Why We Created the Artisan Resource Library
Over the years, I have spent a lot of time answering questions. Some come from homeowners trying to understand what is happening in their house. Some come from other contractors working through an unusual project. Others come from apprentices or young people who are interested in the trades and want to learn.
I have spent a good portion of my life learning how things work. Some of that happened in college and technical school, but much of it has happened where it does for most people in construction: in the field, working alongside other people, solving problems and learning from experience.
That process never really ends. Construction changes. Codes change. Products and technology improve. Every project is a little different, and there will always be someone who knows something you don't. I think being good at a trade has as much to do with continuing to learn as it does with what you already know.
At some point, it made sense to create a place where we could share more of those conversations. That is what this Resource Library is intended to be.
I hate seeing people get taken advantage of simply because they don't understand plumbing or construction. You shouldn't have to know the trades to feel confident making decisions about your own property. Whether you are buying your first home, have owned one for decades or suddenly find yourself responsible for repairs you have never dealt with before, you should be able to understand the problem in front of you, the options available and what you are paying for.
There is a lot of information we encounter every day that is useful well beyond a single service call or project. Rather than keeping that information inside our own company or repeating the same conversations one on one, we want to make more of it available to anyone who can use it.
Always Learning
At Artisan Group, we place a lot of value on continuing education, but that extends beyond formal classes and code books. We are always paying attention to new tools, fittings, materials, suppliers, equipment and methods that could help us do better work.
Sometimes the improvement is simple. A better fitting or a more serviceable layout can make life easier for the person who has to work on that system ten years from now. Other changes are much larger. Hydrovac technology has given us another way to approach excavation around existing utilities and sensitive areas. Advances in tankless water heating and water treatment continue to create new options for homes and businesses. Better equipment and diagnostic tools can change how quickly and accurately we find a problem in the first place.
We don't believe newer automatically means better. We do believe in understanding what is available and being willing to change when there is a safer, more reliable or more effective way to do something.
That same mindset means learning from other people in the industry. Construction is too broad for any one person to know everything. We work with contractors, suppliers, manufacturers and tradespeople whose experience is different from ours, and some of the most useful knowledge in this business gets passed from one person to another.
The Next Generation
Education is also important inside our own company. I had people who took the time to teach me, and today I have the opportunity to do the same for apprentices and younger people entering the trades. I want them to see construction as a skilled profession with real opportunity, but also to understand the responsibility that comes with becoming good at it.
That means learning more than how to complete a task. It means understanding why something is done a certain way, knowing when to ask questions, caring about safety and considering the person who will own, use or eventually service the work you leave behind.
We believe the way we take care of our team ultimately affects the way our team takes care of everyone else. If we expect high standards in the field, our responsibility is to give our people the training, equipment, support and working environment that allow them to meet those standards. Building a good company and building good tradespeople are closely connected.
Our Community
Southern Utah is our home. It is where we are raising our family, building our business and developing relationships that extend well beyond an individual project.
The work puts us in people's lives under just about every circumstance. Sometimes we arrive when a home is flooding or an underground line has failed and someone needs help making sense of a stressful situation. Other times, we get to be part of something exciting: a new home, an upgrade someone has planned for years or an unusual project that gives us a genuinely difficult problem to solve.
The scale changes too. One day the right solution might involve a relatively simple plumbing repair. Another might require excavation, hydrovac equipment or several parts of our company working together on a complicated project. I enjoy the technical side of all of it, particularly the jobs that require us to think, adapt and solve something difficult.
But the longer I do this, the more I appreciate that the equipment and technical work are only part of it. This business has introduced us to homeowners, tradespeople, apprentices, suppliers, contractors and neighbors we might never have known otherwise. Those relationships matter to us, and we want to build Artisan in a way that reflects that.
That is also what I want this Resource Library to reflect. We will talk about plumbing, water, excavation, construction, new technology, maintenance and the trades. Some subjects will be basic homeowner questions. Others will get considerably more technical. When we find something interesting, learn something useful or come across a question worth answering, this gives us a place to share it.
We certainly don't know everything, and we don't intend to write as though we do. We are going to keep learning from the people around us, share what we know and hopefully make some of that information useful to somebody else.
Derek Vogel
Artisan Group
