Preferred Exterior has operated in the New York area for more than 53 years, earning awards and recognition for its high-quality work. Photos: Preferred Exterior/Facebook.

New York conjures up a number of images that resonate universally: breathtaking buildings, pizza, and tough, resilient people willing to put in the work to get the job done.

Preferred Exterior embraces all of those qualities – except making pizza, but it’s certainly done its part to keep restaurants, grocery stores and more safe and dry with award-winning commercial roofing.

“We work very hard,” said Preferred Exterior President Frank Nicola. “Myself and my brother, and a lot of my staff puts in 60 to 70 hours a week on average. You know, the people that work here, everybody's got good work ethic. But that was instilled in us at a young age, and that is really what drives us.”

It’s that work ethic that has transformed the company in the past 13 years from a $1 million operation to an enterprise that generates more than $20 million annually, and receives multiple manufacturer awards for consistently completing high-quality work.

Along with commercial work, Preferred Exterior handles high-end residential projects that have earned praise from manufacturers like GAF.

Building Up Brooklyn and Beyond

Located in New Hyde Park, a village on Long Island, Preferred Exterior was founded in 1969 by Nicola’s father. Nicola started working summers there at age 14 and did so until graduating high school. He pursued a post-secondary education for a year before returning to work full-time around the age of 20.

“A good work ethic is really the main thing,” he said. “It was instilled in us, myself and my brother as kids. My father threw me a shovel at 14 and that's how I started. I feel like I didn't appreciate it back then … but definitely as you get older into your 20s and 30s.”

In his late 20s, Nicola took over the family business along with his brother, Matt, who serves as vice president. It was tough work, but they stuck it out, helping it grow and expand.

“Essentially we were an eight-man operation doing about one residential roof a day, that’s how we started and that’s what I was doing – running the residential crew,” he said. “And then around four years into it, I went over to the guys at (formerly Allied Building Products) and the coastal guys who run Carlisle and made a push to get certified.”

Entering into commercial roofing was just what Preferred Exterior needed. Through networking and taking any job regardless of how big or small it was, the company’s client base grew and its name was passed around by satisfied customers. That networking started bringing in larger jobs as well. Thanks to some friends with connections to the dioceses of Rockville Centre and Brooklyn, the company started doing work on churches and schools.

Today, Preferred Exterior works mostly in the commercial market, but also takes on residential jobs, including roof replacement, slate repair, ventilation systems and residential flat roofing. To that end, Preferred Exterior is a Master Elite contractor with GAF. It has a healthy mix of reroofing and new construction jobs that are tackled by specialized crews.

Roughly 50 employees are split into seven different crews, including high-end residential, residential roofing and two commercial flat roof crews. Nicola said there are a handful of workers who can do both commercial and residential, but he finds keeping everyone in their specialized areas makes for smoother jobs.

“Each crew, they all do the same thing every day. The commercial guys do commercial work every day. The metal guys, tinsmiths, do metal work,” he said. “Everyone's got a designated job and they constantly do it. It's very rare they get mixed together … we just operate better that way.”

To its credit, Preferred Exterior has weathered the workforce shortage well by retaining the workers it hires through advancement opportunities and competitive wages. Employees are also given a bevy of benefits, including medical, dental and 401(k). Workers are shown that they’re valuable through an ongoing investment into their safety.

“All my guys, as expensive as it is, continuously get every different level of OSHA, from OSHA 30 to 40 to whatever, every year,” Nicola said. “It's been a new addition that's required to work in New York City, and we're constantly keeping up with all new safety requirements.”

This warehouse project included the installation of 300,000 square feet of Johns Manville TPO.

Earning High Marks

All of these investments into its employees translates into high-quality workmanship. To ensure every job is done properly, a five-member office staff helps coordinate efforts and job supervisors are constantly checking projects. A meeting is held every week with middle management to check on progress and any issues that may have cropped up.

“There's an infrastructure that gives people the ability to have the time to do these type of things like quality control, checking jobs daily,” Nicola said.

The results speak for themselves, as do the awards from manufacturers. In 2022, Preferred Exterior won the Carlisle Perfection Award, which recognizes roofers whose quality installations results in warranty claim performance raking in the top 5% of all U.S. and Canadian applicators. This is the second year in a row Preferred Exterior received the award.

Carlisle also gave the company its Fleeceback Champions designation for the fourth consecutive year in 2021, and last year, Preferred Exterior received two of the manufacturer’s Centurion 100 Awards, earned for receiving a 10 out of 10 quality rating on over 100 roof installs.

Along with Carlisle, Preferred Exterior’s work on the residential side has earned it a GAF President’s Club Award in 2022, its eighth straight recognition of its leadership and high-quality service.

“It’s always nice to get recognition and receive awards, and it looks good. But … we're not looking back at the things we've accomplished. We're constantly looking forward to do more and do better,” Nicola said.

To receive these awards amidst a pandemic and supply shortages is a testament to the company’s adaptability. To keep operations flowing during tough times, Preferred Exterior bought and stored material when available and had to rebid work due to price changes. Nowadays, the supply issue isn’t as bad, but still requires extra planning efforts, like shipping materials to wherever they’re needed to complete a job. This adaptability has even shone through in its marketing efforts over the years.

“We still have an internet presence to keep our name out there, but the business has become more referral and relationship driven than anything,” he said. “Way back when I started doing this, we were in the Yellow Pages ... now we’re on Facebook and Instagram accounts, those are huge tools because it keeps us current.”

All these efforts are culminating into a thriving commercial and residential roofing business that is earning contracts to work on some major projects in 2023, including a 600,000-square-foot logistics center on Long Island and high-end residential homes.

Even so, Nicola said he knows the company isn’t perfect and mistakes slip through. What sets companies like his apart, though, is owning up to those mistakes, and he encourages other contractors to do the same.

“Sometimes it's how you handle a bad situation that puts you above other contractors. It's when things go bad on a job site where it shows how strong companies are, those that rise up, because a lot of companies are not honest with their mistakes,” he said. “They do make mistakes and they walk away from them. And that's not something we do.”