Allan Heydorn, Editor
Alan Curtis Industry Service Award, Michael Nawa IF FOR NO other reason, Michael Nawa receives Pavement’s 2020 Alan Curtis Industry Service Award as possibly the originator – and certainly one of the originators — of the National Pavement Expo conference program, which has driven the event and helped thousands of contractors succeed in the paving and pavement maintenance industry. “I wanted to get what I needed out of the show, so I made my opinions known to people in charge,” he says. “I tried to make sure there were things there for everyone — whether they were new to the business or whether they had been in the business for years.” And that’s outside of everything he’s done advocating for the sweeping industry. In addition to being involved in National Contract Sweepers Institute and Contract Sweepers Institute — both early incarnations of North American Power Sweeping Association (NAPSA) — he has served on the NAPSA board and was a founding member and serves on the board of World Sweeping Association. In 1993 Nawa was named to the Pavement Advisory Board, where he began a 27-year run of offering insights into the direction of the magazine and the direction and content of the NPE conference. He steps down from the board this year.
An NPE Education Advocate Nawa’s influence in the industry began shortly after he started in the sweeping business in 1978 when he acquired a Schwarze Mini-American round-tank, no-dump, hand-crank sweeper. He’d started his original company, Industrial Grounds Maintenance (IGM), in 1976 as a landscaping business in Reading, PA. Sweeping was “a natural add-on”
to pick up mowed grass from parking lots and to offer an additional service to properties he visited regularly. By the mid-1980s sweeping had outpaced landscaping, but he still wasn’t making much money – or any money as he tells it. He learned about National Pavement Expo in Nashville and decided to attend what was the second show. “I was broke,” Nawa says. “I didn’t have any money to go but it was something I felt was important, so I went and I slept two nights in my car across the street from the convention.” He met NPE founder Bob Woltering (who also founded Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction) and told him how impressed he was with the show. “I also told him I was underwhelmed by what it wasn’t — there was no educational function and as much as I needed to learn about the equipment, I needed education on just about everything else more,” Nawa says. “I made my wishes known to Bob about the need for a conference. He said, ‘Okay, well you’re in charge’,” which was pretty typical Bob.” At that point Woltering had already had some contact with Jeff Stokes and Brad Humphrey and their consulting company, Eagle Flight. He put Nawa in touch with Eagle Flight and paid for Nawa to fly to Maryland to witness Humphrey and Stokes in person and make a recommendation. “I told him they were great.” The next year, Stokes and Humphrey organized and formed the core of NPE’s first conference program.
Sweeping is the Foundation “I’m a sweeper at heart. It’s what I’ve done for 44 years,” Nawa says, and sweeping was the core of IGM. But Nawa
Michael Nawa
saw the need to diversify — a Nawa mantra — which created conflict in the family business. In 2000, Nawa parted ways with IGM and, with wife Judy, started Custom Maintenance Services (CMS) — essentially a one-stop business for any exterior work needed on a property. “It took me a long time to come to the realization that sweeping wasn’t a stand-alone business. I had the opinion that I needed two or three more sweeping jobs to make the money I wanted. But I eventually realized that I had the sweeping jobs and didn’t need any more sweeping jobs. I just needed more jobs from my sweeping customers.” When he and Judy started CMS, they did whatever work they could find. "I offered to do it all," he told Pavement in 2005. “We started out by saying 'Whatever you need done, we'll do it. Of all the pavement maintenance services, sweeping provides a very strong foundation for what comes next. If you're sweeping a property three, five, or seven times a week, which is fairly common for a sweeping contractor, you're the company that sees that property every day or almost every day. Your sweeper driver is in the position to say, 'There's a light out' or 'A stop sign has been knocked down.' And if you see it first there's no reason you shouldn't be first in line to fix it.”
www.ForConstructionPros.com/Pavement • PAVEMENT • February 2020
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