Summer 2019

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WASHING BABE-RAHAM LINCOLN For instance, Bockman recently pressure washed the DC Armory, which opened in 1941 as the headquarters, armory and training facility for the DC National Guard. Commonly identified by its domed roof, is a 10,000-seat multipurpose arena with 70,000 square feet of drill floor, the Armory today is Washington, DC’s most versatile venues, serving as an auditorium, arena, big top and ballroom. “That’s the biggest project I’ve done, really,” Bockman said. “Limestone and…bigger than a football stadium.” “The project was over half a million,” he said. “I spent three and a half weeks on it.” Not unlike historic jobs, successfully completing big jobs, Bockman said, is also highly dependent on planning. “A lot of it is figuring out the fastest and most efficient way to do something with the least amount of manpower and the least amount of resources,” he said. “But the biggest thing on big jobs like stadiums is to make sure that you have access to water or enough water to feed your equipment. You have to make sure you have enough water access to run full out and non-stop…I’ve got pump systems to do 45 gallons per minute. In addition, I have all kinds of different and weird equipment that I either made or designed or created to do stadium jobs. I created a special surface cleaner and patented it – a modified a piece of equipment to do multiple things and which made a huge difference on a stadium jobs. We tripled our speed when I designed that on the second day of a big job that was eating our lunch. The first day, we got like two sections done… once you go through that, you say to yourself, ‘okay, what can I do to make it easier. You learn on the fly. Sometimes every couple hours you try something different just to get two more rows done in the same amount of time.” It’s not just getting the water on site but also getting the water where it needs to be. At the University of Maryland football stadium, for instance, Bockman needs equipment that allows him to get water hundreds of feet up to the top rows. “We had to run lines 250 feet up to the very top of it and then 150 to 200 feet down,” Bockman said. “So minimizing how many times you have to go up and down the stairs to clean – well, you are going to think deeply on that.” Once again, pressure washers nationwide wishing to ramp up from residential jobs to big commercial jobs like football stadiums can learn a lot from Bockman’s experience and advice. Which includes perhaps to consider NOT going in to that particular line of business after all. “Everybody would like to get a job like that, but are you really in a position to do it?”Bockman questioned. “In addition to questions about adequate equipment, there’s also the financial side of it too. “If you want to take on a $50,000- to-$75,000 project, can you cover the overhead to get through the project? Can you cover payroll? Equipment, chemicals, and gas? And you’re probably not making any other income if you have everybody on your crew out there, so there’s no other jobs coming in every day to make money…Can you go three to four weeks without any money coming in at all? And, after that, another 30 days to get paid? Not getting paid for a few months would put most guys out of business.” So how did you do it? “I learned by trial by error or trial by fire,” Bockman said. “It’s a calculated risk and you take it in some cases. “I’ve made big mistakes on jobs…I screwed up one bid on an apartment complex of three-story townhouses, 275 total,” he said. “I was tired while I was running the numbers and wrote up a price not realizing until we got on the job that I calculated square footage for one story, not three. So I did the job for a third of the real price. I think I made $300 on that whole job after labor and materials. I was like ‘don’t make that mistake again.’” Bockman’s service to America was most recently on display during his recent tenure as an appointed member on the Commission on Veterans Affairs. Though he describes his two-year term on the commission as “boring as hell,” with more time spent in meetings listening to presentation than actually taking action, he said he did his best to promote the commission and get it out there on social media so more people recognize that we even have a commission and its programs. “They move so slow,” Bockman bemoaned. “I could have renewed it and stayed on but I figured there’s a lot of things I can do community service-wise and helping people on my own rather than sitting in meetings.” He has done so by recently testifying to Congress for a new training program for veterans that teach them how to deal with government contracting for free, and which also helps veterans network with the powers-that-be who facilitate these contracts. Bockman was also recently recruited to participate in a new veterans-in-business online training program. What’s the latest from Bockman? Well, after decades of running six companies: Henry’s Housework Inc., Commercial Restorations, Extreme Marketing Solutions, a training company called the Contractors Foundation, and two companies that operate online stores and internet directories, he was (at press time) in the process of merging all of his pressure wash businesses into one powerhouse of an entity. “The new company is powerwashcompany.com and it has the ability to do power wash servicing on a nationwide scale,” he said, highlighting setting up different branches, working with other contractors, and lead generation. “I can launch a company in any place easily.” One can’t help but expect that another venture related to his service to the USA is also in the offing for Bockman. 30 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER <strong>2019</strong>
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Summer 2019

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