Orion Services Group adds Twin Cities' Legend Companies and Calgary's Caon Services, two commercial mechanical partners in eleven days

Orion Services Group announced October 5 that Legend Companies of Savage, Minnesota, a multi-trade commercial mechanical and facility services provider founded in 2010, has joined its network. On October 16, Orion added Caon Services Inc., a Calgary commercial mechanical services provider founded in 1997.

Both companies keep their local brands. Legend stays with co-founders Marc Thiery (President) and Matt Lind (Executive Vice President), who have run it together since 2010. At Caon, the leadership team brought in Brooke Kyle as President to work alongside continuing leaders, including Executive Vice President Greg Bertsch.

The assets.

Legend Companies started as a construction-focused mechanical contractor and has reorganized over 16 years into three divisions: service and maintenance; retrofit, renovation and construction; and facility services. Its technicians cover HVAC, plumbing, pipefitting, sheet metal, refrigeration, commercial food equipment and interior facility trades, and it keeps in-house mechanical engineering and full MEP drafting for design-build, direct-to-owner work. Customers include commercial and industrial manufacturers, quick-service restaurants, commercial property managers and municipalities across the Upper Midwest.

Caon Services provides commercial plumbing, heating, HVAC and refrigeration services in Calgary and surrounding communities, from mechanical construction and installation to preventive maintenance and 24-hour emergency support. Its capabilities include medical gas installation, gas fitting and boiler services, including start-up and commissioning.

The platform.

Alpine Investors launched Orion in 2020 with Oklahoma City's Jackson Mechanical Service, founded in 1957, and said at the time it planned to invest a meaningful portion of its then-new $1 billion fund in family-owned commercial HVACR and plumbing businesses. Jackson has since combined with Streets to form Jackson Streets MEP Contractors. Orion's timeline shows it moving into plumbing (G.E. Mechanical, 2021), refrigeration (Marick Mechanical, 2022), electrical (Bertke Electric, 2023), Puerto Rico (Aireko, 2023) and controls (ModernControls, 2024), and passing $1 billion of revenue in January 2024.

Orion formed Astra Service Partners in 2021 as the support team for its heavy mechanical, HVAC, plumbing and refrigeration companies. On September 25, it retired the Astra name so the whole network runs as Orion Services Group. In August, Toronto supermarket refrigeration provider J.L. Refrigeration joined alongside Orion's Berg Industrial Service. Group President Rob Montgomery is quoted on both new deals.

Service-led commercial mechanical, on both sides of the border.

Legend rebuilt itself from a construction shop around service, maintenance and facility work before joining Orion, and Caon pairs mechanical construction with preventive maintenance, emergency response and specialty boiler and medical gas work. Both sell directly to building owners and operators. That mix matters for value, since buyers generally pay more for recurring service revenue than for bid construction work, as we laid out in our construction-exposure valuation analysis.

Caon is Orion's second Canadian addition in about seven weeks, after J.L. Refrigeration in the Greater Toronto Area, and gives the platform a base in Western Canada. Legend adds the Twin Cities and the Upper Midwest.

What it means.

Orion is one of the most active commercial buyers in the trades, and it is adding service-heavy, owner-direct mechanical businesses in the U.S. and Canada while keeping local brands and leadership in place. It describes itself as "the forever home" for commercial and industrial skilled trades businesses, so owners comparing it with fund-backed platforms should weigh how a permanent holding structure treats rollover equity and decision-making after closing.