Brad Flack, winner of the International Erosion Control Association (IECA) 2015 Young Professional of the Year Award, has accomplished much in the decade he’s been in the industry. He catapulted from knowing nothing about stormwater mitigation to becoming a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC) and a Certified Erosion, Sediment and Storm Water Inspector (CESSWI). He started his own company, Storm-Tex Services in Spring, TX, providing industrial, construction, and post-construction stormwater quality management and training services in seven US states and two sites in Alberta, Canada, with 10 employees.
Flack serves as an IECA mentor, chairman of the IECA Region 1 education committee’s stormwater management track, and president of IECA’s South Central chapter. He is also president of EnviroCert International (ECI) Region 6, a member of the ECI Certified Professional in Industrial Stormwater Management steering committee, a CESSWI review course instructor, a CPESC review course instructor-in-training, a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) EnviroMentor, and a member of the TCEQ Houston Area Small Business Advisory Council.
Flack earned a B.A. from the University of Houston, majoring in history and Spanish with the intent to teach. He’s doing that now through customer education and industry lectures. His bilingualism gives Flack a competitive edge in a region where an increasing number of people who speak Spanish need stormwater compliance help and can’t afford high-end consulting firms.
Doing industry training “opens up my playbook, but there is enough business to go around,” notes Flack, adding that teaching benefits him by setting him up as an authority. He sees it as his responsibility to pass his knowledge on to the next generation: “If we don’t protect the environment appropriately, passing on the knowledge of how to do that in an easily digestible manner, then our kids will have to learn it from scratch.” Flack also “pays it forward” on a personal level. Through his church, he directs Hands and Feet Honduras, a missionary program providing humanitarian and spiritual assistance to the impoverished village of La Ceiba.
What He Does Day to Day
Flack’s days are spent dealing with email, ensuring company crews are lined up for the day, working with project managers on work flow, and conducting site visits.
What Led Him Into This Line of Work
In 2002—the same year Flack married his childhood sweetheart Jennifer—stormwater mitigation became enforceable in the Houston area. Management at the company where he worked, which specialized in sediment and erosion control, recognized a potential revenue stream in stormwater management and asked him to learn about it. Flack was a quick study, building on his knowledge of erosion and sediment control with skills in site inspections, permitting, and best management practices and then construction and industrial details. Flack started Storm-Tex Services in January 2013 as a spinoff from Atkinson Engineers, where he had been employed.
What He Likes Best About His Work
Helping clients understand why their site is required to have stormwater control measures and doing so with the most efficient and cost-effective methods and materials to achieve the best results for their site is his greatest joy, says Flack. Although the products Flack uses are site specific, he says he’s found great success on industrial sites with Filtrexx’s Metaloxx metals removal log for metal load reduction in stormwater runoff.
Flack says his greatest joy—customer education—also is his greatest challenge. “I want them to fully understand what it is they have on their site, how it works, what they need, and why. Most people don’t register stormwater as an issue on their radar screen unless a regulator or someone like me brings it to their attention,” he says. He learned from a Dale Carnegie course to approach a situation from the other person’s perspective. That might mean addressing budgetary concerns with realistic expectations of what his company can do based on site conditions. He offers incentives such as longer invoicing periods or discounts if customers agree to let his company handle stormwater mitigation from that point on. The moment when it finally “clicks” for them as they understand what they need to do to get into and stay in compliance “is worth every minute of conversation,” he notes.
