The Olympics may be over, but there’s still a USA team to support on the global stage!

By Emma Peterson. 

This November, IFD will be hosting the 29th World Championship of Young Roofers and Team USA needs your support! 

The International Federation of Roofing Professionals is hosting their World Championship of Young Roofers and their 72nd Congress this year in Austria, from November 13 to 15, 2024. This event is an incredible showcase of trade skills and competencies with participants coming from around the world to compete in the disciplines of facade, flat roof, pitched roof or metal roof. This competition is hosted every two years and is open to teams of professionals who are under 28 years old, in an effort to encourage professional development and interest in the trades.  

This year, a team from the U.S. has been assembled to compete for the first time! Heidi J. Ellsworth got the chance to interview some of the driving forces behind the creation of a U.S. team, Gary Howes of Durable Slate, R.J. Radobenko, of the Global Roofing Group and Steve Little from KPost Roofing and Waterproofing! Gary shared a bit about what he knows about the competition and event, “The International Federation for the Roofing Trades is an organization made up of 26 countries. Its membership comes and goes, but it's been a pretty well-established organization since the 70s.”  

He compared the IFD to the United States’ National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) as they both see like-minded professionals coming together to solve larger industry issues. While they work on different levels, they have a huge focus on education and training. Gary shared, “A big part of what the IFD supports and works with is training and education apprenticeship programs for young folks to come into the industry because everybody throughout the world has the same problem we have here in the U.S. when it comes to getting young folks interested in our industry.” 

When it came to building a U.S. team for this event, R.J. was ready for the challenge. He shared a bit of the behind the scenes of the process, “We actually had a hard time building our team. We have about 150 metal installers and of them I had maybe 20 in the age group. Of that group I had seven that could travel internationally, but half of that group had family obligations. So, of the remaining three, I only had one that knew what the heck we were doing.” What he’s referencing to here is the knowledge that needed to be gained to go from working in the American industry to the European industry. Steve explained, “R.J. talked on one of our planning calls about the tools that he's using and they must be European tools, and everything is in metrics. 
So we're really having to re-educate each of us with the type of tools and things that they need that are done in Europe.”  

But NRCA is stepping up and helping the team prepare for this. Steve added, “The folks at the NRCA are doing a really good job of getting us information. We actually have product coming from Europe from Sika to meet the criteria of what we need to make the program work for the competition.” And the team is feeling confident in spite of the challenges they are facing. R.J. shared, “The group that we have that's going to attend is pretty confident that they can tackle this task pretty fast and learn as quick as possible.
We have a pretty good training platform where we're training in our training building every Friday or building up our mockup model.” Overall, the team has been working hard to perform well at the competition and proudly represent the U.S. roofing community!  

Learn more about this incredible championship and congress at the International Federation of the Roofing Trade’s website!