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I’m still catching up on the fact that it’s a new year, and 2017. At a recent meeting, this statement was made: “CFMS has been around for 25 years, that’s a great accomplishment for a smaller commissioning company, congrats!” I confess I had to quickly do the mental math and acknowledge, yes, it is indeed 2017, before saying thank you. Then I thought on the part of the statement about it being a great accomplishment to have been around for 25 years. While I personally haven’t been with CFMS for 25 years, I’ve been acquainted with them (first as a client) for almost 20 years. There weren’t so many competitors back then, instead our founder Mel James worked hard at selling our services to companies like the one I worked at. 
It wasn’t long after CFMS started before competitors began cropping up. The names of those competitors back then, can’t be found in the marketplace anymore. More and more big companies, seeing the advantage of commissioning, and the increased requirement for commissioning, began offering commissioning as part of their services. So while we started out as a specialty company, offering a specialty service, the marketplace has decreased commissioning being a specialty, but the reason we’ve remained independent and a force in the marketplace is because we are still special.
Why?
I think it’s because the company remained ‘in the family’ all these years. Though Mel himself retired a few years ago, he passed his torch to the two longest standing employees of CFMS, Ed Trueman and Wendy Collins. Ed was the first employee, and really helped Mel build CFMS from the ground up. When Wendy joined, she built solid relationships with two of our longest standing clients – the Simcoe County and York Region District School Boards. While we keep adding to our client base, most of our clients are ones we have had long relationships with. When clients move to new positions at new companies, they tend to bring us with them, because we are people to them, not just names on paper. All of our employees have been with CFMS for at least 5 years now, and so familiar faces out in the field. Internally, we work collaboratively as a team, bringing individual skill sets to the table. Some people may view a smaller company as a negative, but to us it’s a positive, because we care about each other, and each and every project and client. It’s more than just our experience that makes us stand out, and has kept us in the marketplace to celebrate our 25th anniversary. It’s our dedication to our ‘family feel’ company and the services we provide that continues to make us special, even if commissioning itself is no longer a specialty.