Sheet metal industry leaders gather to secure the future at Partners in Progress 2026

The future of the unionized sheet metal industry depends on the things that matter equally to both local unions and signatory employers: growing market share, steady work opportunities, investments in apprenticeship programs and more. That’s why, on February 17-18, 2026, the SMART-SMACNA Partners in Progress Conference brought together leaders from across the trade. For two days, union leaders and employers focused exclusively on bettering the industry — for SMART members and SMACNA contractors alike.

The 2026 Partners in Progress theme was “We Lead Together to Deliver Results.” That sentiment rang true throughout the conference, with keynote speakers and panels demonstrating both the success and the importance of partnering across North America to secure our future.

General President Coleman, SMACNA President Todd Hill reaffirm commitment to the industry

In 2025, the sheet metal industry faced a variety of challenges: federal policymaking that impacted megaprojects in the United States, tariffs that affected jobs on both sides of the United States-Canada border, a U.S. government shutdown and more. But thanks to SMART and SMACNA’s shared commitment to the UNIONIZED sheet metal industry, the two organizations are maintaining their focus on the progress we can make — together.

SMART General President Michael Coleman and SMACNA President Todd Hill, a former union sheet metal worker, demonstrated that in their opening comments. 

“Everyone in this room is here because we care about this industry and its future. No matter where we come from or who we represent — labor or management — we’re all committed to keeping this industry strong,” said General President Coleman. “Not just for ourselves, not just for today, but for the people who came before us and the ones who will come next.” 

In the past, Hill said, conflict between SMART and SMACNA made it difficult to achieve progress as a whole. That doesn’t benefit anyone, he noted — when the nonunion sector and bad-faith contractors grow stronger, we all lose. That’s why SMART and SMACNA worked together to change that relationship.

“Because of everyone’s efforts on both sides, we have continued to change our industry. The relationship between labor and management has never been stronger,” Hill said.

By working together, the two leaders said, SMART and SMACNA have put the unionized sheet metal industry on the front foot: staffing megaprojects, maintaining and expanding core work market share, and developing new jobsite leadership training initiatives. But, General President Coleman explained, we cannot rest. Hill and Coleman urged attendees to take advantage of the conference — both the networking opportunities and the breakout sessions — to fortify our trade’s foundation moving forward.

“We’ve accomplished a lot. As individual people, as local unions, as contractors, and together as SMART and SMACNA. But we also know that where we are today isn’t the finish line. We owe it to ourselves, and more importantly, we owe it to the next generation. We have to keep building on what we’ve started to secure the future of this industry,” Coleman said, adding:  

“What we have here is real. It’s worth protecting. And as long as we keep working together, I’m personally confident this industry’s best days are still ahead.” 

SMART, SMACNA leaders discuss the state of the industry during leadership panel

General President Coleman, SMART General Secretary-Treasurer John Daniel, SMACNA President Hill, Immediate Past SMACNA President Tom Martin and SMACNA CEO Frank Wall discussed the state of the industry and took audience questions during a Partners in Progress leadership panel. Throughout the panel, one theme unsurprisingly took precedence: working together to solve problems and help locals continue to grow.

“It’s important to remember that not one of us can do it alone,” Hill said. “We can work together, and that’s true leadership.”

Having a strong relationship built on trust, communication and collaboration empowers local unions and contractors not only when it comes to issues like negotiations, but also when working proactively to win future gains for both employers and SMART members. That’s been evident in the two organizations’ work on megaprojects, retention and beyond. By planning together in lockstep for megaprojects years in advance, for example, locals and contractors met the challenge presented by workforce demands, megaproject management and foreperson training, to name a few.     

“When we’re communicating well, we’re up to speed on trends. We know where future big projects might land, and that’s imperative,” said Martin.

Partnership also matters as SMART and SMACNA try to grow — geographically and membership-wise, but also in terms of new markets.

“We’ve got an obligation, a responsibility, to identify those markets and not just lean into them – we’ve got to jump into them,” said SMART General Secretary-Treasurer John Daniel. “We’ve got to find a way to work together to grow into those sectors.”

During the panel discussion and when answering audience questions, industry leaders covered a lot of ground. But the bottom line was put succinctly by General President Coleman.

“When there’s a good labor-management relationship in an area, their market share is high,” he concluded. “That’s a fact.”

Sheet metal leaders prepare for the future in breakout sessions

At every conference, Partners in Progress breakout sessions put the power of effective labor-management relationships on display. In 2026, attendees got the chance to take a variety of lessons home from fellow union leaders and contractors — helping secure the future for sheet metal workers across North America.

In the “Leveraging Technology and Partnerships for Industry Advancement” session, SMART Local 38 (Brewster, New York) Business Manager Michael Colombo joined Mark Treglio and Stacy Yuden, president and CEO, respectively, of the labor-aligned tech and communications firm NEP Services, as well as SMACNA Southeast New York Executive Vice President Alan Seidman. Working together, Local 38, SMACNA SENY and NEP Services used data mining and information technology for strategic political engagement, helping pass pro-worker state legislation in Connecticut in 2025.

Fire life safety is a crucial priority for local unions across SMART — both for the safety of communities and first responders, and because of the work it creates for union sheet metal workers. In “Getting Fire Life Safety Regulations Done — A Practical Playbook,” Local 49 (New Mexico) Business Manager Isaiah Zemke, Tony Kocurek of Energy Balance and Integration, LLC, and Ronda Gilliland-Lopez of SMACNA New Mexico discussed how they worked together to win fire life safety standards in New Mexico.

“Knowing that this was an underserved or under recognized part of a building system to keep occupants safe and building owners safe, we had a lot of support from the fire fighters — union members, boots on the ground,” Zemke said, adding that the partnership with SMACNA helped overcome potential obstacles in the state legislature.

“The work doesn’t end once the law is passed,” he advised attendees. “You’re not done yet.”

Megaprojects have presented local unions and signatory contractors with extraordinary challenges and opportunities over recent years. SMART Director of Megaprojects Joseph Powell, Local 4 (Memphis, Tennessee) Business Manager Mike Thorne, representatives from Southland and Ventcon, and moderator Clark Ellis of Continuum Advisory Group engaged in a panel focused on the project management challenges unique to megaprojects. Collaboration, resource-sharing, consistent communication and coordination are key to helping local unions and signatory contractors meet the workforce challenges that megaprojects inevitably bring.

“At the IA level, we set up meetings with SMACNA, had routine meetings on a monthly basis — really trying to figure out what resources we could provide to locals,” said Powell.

In Labor-Management in Action, Local 280 (Vancouver) Business Manager Steve Davis and SMACNA-British Columbia Executive Director Jeremy Hallman discussed how fostering a true labour-management partnership has benefited the industry in the province, leading to growth for the local union, increased market share and efforts to find new training opportunities for members to help them gain more certifications. In a panel on clean rooms, meanwhile, SMART Canada International Rep. Scott McQueen joined SMART Director of Business-Management Relations Tom Fischbach and Kocurek of Energy Balance and Integration, discussing the massive (and growing) clean room market. In Ontario, McQueen reported, one megaproject alone required 1.5 million work hours on clean rooms.

Other breakouts focused on developing jobsite leaders, reclaiming residential market share, artificial intelligence on the jobsite and in the classroom, and more.

Keynote speakers energize attendees for the work ahead

The conference’s opening keynote speaker, Melissa Stockwell, graduated from the University of Colorado in 2002 and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. In March 2004, she deployed to Baghdad, Iraq. Just three weeks later, a blast from a roadside bomb struck her Humvee, causing the loss of her left leg above the knee.

Rather than let tragedy slow her down, Stockwell made history. In April 2008, she became the first Iraqi War veteran to qualify for the Paralympics. She competed in three swimming events and was selected by her fellow Team USA athletes to carry the American flag in the closing ceremonies. After Beijing, Stockwell turned to the sport of Paratriathlon and is now a three-time World Champion. 

“They took my leg, but they didn’t take my life,” she told Partners in Progress. “My life would go on. The only difference was, I would wake up, put my prosthetic leg on, and go about my day.”

Perseverance, resilience, refusing to give up — local union leaders and signatory contractors need to practice such traits every day. Stockwell presented to conference attendees on “The Power of Choice,” relating her story to the challenges and accomplishments SMART and SMACNA members face in the sheet metal industry.

“You are a team … as you’re learning this week, together, there’s even greater results,” she said, adding: “The next time something doesn’t go your way … how are all of you going to join me in exercising your daily power of choice?”

Closing keynote speaker Mike Massimino is a former NASA astronaut, a New York Times bestselling author and a Columbia University professor. A spacewalker on the final two Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions, Massimino and his crews traveled faster and higher than any other astronauts in the 21st century. 

“It was designed to be worked on by astronauts. But there’s a lot of sheet metal on this thing,” he said of the Hubble.

For his first mission to space, Massimino recalled walking up to the spaceship as it made extremely loud, guttural noises, and thinking to himself: “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

That’s when Massimino relied on what he called the three trusts: Trust your tools. Trust your training. Trust your team. That gave him the courage to get inside the spaceship for the first time and, looking at planet Earth from space, experience the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

On his second mission to Hubble, Massimino and his team were taking on an extraordinarily complicated objective: repairing the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph in space. Instead of simply removing and replacing a component, Massimino would be fixing a piece of equipment that was painstakingly put together in a clean room. He needed to access a panel that had 111 small crews holding it in place, each with a washer; more than 100 new tools were invented to complete the task.

Massimino had a backup plan for every single part of the mission — besides a simple handrail that needed to be moved aside. When he looked to remove the final screw holding the handrail in place, it was deformed into a gnarled piece of metal that could not be unscrewed. The mission was in jeopardy.

That’s where trusting his team came into play. Thanks to a stroke of inspiration from an engineer back on the ground in Mission Control, Massimino went for brute force: ripping the rail off the telescope by hand. It worked, and that imparted a valuable lesson.

“We can’t always solve problems on our own — remember there’s a control center for you,” he told sheet metal leaders. “There’s people on your team that can help. And maybe more important, you can be that Mission Control for others.”

Massimino closed with an image of a star field, one with 10 million stars. He called it “the big picture.”

“What you’re doing is not easy, and it’s met with challenges, changes,” he told Partners in Progress. “But when you hit those bumps in the road, I would encourage you to persevere, think about the big picture and keep doing what you’re doing.”

With that, the conference came to a close.