds production, exacts specific measurements and increases work efficiencies for his staff.
Miranda earned three journeyman cards after joining the Local No. 16 for sheet metal workers as a third-generation metal worker. At the union hall, he began to teach night classes, training shop apprentices, to impart this knowledge onto others. This is what he had learned and wanted to pass along when he started mentoring.
Now, Miranda and his company are doing important work, helping to build the new Mountain View High School (MVHS) and working to foster a diverse workforce. He notes that business and construction knowledge is ever evolving.
“We have tough customers and tough competition,” Miranda said. He believes being certified as a 100-percent minority-owned business not only gives him a business edge, but it creates opportunity.
Miranda said he is proud to be a part of the Mountain View project as it means he’s working to help build the neighborhood high school his children have recently attended. His oldest son Orion was part of MVHS’s 2019 graduating class and his second son, Sebastian, just graduated in Spring 2020 from Mountain View.
Miranda’s Just Right Heating & Cooling was the perfect business partner for Skanska USA Building, Inc., because of the company’s expertise, its local relationships and its commitment to diversity in its workforce.
At Skanska’s large Portland International Airport project, Miranda partnered with other firms as a subcontractor where he provided the specially shaped ductwork in the brand-new Concourse E.
“We provided 28,000 pounds of metal and insulation there,” and adds his small company rises to the occasion for these projects because he can partner with other firms who can teach him how to constantly improve and scale his business.
“Daniel fits in perfectly with Skanska’s overarching approach to cultivating and improving diversity at each of our 30-plus project work sites around Southwest Washington and throughout Oregon,” said Trevor Wyckoff, Skanska‘s vice president and account manager overseeing the new 41-acre build at Mountain View High School.
Wyckoff adds that a key to Skanska’s local success is its broad personnel investments in vendor diversity.
“To attract and hire diverse workers, we conduct consistent outreach and engagement, use inclusive procurement strategies and we provide technical training and support,” Wyckoff said. “We also want to retain this diverse talent by creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels free to be themselves at work.”
At the PDX project in Portland, Miranda met Skanska’s Ryan Richards, who continued the cycle of mentoring Miranda and his employees.
“I learned how Daniel embedded himself at the PDX work site in positive ways and now here in the Southwest Washington community,” Richards said. “Miranda’s taken what he’s learned and fosters his employees by helping them with education and training. He and his employees also joined up with Friends of Trees, where his company underwrote planting perhaps hundreds of trees in Clark County on their personal time. He also helps his employees find housing and mentors them to find local apprenticeships to advance their careers.”
“We recognize we’re part of a large and diverse network here in Southwest Washington, and we are so fortunate to be,” Miranda said. “We have to always give back, always give back.”
