Robert Hohl

Robert started his career in the fire protection industry at the young age of 16 as a fire extinguisher technician. He quickly moved up with in the company to become a lead fire sprinkler installer. During the early 2000’s as the market shifted in the Western New York area the fire sprinkler work diminished and Robert decided to travel the Eastern sea board to do service work for national accounts. During this time, he managed service accounts for Home depot, Old Navy, Kmart and Best Buy. While traveling he fell in love with the Northern Virginia Area. After 2 years of traveling as a young man he decided it was time for a career change.

Robert left Western New York in 2005 and moved to Virginia. There he took a position with a large mechanical, plumbing, fire protection company. With this company he was responsible for managing multiple high-rise residential sprinkler projects. Most of these projects consisted of install crews ranging from 20 to 50 installers. After 2 years of running high-rise projects Robert decided it was time to move up the corporate ladder. In 2007 Robert accepted a Senior Sales / Project Management position with Fire Watch Services in Northern Virginia. For 2 years he estimated, sold and managed large scale fire sprinkler tenant renovations in the DC / NOVA areas. In 2009 Fire Watch Services was purchased by Fire and Life Safety America (FLSA) and Robert made the transition from a family owned company to a large, multi- branch, multi-state corporation. Robert continued to exceed sales expectation with FLSA achieving the President’s Club Award. During his time at FLSA, Robert was the top-ranking sales person for tenant renovations across all FLSA branches.

In 2011, Robert decided to part ways with FLSA and start his own fire protection company. As President of Black Water & Associates Inc, he built a strong reputation in the industry. He developed relationships with the large general contractors in the area which kept the work flowing. During the company’s infancy he was a 1 man, 1 truck operation but quickly grew into a multi-million dollar operation employing office staff and full-time design engineers. As President he made it his focus to provide his customers with the speed and precision they demanded. He developed systems that could turn around design drawings and submittals faster than his competition . Once drawings were approved, he was able to switch gears and complete the necessary install ahead of schedule and under budget. During the next few years Robert was successful in turning Black Water & Associated into a household name completing projects for Raytheon, General Dynamics, Tridex Associates and Microsoft.

In the summer of 2014 Robert and his family made the decision to move back to Buffalo after dealing with an unexpected death in the family. Robert accepted his current position with Great Lakes Buildings Systems in large contract suppression, fire and security sales. At GLBS Robert is responsible for estimating, selling and project management of large scale commercial fire alarm systems, commercial fire suppression systems and access control/security systems, Robert currently holds accreditation’s with NICET, FSSA, Fike, Notifier and Buckeye. Robert resides in Hamburg, NY at his small family farm with this wife Jamie and sons Nathan and Brayden.

Phone : 716-892-5253 x 109
Email : rhohl@glbs-inc.com