Kevin McGraw bids a new building in pieces. Ground up is one section. Rough-in is another, then finishes, gas piping, condenser work, and pumps, boilers and installations. He can be hired for one stage of a project or several.
That kind of work is the whole business at Gibbs Plumbing, the company McGraw started in 2026 after roughly 30 years in the trade. He takes new construction, residential or commercial, and leaves the rest alone. “I’m focused on just new construction, nothing service oriented or quick interchanges of plumbing,” he says.
A lot of the builds are commercial. McGraw works with a particular builder in the area, and the two of them take on commercial projects together. He calls the builders he works with his partners. Beyond them, the company is him. Gibbs Plumbing’s own description of itself draws the same lines: general contractors, developers and custom home builders, with installations meant to pass inspection on the first try.
The narrow lane comes with a rule he returns to more than once. “Quality beats quantity,” he says. “You can take on a lot of jobs, make a lot of money, but in the long run that’s only going to hurt your company.” He does not push himself for more work, he says, “because that’s where the quality goes down.” Pile too much onto the schedule and a plumber can’t put an efficient day in on any of it.
Construction tests that rule in its own way. There is a lot of downtime on a building job, he says, so the timing has to be right when work opens up. There are also deadlines, plenty of them. Finishing on time, in his experience, is what leaves a customer happy enough to recommend him or bring his company onto the next project.
Anyone who works with him plays by the same terms. “Anybody that works for me is going to adapt to the way I do plumbing, or they won’t be at Gibbs Plumbing too long,” he says. He calls that his own preference. What he wants, he says, is for the company to be a quality product for other people.
McGraw started plumbing at 18. He grew up around Detroit and Dearborn, spent some years in Florida with his wife, then came back to Michigan and went to work for someone else. It didn’t last. “I just kind of burnt out on working with or for other people,” he says. “I just wasn’t happy with my everyday schedule working under somebody else.”
He has no interest in handing the company down. He keeps its territory close: he tries to stay in Wayne County, though he has taken work as far away as Troy. “I try to stay as local as possible,” he says, “but when I do fit in other jobs, if it’s worth it for me to travel a little further, I will.”
The schedule is his own now. He generally starts at 6 or 6:30 in the morning and wraps up around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon.