Facility managers, plant engineers, and project owners in Michigan deal with a wide range of sandblasting contractors — from established industrial operations to smaller crews that aren’t equipped for the compliance requirements, surface standards, or scale of serious commercial work.
When you’re putting a coating system on critical infrastructure, structural steel, or high-value industrial assets, the prep work underneath it determines whether that coating performs for a decade or fails in two years. These seven questions are the ones that separate professional industrial contractors from operations you want to avoid.
1. Are You Fully Insured and What Are Your Coverage Limits?
Commercial and industrial projects require more than a basic liability policy. Confirm:
- General liability — and the coverage limit. A $1M policy may be insufficient for large industrial sites; $2M+ is common on significant projects.
- Workers’ compensation — if a worker is injured on your facility and the contractor lacks coverage, your company’s liability is exposed.
- Umbrella coverage — required by many general contractors and facility operators for subcontractors on larger projects.
Request a certificate of insurance naming your company as additionally insured on the project. A contractor who hesitates on this is not set up for professional commercial work.
Blasting Jack carries full general liability and workers’ compensation coverage on every project and provides certificates of insurance as a standard part of project onboarding.
2. Are You Certified for Lead Paint and Hazardous Coating Work?
Michigan’s industrial and infrastructure stock — bridges, pre-1978 manufacturing facilities, power generation equipment, older commercial structures — frequently carries lead-based paint. Blasting without proper containment and certified protocols creates serious health liability and regulatory exposure for your organization.
Contractors on lead paint jobs should hold EPA Lead Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) certification and follow OSHA 1926.62 (construction) or 1910.1025 (general industry) lead standards. Spent abrasive contaminated with lead paint is classified as hazardous waste in Michigan and requires certified disposal under EGLE and EPA rules — this must be documented, not just verbally acknowledged.
Ask for their certification documentation and their written lead paint protocol before the job starts.
3. What Abrasive Media Do You Use, and How Do You Select It?
Silica sand is effectively obsolete in professional industrial blasting. Its link to silicosis — an irreversible, fatal lung disease — has driven OSHA to enforce strict respirable silica standards (29 CFR 1926.1153 and 1910.1053), and legitimate contractors moved away from it years ago.
The right answer from a professional contractor names specific alternatives — steel grit, garnet, aluminum oxide, crushed glass — and explains the selection logic for your specific substrate and coating spec.
More importantly, the contractor should ask what coating system is being applied after blasting, because the required anchor profile (measured in mils) drives the media selection. A contractor who doesn’t ask that question is not engineering the prep to your coating manufacturer’s specification.
What we use at Blasting Jack: Media matched to the job and the coating system — steel grit for heavy industrial steel, garnet for precision profile work, appropriate media for specialized substrates. Never silica.
4. How Do You Manage Containment and Environmental Compliance?
On industrial sites, blast debris containment is both a compliance requirement and a liability issue. Spent abrasive mixed with old coating, rust, and industrial contaminants must be captured at the source — it cannot be allowed to migrate into storm drains, waterways, or adjacent operational areas.
Ask specifically:
- What containment system do you use for this scope of work?
- How is spent abrasive collected and staged?
- Who is your waste disposal partner, and are they certified for hazardous material if applicable?
Michigan EGLE and EPA rules are clear on this. Any contractor who can’t give specific answers to these questions is not prepared for professional industrial work.
5. Can You Perform Mobile, On-Site Work for Industrial Scale Projects?
For most industrial and commercial blasting — structural steel in place, large equipment that can’t be transported, active facilities — mobile blasting is the only practical option. A contractor who only operates out of a fixed shop cannot handle the majority of real industrial scope.
Mobile industrial blasting means bringing sufficient compressed air capacity, media supply, containment systems, and qualified operators directly to your site. It requires logistics planning, site coordination, and the right equipment for the scale of the project.
All of Blasting Jack’s operations are mobile. We bring industrial-capacity equipment to your facility and work within your operational schedule, whether that means phased access, off-shift work, or coordinated shutdowns.
6. What Blast Standard Will You Achieve, and How Do You Document It?
This is the most technically important question on the list — and the one that separates tradespeople from professional industrial contractors.
Every industrial coating system has a specified surface preparation standard:
- SSPC-SP 6 / NACE 3 (Commercial Blast) — adequate for most industrial maintenance coatings
- SSPC-SP 10 / NACE 2 (Near-White Blast) — required by many high-performance epoxy and coating systems
- SSPC-SP 5 / NACE 1 (White Metal Blast) — required for immersion service and the most demanding industrial applications
In addition to cleanliness standard, the coating manufacturer specifies an anchor profile — surface roughness measured in mils using Testex replica tape and a micrometer, or a digital profilometer. If the profile is outside spec, the coating bond is compromised regardless of how clean the surface is.
A professional contractor will tell you the standard they’re targeting, verify it with calibrated instruments, and provide documentation for your project records and coating manufacturer’s warranty requirements.
Ask to see their surface preparation documentation from a previous comparable project.
7. Do You Coordinate With the Coating Application and Protect the Blasted Surface?
Surface preparation work only delivers value if the coating goes on correctly — and promptly. In Michigan’s climate, bare blasted steel can develop flash rust within hours. If there’s a gap between blasting and priming that isn’t planned for, you’ve paid for prep work that’s been partially undone before the coating is applied.
A serious contractor has a clear protocol for handoff to coating application. They also understand that certain coating systems require application within a specific window after blasting (often 4–8 hours for high-performance epoxies in humid conditions).
Ask how they manage the blast-to-coat transition, and whether they coordinate directly with your coating applicator or coating inspector to ensure compliance with the product data sheet requirements.
Why This Matters for Michigan Industrial Projects
The stakes on industrial coating work are high. A coating system applied over properly prepared steel — to the right standard, with the right profile, and primed within the right window — performs for 15–20 years. The same coating applied over inadequate prep fails in 3–5 years, requiring costly remobilization and rework.
Blasting Jack has been doing this work in Michigan since the 1980s. We answer every one of these questions in detail — because we’ve built our entire operation around the standard of work that industrial and commercial clients actually require.
[Contact us](/# contact) to discuss your project. We serve industrial and commercial clients from Metro Detroit and Macomb County to Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint, Saginaw, Kalamazoo, and throughout Michigan.