Premier Restoration Hawaii is excited to promote our very own Marlone Madamba to the position of General Manager of Oahu Operations. Marlone has lead our Oahu Mitigation division for the past 4 years during a period of incredible growth for our organization. With over ten years in the Property Damage Restoration industry, Marlone is the perfect mix of both exceptional operational and management experience to lead our largest market in The State of Hawaii.
We sat down with Marlone to ask a few questions about how he got into the Restoration Industry and what he likes most about it.
When did you get into the Restoration Industry?
A little over ten years ago, I joined a mitigation apprenticeship program with an Oahu based restoration contractor that was then called Hawaii DKI. I started off mostly carpet cleaning and then after graduating from the program, I moved into a full-time mitigation technician role responding to water damage and water loss events. I spent less than a year as a mitigation technician before being promoted to lead mitigation technician. One year after that, I became a project manager and worked my way up to senior project director and then eventually Mitigation Department Manager where I served for 7 years before joining the team at Premier Restoration Hawaii as the Mitigation Manager for Oahu Operations.
What’s a Typical day like for a General Manager of Hawaii’s largest locally owned and operated property damage restoration contractor?
Meetings, meetings and more meetings! Transitioning to an executive management role is challenging when coming from a task driven position like a mitigation technician where you’re always on the go, responding to one floor or water damage loss after another. My role as General Manager requires that I constantly take a step back and look at the bigger picture to make the best decisions that are going to grow the company and improve over-all customer satisfaction.
What’s the Largest Property Damage Loss You’ve Ever Responded to?
The largest loss I’ve responded to in the world is in the aftermath of Hurricane Mathew which hit The Carolinas in 2016. Hurricane Mathew was the most powerful storm in the Atlantic Hurricane Season that year with extreme rainfall and flooding; I helped to manage a team for clean-up efforts following the destructive hurricane.
Locally, the largest loss I’ve responded to is the Marco Polo Fire in 2017. We did the initial mitigation response, removing the water from the building from fire-fighting efforts. That job was particularly challenging because there were so many moving parts and a lot of liability. It truly was an unprecedented loss event for The State of Hawaii with a lot of red tape and politics involved. It was just very difficult to navigate all of that while meeting deadlines that needed to happen in the recovery process.
What is your favorite thing about your role as General Manager of Oahu Operations?
Overall, I’m just excited to be a part of building something great from the ground up with a locally owned and operated company. There are a lot of nationally managed restoration contractors and franchises out there where the bones of the business are already there and the path is set. It is so much more satisfying to me to be creating something that is meant to truly raise the bar when it comes to service experience expectations for all restoration contractors in the State of Hawaii. This is also equally met with my passion for creating incredible growth and career opportunities for our employees who work super hard.
So Outside of Property Damage Restoration, what do you like to do?
This industry requires a lot of me so it’s important to balance the demands with some of my favorite hobbies like golf and jiu jitsu and spending time with my kids.
Any parting words to leave us with?
Yes, my favorite quote by Frederick Douglass, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
With Marlone’s work ethic and vision for greatness for our employees individually and our company as a whole, we are excited to see what lays ahead as we continually strive to uphold our spot as Hawaii’s number one choice for Water, Mold, Fire and Storm response.
