With a long-hoped-for comeback underway, Detroit is seeing a construction boom as grand old buildings get restored and updated and new ones go up. Rolls Mechanical is there for it.
Rolls, based in Fenton, Michigan, has been involved with some of the most prominent recent construction projects in Detroit and the surrounding area, including the just-completed Godfrey Hotel Detroit in the city’s trendy Corktown neighborhood; the new Wayne State University Fieldhouse, where the Detroit Pistons G League team and the university’s basketball teams play; and the renovation and expansion of South Foundation Hall at Oakland University in the suburb of Rochester.
Rolls, founded in 1994 by Jim Rolls, owner and company president, is the top commercial contractor among this year’s HVAC All Stars, a new ACHR NEWS awards program. The company offers HVAC, plumbing, refrigeration, and electrical services and is licensed in 20 states.
“We just do things differently here. We are building a company big enough for everyone’s dreams, and we mean that!” wrote Karly Rolls, the founder’s daughter and the company vice president, in nominating Rolls Mechanical. “We have a culture that is based on building — relationships, apprentices, people, leaders, cities, legacy.”
Rolls Mechanical focuses on long-term relationships with its clients and developing and promoting its own talent. The company still retains its first major client as well as its first employee.
Rolls won a Rheem Difference Maker Award this year and was a Detroit Free Press Michigan Top Workplace in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
“We’re the best team doing the best work for the best customers,” Karly Rolls said during an interview, echoing the company’s motto. The company has no marketing budget, she said, but relies on its relationships and reputation.
“We go in to do a job for somebody, you know, we’re doing our very best to maintain that after, and do more work for them later on, and do service … and build up a great rapport with them,” Jim Rolls said.
Rolls has about 200 employees, some 170 of whom are on jobsites every workday, and about 130 trucks on the road.
“We promote a lot of training,” Jim Rolls said. “We’ll send people out of state to get specialized certificates and training on different things so that they’re factory-trained on large chillers and big air conditioning units, boilers, burners, that sort of thing.”
Jim Rolls has been in HVACR for more than 45 years — since he was hired while in his teens to service residential refrigerators and freezers.
“I started at the bottom with that, and then learned that I didn’t like that,” he said. “As soon as I could get into commercial, I got into commercial.
He trained at a vocational high school, with some outside courses, and on the job. He was with Pipefitters Local 636, part of a union for journeymen and apprentices in plumbing, pipefitting, and related services, for six years before starting his business.
“I worked for multiple companies in the Detroit area, doing service, install,” he said. “I did all commercial service and heat and air conditioning, refrigeration.”
He was drawn to the technology of the systems he worked on, the way the job brought him to different places and interesting buildings, and the challenge of putting it all together and making it hum.
“Everything you install is different,” he said. “Every job’s got its own custom features that it has to use. You’re working outdoors, indoors. You’re working pretty much all over the state or out of state. So you get to travel a lot, do different things.”
Jim Rolls has seen the transition from mechanical to electronic controls, and more recently to computerized systems. He has an appreciation for all of it.
“The computers are great. I love all of that, what they do with it,” he said. “But the old basic systems were terrific back then to work on.”
Though his days of climbing 30 feet up a ladder are over, he said, Jim Rolls still gets out in the field.
“I go out and help guys and see what they’re doing and all that,” he said.
Karly Rolls has worked in the Rolls office for nine years, but before that put in three years as a shop hand, apprentice, and maintenance technician. She has an associate’s degree in HVACR technology as well as a master’s in business administration.
Like her dad, she has a love for the field work.
“You can install the same unit 20 different places, and it’s 20 different applications and 20 unique customers that are doing cool things in their own space that we get to take care of,” she said. “And it moves super, super fast, and it’s exciting to solve that many problems for people.”
HONORABLE MENTION: A Total Comfort Group technician takes a moment to pose for a photo while working on a York rooftop unit. Total Comfort Group, of Eatontown, New Jersey, won an HVAC All-Stars honorable mention in the commercial contracting category. (Courtesy of Total Comfort Group)