Dave Svoboda has made a career out of saying yes to new opportunities.
The Wyoming native was 20 years old, living in Las Vegas and working the graveyard shift at a restaurant. While he liked having his days to do as he pleased, he followed a friend’s suggestion and applied for a job as a plumber doing finish work.
“I didn’t really know what I had when I first started,” he said. “I knew it was kind of a lucrative trade and there’s a lot of people that were successful as plumbers, but I wasn’t really sure if that’s what I wanted to do.”
At one point he thought he wanted to pursue a career in computers and began attending a technical school while still doing plumbing work, but then he started working for a different company — and making a lot more money.
“That’s really what hooked me and opened my eyes to realize what I already had and I didn’t need to go the school route and get all these student loans, which I’m still paying on, unfortunately,” he said.
After Svoboda earned his journeyman’s license, his employer began giving him opportunities to serve as a foreman on job sites. Because he began with finish work, he needed to learn more about other phases, including rough-in. Svoboda said he is glad he started where he did.
“I really like how I jumped into plumbing at the finish end,” he said. “It gives me a grasp of what the final product is and what it’s supposed to look like, and then all of the components to get it there.”
After working as a foreman for more than five years, he reconnected with his high school sweetheart, Echo, who still lived in his home state of Wyoming. She had two daughters from a previous marriage, and he moved back to Wyoming and they got married.
Svoboda took a job with a plumbing contractor in Wyoming who was a childhood friend’s uncle. He said that was where he gained a strong foundation as a plumber.
“There were two guys who were co-owners of Modern Plumbing in Wyoming, and they were some hard-nosed guys who expected certain things, and I really thrived working under those guys,” he said. “I felt like I needed that at that point in my career.”
As much as he enjoyed his time at Modern Plumbing, Svoboda said he increasingly thought about moving back to Las Vegas. In 2014, a friend told him he had a job waiting for him whenever they could get there.
They then learned that the Plumbing Heating, Cooling Contractors of Nevada (PHCCNV) needed an office manager, and Echo left her job in finance for that position.
Less than a year later, Svoboda was enjoying a drink at a PHCCNV apprentice graduation when someone told him the organization was looking for a second-year instructor and that he should apply. Though initially reluctant because he admittedly had never considered such a career path, he ultimately applied and was hired.
“I ended up getting the job and starting teaching students and really realized the benefit of sharing the knowledge that was in my head,” he said.
Two years later, Svoboda was promoted to training director/apprentice coordinator, a role he held for nearly a decade.
Soon after Dave went to work for PHCCNV, Echo became secretary of IAPMO’s Southern Nevada Chapter, so he started attending meetings as well. He was still working as a plumber during the day, so he initially did not have time to get involved with IAPMO.
Then he went to work for a company that had more freedom, which freed up his schedule enough that he could go to more IAPMO functions. He joined in March 2022.
Then at a meeting in 2023, he was nominated to be chapter chairman.
“I wasn’t expecting it, but it kind of put me on the spot so I said, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ The meetings gave me the opportunity to meet representatives from southern Nevada building departments, other trade organizations, and IAPMO national staff, not just plumbers and contractors.”
Working two jobs was taking its toll, but “my horizons had been broadened, and I saw my code knowledge, field and teaching experience could be of use in possibly another capacity other than physical labor,” he said. “After discussing some options with new contacts made through IAPMO, it took about six to nine months for me to mull over the trajectory I wanted my career to take, and I applied for and got an entry-level position at the biggest building jurisdiction in southern Nevada.”
“It was a beautiful thing how it all kind of worked out,” he said. “You’re working hard, 10 to 12 hours a day, and you don’t really have time to assess things and what’s going on. You just kind of keep going with the flow. But when somebody comes in and says something to you it plants a seed, it can really blossom and grow and turn you in a completely different direction.”
Now a plans examiner for the Clark County Building Department, Svoboda works four 10-hour days, which he begins at 6 a.m. He called the career move the best thing that could have possibly happened to him.
“My knees don’t have the stress on them anymore,” he said. “My plantar fasciitis in my left foot is nearly gone.”
He also has more time to focus on his work with IAPMO. He took a break after his first stint as chair and is completing the second year of his second term. He said he plans to become secretary next and ultimately train someone to succeed him at that position.
Much as others have encouraged and guided him throughout his career, Svoboda is proud of the role he has played in helping so many young plumbers.
“I love touching their lives,” he said. “You don’t realize what you can do to somebody’s life if you kind of mentor them and push them in the right direction, so the best thing for me was watching an apprentice come in as a first-year and then watching them grow and what they grow into as they walk out the door as a graduate after the fourth year.”
He said the first thing he looks for in young apprentices is commitment.
“You start something and you stick it out and you finish it,” he said. “I think that’s one of the biggest qualities that you can have. So if we get an apprentice that comes in, who may have had a little bit of trouble along the way, but he sticks it out, and he toughs it out, and he makes it all the way through, that’s just a testament to that guy and what he’s capable of.”
Svoboda credits his involvement with IAPMO for helping advance his career.
“If it wasn’t for IAPMO and the networking that it provides and the relationships that you can make with people, there’s no way that I would be where I am right now,” he said. “I’d still be out there doing 10- to 15-hour days every day.”
Although Dave and Echo no longer work together, both remain active in the plumbing industry and involved with IAPMO. Away from work, the couple enjoys spending time on the golf course.
“She’s been the biggest supporter in all of this,” he said. “I think it’s been great to be able to work with your wife in that aspect. We can have some pretty deep conversations about what we want the future to hold and what we want to see the IAPMO chapter do, and it’s great.”
A fun fact he likes to share with people is that he appeared in an episode of the HGTV show “Kitchen Crashers,” in which people are “ambushed” at home improvement stores and offered a kitchen makeover.
“I was the lead man on the crew,” he said. “In the episode, I pulled up in my work truck, jumped out, and ran inside. It was kind of a silly thing. There’s a couple people that know about this, but I like to try to throw out there, ‘See if you can find the episode.’”
Mike Flenniken
Mike Flenniken is a staff writer, Marketing and Communications, for IAPMO. Prior to joining IAPMO in 2010, Flenniken worked in public relations for a group of Southern California hospitals and as a journalist in writing and editing capacities for various Southern California daily newspapers.
Last modified: November 13, 2026