Building PowerVac: A Tale of Disciplined Growth

Where We Started

When we first met the founder of PowerVac of Michigan, we saw exactly the kind of business we are drawn to.

It was a well-run local operator providing hydro-excavation, jet/vac, pipe inspection, and related infrastructure services to municipalities and utilities. The fundamentals were strong: attractive margins, long-standing customer relationships, and recurring contract economics tied to essential infrastructure maintenance.

But it was also a familiar profile in a fragmented services market. A business with real value—but one constrained by geography, capital, and the practical limits of a founder-led organization. Too small to attract traditional private equity attention. Too dependent on its founder to scale meaningfully beyond its core footprint.

The founder wasn’t looking to sell and walk away. He had spent decades building something durable. What he wanted was a partner—someone who could help professionalize the business, expand its capabilities, and unlock the next chapter of growth, while preserving what made it work in the first place.

We invested in PowerVac in August 2019.

The Thesis

Municipal and utility services is a deeply fragmented industry.

Across the Midwest and Northeast, there are hundreds of local operators providing variations of the same mission-critical services: hydro-excavation, jet/vac, plumbing, HVAC, electrical infrastructure, trenchless rehabilitation, environmental services. They serve similar customers. They use similar equipment. They face the same challenges around fleet utilization, procurement, labor, and compliance.

What they lack is scale—and the operational infrastructure to grow beyond their home markets.

Our thesis was straightforward:
Identify a strong operating platform with experienced leadership and a proven customer base, then use disciplined, adjacency-driven acquisitions to expand geography, broaden service capabilities, centralize back-office functions, and build a platform that could compete—and ultimately transact—at a very different scale. PowerVac was that platform.

A Disciplined Acquisition Engine

Since our initial investment, PowerVac has built a repeatable M&A engine supported by a high-volume opportunity funnel.

Over the past six years, the team has reviewed hundreds of potential acquisition opportunities sourced through brokers, direct outreach, industry relationships, trade associations, and referrals from within the PowerVac ecosystem. From that broad universe, PowerVac has maintained a highly selective approach—prioritizing cultural fit, service adjacency, and integration readiness over sheer deal volume.

The result: eleven completed acquisitions in five years, spanning HVAC, plumbing, electrical, hydro-excavation, trenchless rehabilitation, and environmental services.

A few inflection points along the way:

• August 2020 – Fire & Ice Mechanical established PowerVac’s HVAC platform in Metro Detroit.

• December 2021 – Strain Electric added municipal electrical infrastructure capabilities.

• 2022 – CSB Industries and TJO Heating & Cooling expanded hydro-excavation and HVAC density across Northern and Western Michigan.

• March 2023 – The Precision Group marked a step-change acquisition, launching PowerVac into the Northeast and adding industry-leading trenchless and industrial services capabilities.

• 2023–2024 – Additional tuck-ins across plumbing, hydrovac, and environmental services deepened density and recurring revenue streams.

  
  

Most of these businesses were small, local operators that would never appear in a traditional private equity process. That’s by design. In a fragmented market, value creation happens through aggregation, integration, and operational leverage—not through any single headline transaction.

What Changed

PowerVac today looks fundamentally different than it did in 2019—but not because the original business was dismantled.

Instead, the platform was built outward from what already worked.

What began as a Michigan-based hydro-excavation company is now a multi-discipline infrastructure and facility services platform operating across Michigan and the Northeast. The company provides hydro-excavation, jet/vac, plumbing, HVAC, electrical infrastructure, trenchless rehabilitation, industrial maintenance, and environmental services to municipalities, utilities, industrial facilities, and commercial customers.

Operations are now organized through an integrated network of more than ten acquired companies, supported by shared systems, standardized safety and fleet protocols, centralized dispatch and billing, and an active cross-sell engine that connects service lines across regions.

Margins have expanded. Route density has improved. Customer relationships have deepened through bundled, multi-service offerings and recurring maintenance contracts.

And critically, the management team has grown alongside the platform—adding the operational depth required to support scale without losing the responsiveness and reliability that made the business successful in the first place.

Integration as a Core Competency.

Integration has been a value-creation lever, not an afterthought.

PowerVac applies a consistent integration playbook across every acquisition—aligning systems, operations, culture, and customer experience while retaining local leadership and field expertise. ERP, dispatch, billing, and reporting systems are standardized. Safety, fleet management, and technician training are aligned. Cross-sell opportunities are identified and activated across service lines.

The result is a platform that operates as one company—not a loose collection of acquired businesses—while preserving the local relationships that drive recurring revenue.

What It Meant for the Founder

For the founder, the outcome has been both financial and personal.

By retaining meaningful equity and staying actively involved, he benefited from the compounding effect of platform growth. The equity he kept is now worth multiples of what he would have received in a traditional sale. At the same time, he gained the infrastructure, capital, and support needed to scale the business far beyond what would have been possible independently.

This is the second bite of the apple in practice—not a slogan, but a lived outcome.

What We Learned

Every platform teaches you something. PowerVac reinforced several beliefs we already held:

• Fragmented industries reward patience and discipline. A high-volume funnel and selective execution matter more than deal count.

• Operators know their markets best. Our role is to provide capital, systems, and support—not to replace local expertise.

• Integration is where value is created. Repeatable systems and cultural alignment turn acquisitions into a platform.

• Aligned incentives compound outcomes. Founders who stay invested and engaged often outperform those who fully exit.

What's Next

PowerVac’s story is still being written.

With a proven sourcing engine, a disciplined integration model, and a growing base of recurring, compliance-driven revenue, the platform is positioned to continue expanding within its core service pillars and regions—deepening density, adding capabilities, and compounding value over time.

This is what we mean when we talk about building companies with capital and creativity. Not financial engineering. Not quick exits. But partnering with the right operators, in the right industries, with the right thesis—and executing over years, not quarters.