DACA Specialty Services

DACA Specialty Services was founded in 1978 with a focus on delivering best-in-class painting applications for the new construction and maintenance needs of the industrial and commercial marketplace. By providing superior service to a select group of clients over the years, the business has expanded with its key customers to support fleet wide needs on a regional and national level. The firm is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and has added dynamic regional operations in Tennessee, Florida and Indiana to more responsively and economically serve the specialty service needs based of its client base.

DACA plans to continue expanding these regional operations in the future. Along with DACA’s regional expansion efforts, the company is also focused on building out a unique specialty services platform that is focused on delivering peripheral trades that complement its painting foundation for construction efforts. On the maintenance side, the target objective is a comprehensive asset preservation offering for reducing costs of managing an aging facility infrastructure.

“Our goal is to provide a unique specialty service offering through dynamic regional operations that are capable of adapting to each area’s specific customer needs,” says David Joiner, president of DACA’s industrial division. “All the while, we focus on maintaining the core DACA project management and service disciplines.”

There is a long-used saying in the military and plant operations world that a “good-looking ship is a good-running ship.”  For new construction efforts or existing plant capital projects, the final appearance of a new plant being turned over to the owner has the same impact on customer satisfaction. It is highly challenging in today’s marketplace with compressed schedules and tight budgets to coordinate the finishing trades effectively to deliver on the final product expectations.

The company’s commitment to go above and beyond for the customer has served as the backbone of DACA’s operation since Day One. According to the firm – one of only a handful of contractors in the country that have earned the Society of Protective Coatings (SSPC) QP1, QP2 and QS1 (ISO 9001) quality certifications – 95 percent of its customers are repeat customers, which the company attributes to its superior employee safety program commitment, consistent quality of applications, bottom line cost effectiveness, and commitment to customer satisfaction. These clients contract with DACA primarily for major commercial and industrial construction projects, manufacturing and industrial maintenance programs, and regional/national reimaging and renovation needs.

Building a unique specialty services platform

As set forth in its mission statement, DACA is committed to ensuring every project is planned and executed in a manner to guarantee safe, first-time quality, and tightly managed schedule and cost performance. On the backside of each project, a focus on lessons learned that drive ongoing training and development efforts are geared to stay at the top of its field.

Based on this foundation, the company is moving forward with the evolution of its specialty service platform for the new construction and maintenance markets respectively. For the new construction market, DACA has a foundation in place for serving the painting, wall covering/wall protection, concrete linings, tank linings, floor coatings and intumescent fireproofing needs of a project. The team has recently made a strategic addition and brought on a 25-year industry veteran to lead the company’s waterproofing and joints sealants division. The synergies are already paying off with customers in improved site economies with these combined offerings. Downstream additions on the horizon include an enhanced floor coatings offering for interiors and further expansion to address the entire exterior envelope of the building.

For the maintenance markets, DACA has assembled a team of professionals with extensive industry experience capable of providing the cleaning, painting, lead abatement, concrete restoration and tank maintenance needs of its clients. For the current multi-craft model with scaffolding, insulation and  painting, the painting is such a small part of the revenue model it tends to get lack of focus and quality of resources. With the DACA focus on asset preservation with improved proactive planning and budgeting, the company’s specialty services expansion is focused on:

• Environmentally efficient cleaning and surface preparation technologies to protect the environment and workforce along with minimize the impact on ongoing plant operations
• Extended life coatings technologies to improve ROI and rapid cure coatings to allow quicker return to service
• Insulating coatings to reduce maintenance costs and eliminate corrosion under insulation issues associated with conventional systems
• Roof coatings and select replacements to improve energy efficiency and offer total exterior envelope maintenance in concert with our waterproofing and joint sealants division.

Repeat business model

DACA has built its business by meeting and exceeding expectations with an aim on earning a preferred contractor relationship for the long-haul. On the general contractor side, the company’s goal is to strategically pursue firms that will benefit from DACA’s commitment to establish a dedicated management leader for ensuring continuous improvement from project to project. In addition, experience working with commercial and industrial clients on major construction projects that can integrate with peripheral trades to safely deliver cost-effective, first-time quality and on-time schedule delivery. The firm also serves as a one-stop resource for the direct-to-owner maintenance markets, with a goal to provide project specific solutions along with putting together regional and national preventive maintenance and facility upgrade programs. To complete such initiatives, DACA has a sophisticated Web-based management system linked to the client so the team can track the real-time progress of any annual maintenance program, major restoration requirement or upgrade.

Major League ambition

With such a wide range of expertise across these sectors, DACA has built an impressive portfolio during its 30 years in operation. The company has worked on stadiums, power plants, airports and hangars, data centers, high bay ceilings and complex steel structures, storage tanks, hospitals, government and military installations, containerboard and paper mills, food and beverage and pharmaceutical projects to name a few.

Recent major project successful endeavors include some of the largest projects in the Southeast including Baxter Pharmaceutical in Conyers, Georgia, Wacker Polysilicon in Cleveland, Tennessee, Southern Company Kemper Station in Mississippi, and Ft. Benning Hospital in Columbus, Georgia.

According to Joiner, DACA is focused on performing major projects that take advantage of the firm’s project management strengths, resource depth, complex project expertise and financial strength.

“It is a very exciting time for the company with two major growth initiatives in the early stages of evolution,” he explains. “We are committed to our continued regional expansion and the build out of a specialty service platform that better serves the needs of our clients.”

DACA Specialty Services will move forward with both at a pace that ensures the core values of the company over the past 30 years are maintained in the process.