Dave Gobis Presented with TCNA Tile Person of the Year Award

Anderson, SC, February 3, 2016—In recognition of his innumerable contributions and exceptional service in the North American tile industry over several decades, Tile Council of North America (TCNA) awarded Dave Gobis its 2015 Tile Person of the Year Award.

In presenting the award, TCNA executive director Eric Astrachan said that Gobis, who started out as a tile helper for his grandfather, came to be recognized as an “industry guru,” a go-to resource in the tile industry who has had—and continues to have—enormous influence in the realms of training and education, standards development, and inspection and consulting.

In accepting the award Gobis remarked that the honor was like winning an Academy Award, “because tile’s been what I’m all about.”

In cataloging Gobis’s many noteworthy achievements, Astrachan focused on Gobis’s nearly decade-long post as executive director and technical director for the Ceramic Tile Education Foundation (CTEF). In this role Gobis demonstrated his strong commitment to standards-based, non-proprietary training, and much of the core curriculum he created is still in use today at CTEF for its various installation and inspection courses, said Astrachan. He also credited Gobis with “keeping CTEF going at a difficult time,” saying that doing so very much relied on Gobis’s generosity of time and resources.

After learning the trade from working closely with his grandfather, Ralph G. Mayfield, a master tile and stone installer and owner of Mayfield Mantel and Tile, Gobis received formal tile setting training in Jacksonville, Florida.

Later in life, Gobis set up shop as a tile contractor in Racine, Wisconsin, first as GM Associates and later as Tile Concepts, and he started getting involved in the industry. In the 1980s, Gobis joined the Southern Tile, Terrazzo, and Marble Contractors Association (STTMCA), which later became the NTCA. In addition to serving as director of NTCA’s Region 6, Gobis was active in the association’s committees including chairing its Training and Education Committee and its Website Committee.

In addition to supporting his fellow contractors through association work, Gobis said he took special pride in taking care of his employees, paying them wages equal to those of union workers even before his shop became unionized, and providing them with generous benefits, including merit raises for employees who attended educational sessions.

After selling Tile Concepts in 1998, Gobis readily accepted the challenge to lead the fledgling CTEF, and he expanded his participation in the tile industry by regularly contributing articles to trade publications and speaking at industry events. Gobis also got much more heavily involved in standards development, especially through the ANSI Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) A108, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) C-21 Ceramic Whitewares Committee, and the TCNA Handbook Committee.

Gobis retired from CTEF in 2008, and in 2009 NTCA honored Gobis with its prestigious Joe Tarver Cornerstone Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Gobis is now self-employed, undertaking forensic tile installation inspections and consulting on a national basis for owners, end users, manufacturers, and contractors.