During the pandemic, when specialty roofing membrane lead times suddenly extended from 3 weeks to 3 months, we leveraged our 20-year relationships with regional suppliers to secure materials for critical projects. The experience taught us to diversify our supply channels beyond what seemed necessary pre-COVID. We've since established partnerships with manufacturers in different geographic regions, created a dedicated procurement specialist position, and increased our warehouse capacity by 40%. Our most valuable lesson came from transparency--by sharing our inventory with compatible contractors and borrowing when needed, we created a reciprocal support network that's outlasted the crisis and strengthened our industry's resilience against ongoing material fluctuations.