Building The Perfect Templater

The best stone shops use templating, fabricating, and installing to create a project that's a unified whole. The counters mesh with their surroundings and all the elements of design are balanced.
The whole process swings around the templater. It takes someone with experience, imagination, the ability to communicate and an eye for detail to produce some fantastic kitchens and baths. Send out a person who doesn't pay attention to the little things, and the result is a mistake-filled, inferior product. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and can tell you that a daily dose of bad counters would drive me nuts.
To keep your customers sane and your company profitable, you need to have the right person making your templates. Getting proficient at fabrication and installation is a long process, but one that most people can master. Templating is another animal altogether, requiring a different set of skills.                
The most important skill for the templater is experience. In order to measure a project correctly, your templater needs to understand the product: the slab size and thickness, strength limitations and how movement or color affects the measurement. That person also needs to know how the product works with different sinks, stoves, cooktops and other kitchen- and bath-related appliances.
Most templaters gain this experience by working their way up from the shop floor. They see how the product goes from the slab to the kitchen and, hopefully, learn a thing or two from mistakes others have made. From this, they're qualified enough to go out and glue sticks together for straightforward jobs.
Product knowledge is only the first step; the templater also needs to know how kitchens and baths go together. From standard overhang and corner radius sizes, and proportional backsplash height to proper electrical outlet placement, the list of things to know about countertops seems endless.
And, a top-notch templater won’t stop with just countertops. Understanding everything from basic stud-wall construction to plumbing to drywall finishing can be very handy.
Following design trends is also key. If your clients are anything like mine, they often ask about the latest hot looks or products. While this should be directed at the designer instead of the guy with the tape measure, knowing the answer can only improve your standing.
Imagination sounds like an odd skill for a templater, but it makes perfect sense. In making any kind of template for a countertop we're, in essence, imagining or visualizing the finished product in place. For complicated jobs, a templater needs imagination in determining how an edge detail or piece of backsplash should end, how an arch piece should blend into a straight run, or any number of other crucial details. When working to fulfill the design wishes of a designer or homeowner, a good imagination is a must.
If your templater doesn’t have the ability to imagine someone else’s vision, it may lead to expensive remakes for unhappy customers; people get very attached to their ideas. If a homeowner says she wants her backsplash to look like a ragged mountain range, the templater’s job is to imagine what a ‘ragged mountain range’ of backsplash looks like, and make a template of that vision that pleases the homeowner. 
The templater’s imagination is sometimes crucial in stopping bad decisions by the homeowner or designer. Let’s face it; sometimes the design ideas that people have in their head don’t translate very well to the real world. If the templater can imagine with them and then show them why it’s a bad idea, it can save a lot of expensive tearing-out later.
But telling someone their idea is a bad one without making them mad requires excellent communication – another skill necessary for the templater. While shooting down a bad idea takes delicate wording, it’s a small part of the job.
Most of the communication for a templater involves straightforward questions to the builder, homeowner, or designer. Getting every possible question about the countertops answered is the number-one priority for the templater. I carry a form to every job for checking off as questions are answered, just to be sure.
When communicating with designers, a templater needs to be especially careful. There is a fine line between offering helpful suggestions and reworking their design, and each designer has their own reaction if they feel the line's been crossed.
I offer only product information unless I get a direct question about design ideas. If I'm asked anything, I try to be specific to the question. If I start in about the cool stuff I saw in another house, it might lessen the skills of the designer in the eyes of their client. Do something like that, and I doubt you’ll get the countertop jobs from that designer in the future.
Not only does the templater need to communicate with the homeowner and designer; it's the same kind of process with the fabricators and installers. In many cases, this is translating verbal wishes to a written form, and sometimes even into another language altogether.
 Most of the mistakes I’ve seen come from miscommunication between the templater and the shop. The worst mistakes happened when written instruction on a template were ignored.
 Most shops have their own template language and symbols. An ideal templater follows these in a disciplined, if not downright religious, manner, making notes on the templates that are readily seen and easily understood. If an edge detail needs to stop at a certain point, it should be clearly marked and easy to follow.
 Many shops now use AutoCAD drawings to complement templates. These files can be very effective, but only if they contain the exact same information as the templates – and the information is correct in the first place.
In my opinion, these drawings are more-effective if done by the templater. Communicating with a third party to get the drawings done brings another potential error-making human into the equation.
Finally, a ideal templater also needs to be detail-oriented, which is defined by combining the first three skills of experience, imagination, and communication.
It's the experience to get all the overhangs perfect, the sink in the right spot, and the seams placed where they will work and look good. It's the imagination that allows the development of all the details that make a job, visualizing perfect splash height, edge details, and countertop shapes. And, there's the ability to communicate effectively with clients and designers to ensure that the installed project meets their needs and wishes.
What more could you ask?
Jason Nottestad, a 12-year stone industry veteran, is co-owner of Wisconsin-based Midwest Template Services.