From the food we eat to the products we rely on daily, the things we use start in an Enerfab vessel. For over a century, our teams have worked on projects that make necessities possible, building the things that make real life work. By introducing new capabilities, innovative processes, and facilities, we can fabricate more efficiently to save our customers time and money and offer you a single-source solution. Over our history, one thing remained paramount — our commitment to fabricating and producing lasting, trusted equipment.
In this first episode of Shop Talk, we explore how Enerfab manages customer expectations in a Rapid Response project and delivers exceptional fabrication in record time.
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Greg Henning (Director of Strategic Projects): It always seems to happen on a Thursday or Friday. Nobody seems to do this on a Monday for some reason, but on a Thursday, we got this notification, and on Friday, the price was given right away. And they said, “Yes, go.”
And so, on Monday morning, I was on a plane to Houston to expedite vendors, and the engineering team and the sales team were on the road driving to the customer’s facility to work out all the details and to finalize everything. And I remember one of our engineers was in the backseat doing AutoCAD drawings as they were driving.
And so, it’s just a different mindset. And one of the things I think that’s really — Enerfab has embraced, all the employees, all of us, have embraced Rapid Response because it’s exciting. It’s not your average everyday thing. And it really causes a passion to be spread throughout our company.
[music]
Dan Creech (Executive Vice President): Welcome to our first episode of our Building for Real Life Shop Talk series. My name is Dan Creech. I’ll be your host for today.
We have Greg Henning, our director of strategic projects, Kelly Wyrough, senior sales technician in our Gulf Coast region, and Nick Anderson, our engineering manager.
What we’d like to accomplish with these series, from time to time, is to educate our customers and the industry on interesting topics and conversations of real-life projects.
Today’s topic of discussion is going to be Rapid Response and what that means to our customers.
So, Rapid Response is a term that I don’t know that is widely used in the industry yet. It’s something that we created, it sounds like. So, in the industry, does the customer think something can be done in a Rapid Response scenario that might be deemed impossible?
Greg: So, I think a good example was several years back, we had a customer that came to us, and they had (because of an accident in their plant), had a piece of equipment go down.
And, I remember because it was handed to me on, like, a Thursday. Two-inch thick, special 900-pound forging. And we ended up, from the time that was laid on our desk to the time that we delivered that tank, through a US holiday, a major US holiday of Thanksgiving, was three weeks.
There was a competitor of ours who had called on the same customer. And so, weeks later after we delivered it, they said, went to our customer and said, “Did you ever buy that piece of equipment?”
And the guy said, “Yeah, it’s here.” And he was shocked. In fact, that competitor called me and wanted to understand how we did it. And it’s because it’s a different mindset.
Dan: Let me ask another question leading into this for our customers for the industry. The industry has terms of outages and turnarounds that are sometimes scheduled, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re created based on what we call “discovery.”
Is it realistic that in an outage or a turnaround that are typically four weeks to six weeks long, is it realistic to think that, let’s say, a large reactor could be built in a four-week time frame? Kelly?
Kelly Wyrough (Senior Sales Technician): Yes, it is realistic.
With the proper procedures in place and by Rapid Response in the team that we have that knows the approach and getting in front of the customer and getting secure materials, engineering is the priority. From day one, engineering and decision making is the priority. We have to build per critical path from an engineering perspective. Nick, right?
I mean, we all know during projects and what we do, there’s lots of design. There’s lots of specifications. There’s code compliance, of course. But in these particular situations, what’s it take from an engineering perspective to play in this fully expedited world? How do we do that?
Nick Anderson (Engineering Manager): Yeah, and that’s a question we asked ourselves from the start when we did Rapid Responses. We know code. We know what specifications are probably going to come in. But on a normal project, you can ask questions and figure out what the most optimal thing is.
In a Rapid Response, we have to use our expertise and use our knowledge and be able to do things that the customer is going to use and be able to provide that at an expedited basis.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, you’re an engineer, so we understand all this. Every customer is different, right? Every customer may have different specifications that when they issue RFQs in a normal situation, they might — you have to adhere to all of our specifications.
Does that differ in a Rapid Response situation?
Nick: It does. In a perfect world and in a perfect project, you want to optimize everything. You want to get exactly what the customer has learned throughout its existence and get something exactly what they want. In a Rapid Response standpoint, some specifications are great. But in reality, they may be overkill for what they really need to get up and running.
Greg: A lot of times, a customer will have an AML or a country of origin. We had one recently where the AML did not allow plate from Korea. But we got on the phone with the quality director of the company and said, “This plate is available.” And I’m walking through an airport and he’s somewhere also, I think, flying somewhere. And he’s checking with his people and saying, “This mill, yes, we know them, yes, they’re approved. Go.”
And so, the one thing that I think that on a Rapid Response, kind of to hit to Nick’s point, there has to be a trust. And Enerfab is the right company, because we’ve been in business for over 100 years, and we have the engineering expertise, but there has to be a trust that we’re going to never compromise quality, never compromise safety, but there may have to be some flexibility in their standards. We use the analogy of a three-legged race. So, they have to be willing to run with us in that manner.
Dan: I think what I’m hearing you say, and I think let me help you a little bit there, is that the customer has to be willing to reprieve us of some of their specifications or the wish list we’ve talked about quite a bit, right?
And so, we have to present to them — and that’s what’s really important — in a Rapid Response project, we have to present to them the fastest alternative possible. And that may not be per their specifications or their country of origin or their AML or per their engineering standards, right? But it’s our responsibility to tell them this is how fast it could be done. And here’s the details within. They have to make decisions quickly to say, “Yes, we’ll allow it. Yes, we — no, we won’t.” And we’ve had those situations most recently.
Nick: Yeah, one example that pops into my mind — it’s a simple example, but insulation bars. A customer wants a special insulation bar that they have in their spec. And it takes, let’s say, a day to build. Well, we can make one very simple — simply in our standards, in a couple of hours, saying, “Hey, this is something that your spec says. We can speed up if we move away from what your document says.” So that’s just an easy example, but we see that pretty regularly.
Kelly: We do.
Dan: We’ve got to be willing to ask the questions, right? We have to challenge our customer. That’s key, right?
Greg: But I think it’s also — there are times that the customer says no.
And so, we’re not hard-fast in our position, either. For example, that same quality gentleman rejected an elbow that was on their AML. It was…we showed it to him. We sent him the MTR. And he said, “I don’t like it, find something else.”
And, we were like, “OK.” And so, it’s just a matter of that communication running together and being flexible on both sides. We need to be flexible. The customer needs to be flexible. And then we can achieve the impossible.
Dan: This group right here — I’ve worked with you on many Rapid Response projects. We’ve got a lot of experience executing these over the past probably 20 years.
You’ve heard me talk about in certain situations that in these Rapid Response situations, the actual roles and responsibilities are flipped. We almost flipped the switch.
What do I mean by that? What does that mean to you, Kelly?
Kelly: We’re directing the customer of what needs to happen — they’re not directing us.
We’re setting the timeline, we’re sending the whole execution plan out to them by critical path for them to follow. We’re pushing them instead of them pushing us and telling us.
We’re trying to get more information. So, the importance of that is getting a decision-maker in the room with us at all times so we can move past every critical path successfully.
Dan: That’s a great comment right there because we’ve talked about that as having someone be able to make decisions for our customers on the spot to allow us to move as quick as we know we can, right?
Greg: Right. We use the term “centralized decision-making process.” If there is with our customer a third-party engineering company, for example, that they have to get buy-in from that, it muddies the water. It’s best when there is one decision making team or person that can say, “Yes, that’s OK. Move forward.”
And going back to a question that you had a little bit ago about: Can a reactor be built in four weeks? It depends on the project. We’ve had a Rapid Response that was a significant column that was 24 weeks, but that was still a third of what the industry standard was. So, the timeframe depends on the piece of equipment. A Rapid Response can be 24 weeks. It can be two days. It just depends on the piece of equipment.
And we will tell you, one thing that I’ve been really proud of our team is in our history of Rapid Response, we’ve never overpromised. We’ve hit every delivery that we have promised, and I think that’s a credit to the team.
Dan: We’ve seen multi-day versus multi-week versus, in some cases, a few months. But they’re all deemed Rapid Response just because of the complexity or size or something like that.
Nick: From an engineering standpoint, people think an engineer just sits behind the desk and makes all the numbers work. I remember working on a Rapid Response job — we got the call on a Friday evening.
And Monday morning, me and our engineering team were on a plane down to the customer. We’re agile, we’re willing to be in front of the customer whenever is needed to get the job done.
So, the rules that you think are industry standard — we break those pretty regularly to make these things possible.
Dan: Not to…I think that’s a really good comment. You said something earlier that I wanted to key in and maybe elaborate a little bit further on. Anytime a normal, scheduled project is in, we go through engineering phases.
That engineering phase could last longer, could be shorter, depending on the piece of equipment and complexities. We always talk about engineers when they’re replacing vessels, whether it be on a discovery or whether it’s, hey, it’s at its end of service life and they’re replacing it. We talk about the wish list and engineers wanting maybe a spare nozzle or maybe add this here and there.
How does that work? And how do we communicate to our customers that you may not get your wish list, so to speak?
Nick: Yeah. So, at the end of the day, the big things that we’re designing initially are the heads and shells, and we’re getting the nozzles to you. That’s basically what makes the vessel operate.
As it comes to wish list items and trying to optimize everything, like I mentioned before, when your plant’s down, it’s great to optimize stuff, but you really just need to be turned on.
We really pride ourselves in saying, “We understand what you’re saying, but that isn’t going to fix a problem that you have. You can make it the best thing you want, which we are going to provide you the best product. But at the end of the day, you need a vessel up and running.”
So, we provide the…these are the mandatory things that you need to have to get this vessel going. So, we list that out to you pretty explicitly. So, there isn’t any of that minutia of, I want this, I want that. It’s, this is what you need.
Greg: Another good example of this was on that 24-week project. About several weeks into the plant, not corporate engineering, but the plant decided they may want to rethink the internals/the design of the internals, and the corporate engineer said, “No, you can’t.”
And one of the principles of Rapid Response is very quickly freezing the design. Change orders will — you can work around them, but the concept is to establish the design, freeze the design, and move forward.
One of the key elements is getting all the materials in our possession, and once those materials are in our possession, we control it. And so out of the gates, you want to make sure you can get all/everything bought and get it in our control.
And once it’s in our control, we control the schedule. And talking about — Nick, you mentioned some of the extreme things over here on a plane.
I remember one of the Rapid Response projects that it was, again, they always seem to happen on a Thursday or Friday. Nobody seems to do this on a Monday for some reason, but on a Thursday, we got this notification. And on Friday, the price was given right away. And they said, “Yes, go.” And so, on Monday morning, I was on a plane to Houston to expedite vendors, and the engineering team and the sales team were on the road driving to the customer’s facility to work out all the details and to finalize everything.
And, I remember one of our engineers was in the backseat doing AutoCAD drawings as they were driving. And so, it’s just a different mindset. And one of the things I think that’s really… Enerfab has embraced, all the employees, all of us, have embraced Rapid Response because it’s exciting. It’s not your average everyday thing. And, it really causes a passion to be spread throughout our company.
Dan: Well, I think — and Kelly, I think you had something to say, but I’ll just add one thing to that really quick. I think it’s exciting for us because we’re customer-service oriented, right? And when our customers have an issue, it’s just natural for us to want to respond and help them out as best we can.
So, you were going to say something?
Kelly: Yeah, there are occasions where we can’t stop the design in a discovery mode.
We just had a recent project that was a discovery mode. Thirteen pieces of equipment went down. They needed…they need to expedite it. They knew the time frame that they needed it in was eight weeks. We thought we were building vessels that we built before, that they were the same.
After their discovery, they found out that there was going to be a lot of edit quality control, edit post-weld heat treating, solution annealing, special cleaning…and we couldn’t control the design, but I’m so proud of our team. We hit that eight-week bar and beat it in four of the pieces of equipment.
Nick: Yeah, talk about that project with talking about how we need to fix design on this project. They were moving some stuff around because they needed to get their process in line. Our team was able to balance what they wanted to do as well as keep the project moving at the same time. So, there is, to some extent, some agility that our team has working with them of, hey, this is what you want, but what you want isn’t going to work — we have to do this. It’ll still work for you in the end, but you have to be willing to change your design. So, there is some agility now that you brought this.
Dan: Yeah, I think you made a good point there, Nick, and I think we all lived that project. In that eight-week period, I think our entire company lived that project. We talked earlier about managing the wish list from an engineering perspective, but on that particular project, part of their wish list was discovery of things they need to have, right? And we had to add in.
So, what we thought was just replace in kind, and we developed our schedule of eight weeks, there were all kinds of things added to this job that was critical path that they needed to have. So, it’s important that we listen, right? And it’s important that we accommodate our customers on some of their wishes and understand what they need.
And, I think the most amazing thing about it is we added a lot of critical path, but we maintained and still beat the schedule because of the communication and working together with our customer, so I just wanted to touch on that. I think it was a really good point.
Greg: Yeah, Nick, in fact, when you say that, it just reminds me of one of the projects where the biggest problem from an engineering standpoint was our customer keeping up with our drawings because we were outpacing them.
And I remember hearing the engineer saying that she would put her kids to bed at night and check drawings, and that’s how she would spend her evenings. And…but keeping up that pace, we will outpace our customers almost every time.
Dan: One thing that comes to mind on Rapid Response projects or fully expedited projects is, how do you manage your subs? How is it important?
You know, Greg, you touched on earlier the importance of getting control of material. When you have maybe plate special forging, special nozzle, something out there, how do you manage that so that they can keep up with you?
Greg: Well, you know, I go back to that project where I headed to Houston and I remember…you ask for the impossible, and then when they give it to you, you ask it to be better. And, I remember going down to Houston, and these were specialty forgings, and sat in front of the vendors and said, “You know, what can you do?” And he did everything, and he said, “Like, a week.”
And then I’m like, “Okay, can you do better?” And, he got a little mad at me, you know, not too mad, but you just, you really, you’re asking the impossible. You’re asking the vendors to move in a way they may not think.
The other thing is we aren’t dealing with a brand-new vendor in that situation. We have a trusted set of vendors who we know will perform. They know us. And so, you’re dealing with very trusted vendors in these situations.
Dan: Kelly, I know we’ve used you in the past, right? I mean, you live down in Houston and your responsibility is our sales and business development, right? But, I know we’ve used you to expedite for us.
I mean, talk to me about the importance of versatility with our people to come through on these projects.
Kelly: It is very important with the versatility of our people, especially like myself, ’cause I’m located in the central where a lot of the materials are coming from. So, I was able to keep track of custom-made pipe, forging, plate being rolled, whatever was going on. But we were in there daily.
Sometimes it was more than daily. We were there in the morning and then again, back at night, just to check on where they were with the X-rays or any critical quality control, dimensional checks, and ensuring everything was flowing and helping them make the impossible happen.
Not leaving them out there to dry, answering any questions right on the spot, getting it done, calling back to the office to Nick. “Hey, on the drawing, it says you need 16 inches of pipe. Is it okay if we make this a little longer? Can we trim it back in the shop? Or do we have to cut it back here?” Stuff like that.
Or maybe it’s a polished pipe, checking the RA, getting out there with a prophilometer, making sure when they first start their polishing…that they’re starting off right to give us the achievement at the back end.
So being versatile…a lot of our sales department are very versatile. We ran the shop. We were in estimating. A lot of us have that technical background and are able to do that. It makes us unique.
We have a lot of people that are very versatile within Enerfab that can take on the challenge of expediting materials, helping out quality control, and that’s what makes our Rapid Response unique.
Nick: Yeah, you brought up about going and seeing the vendors and stuff, and we talked about a wish list with the customer. Well, they give us a reality check, too, from a wish list standpoint in the sense. We may design a nozzle to be SCED 40. Well, they may say, “We don’t carry SCED 40. We have SCED 80, can you make that work?”
We’re going back, we’re checking on the fly. Well, we’re making things work based on availability from our wish list. They’re telling us what they can give us to make things work. So, it’s that constant communication with them to make things possible.
Kelly: Right. And that’s a good thing that you bring that up because that’s a risk of delay. If they don’t move quickly, most of this inventory is coming from stock. If somebody buys it first, I mean, the project we just did on those 13 pieces of equipment, we bought every piece of alloy plate that there was in the industry.
In fact, we needed something else, and one of our vendors called another vendor and they said, “Hey, a company called Enerfab bought everything.”
(laughing)
So, you know, we’re like, “Wow! Okay.”
Greg: Yeah, we did.
Kelly: And we did, but we found a solution to that. We custom-made pipe.
Dan: Yeah, I think that’s a great point.
I think the other thing that’s really important I learned from this is our communication internally to our materials-management division, right? Our communication to who’s buying the material, who’s talking to the vendors directly, to make sure that they understand.
We’re not asking you for an expedited project. We’re asking you how fast you can physically get this to us. Imagine yourself having nothing else there and you solely dedicated yourself to this project. How fast can you get it to us? And then tell us what it costs, right?
So, a question I have about engineering, I want to elaborate on something because I think this is really important. I’ve seen this in the past kind of optimized engineering to fit the project or maybe to fit what vendor stock is available or to maybe fit utilization of plate.
How do you do that? What does that mean to you when I ask you that question as far as, do you bring everything up in thickness? Do you, I mean, how do you do that to optimize speed? Which is really important. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Nick: Yeah, one thing I think is very unique about Enerfab is, we are boots on the ground. We’re out in the shop talking with the plant, talking with the superintendent, talking about talking with the guys that are actually doing the work.
So, in an ideal world, we’d order one plate and make a whole show out of one plate, but sometimes that’s not realistic. So, working with estimating, working with the shop of what they would prefer to make them go quicker. We kind of tailor it in the moment of what’s available and what they would prefer to make the most efficient design.
I’m pretty proud of how much we’ve learned throughout the years. I use the term “book engineer” versus “real-life engineer.” A book engineer says, “Oh, this has to be this way.” That’s not how reality is. So, our engineers have really learned what is practical, what is actually going to be done, and we tailor our designs to match what is actually going to be built.
Dan: That’s a really good point, yeah. And I mean, listening and understanding what the shop needs first from a sequential standpoint, right? So, I think that’s a really good point.
Greg: Yeah, you’ve said a key word which is the communication and that’s one of the principles of Rapid Response is communicating and over-communicating with the customer, with vendors, with the people on the floor internally.
That communication is so very important.
Dan: Absolutely. Kelly, I got a question for you about the customer. Who defines what is Rapid Response? Who defines that it is Rapid Response, right?
Kelly: We do, together with the customer. We understand what they have — the period of time. You know, somebody might think a Rapid Response is 19 weeks. You know, that’s a normal schedule.
They don’t really have to pay for it, but they think, “Oh my goodness, deliveries are 38 to 40 weeks. Nineteen weeks, maybe.” Sometimes they’re not fully Rapid Response. Sometimes they could be rapid or just very accelerated, right?
And, we try to optimize that for the customer ’cause they’re already down and out. A Rapid Response has a different level set. So, we listen to them. We listen, too, about the criticality, when they need to have it back up and running, what we know in regard to material availability, and we’re thinking all the while.
You know, maybe parts of the jobs, you’re running rapid, you know, seven days a week, 84 hours, seven days a week, 84 hours schedule to keep up a critical path, but then other parts of the project…it might not need that to keep up with it.
So, we look at that as well to help costs with the customer ’cause we know that they’re in pain. An urgent need is an urgent need. So, we kind of defined what’s urgent based off of what we know our engineering can do. We know what our shop space is like ’cause we’re always keeping track of that and material availability.
Once we know all that and their need and their need date to get back up, well, then we decide, is it Rapid Response or is it super expedited?
Greg: Yeah, so I think you hit a key point, and that is a lot of times you can, the customer may say, “Can I have it in four weeks?” And, he’s asking for four weeks because he really needs it in eight weeks, but he wants to make sure.
And the difference, you know, four weeks may be X, and adding a few weeks to it may be 25% less. There are constraints that really drive prices as you push towards what’s optimally achievable. So, it’s a matter of listing the customer and saying, “When do you really need it?”
And, they may have another piece of equipment that’s coming in that it doesn’t do them any good to have our piece ahead of time. So, you just gotta really listen to it, the customer, what the customer says, and what he needs. And you know, I’ve used the term semi–Rapid Response, and I just used that recently. In fact, we just got the award today. And so, it’s…there is a blending between expedited and rapid, but true rapid is just completely go, go, go.
Kelly: Yeah, to add to that, the customer is, like, enthralled in this problem. That’s all they see is the problem. They can’t find their way out.
So, they think, “You know, it’s a couple of pieces of equipment.” And they think, “Oh my goodness, I need it now.” We’re the person that’s listening behind and understanding that they’re getting another piece of equipment that’s maybe 15 weeks or something.
And you know, they need that to put in. Maybe they need ours a couple…it attaches to ours. They needed a couple of weeks. So, we’re there to be the calming force, so that…to try to make their problem solution a lot more comfortable for them.
Dan: Yeah, that’s a good point.
This is an interesting question, but I’m going to ask it and see how you guys take our experiences because I think this is really important in the success of these Rapid Response projects.
How do we ensure that we’re going to hit our dates? What types of things do we put in place? Call it incentives, call it, you know, with our people, with our subs…what’s critical to make sure that that eight weeks or that one week that we hit that? That we have 100% record on? What’s key?
There are some other key things that go into this. What are they, Nick?
Nick: Yeah, so from an engineering standpoint, you know, when we first started out, there were two people that kind of were the Rapid Response team. Well, as we got more complex jobs and more people looking for this Rapid Response offering, you know, we’ve trained our team to all be experienced in Rapid Response. So, you know, the other work doesn’t stop. You know, it’s not like we put everything on hold. So, we’re able to adjust our work to make sure all customers are taken care of.
And then from an incentive and from a, you know, want to get it done on time, you know, like I said before, we’ve invested in technology so that we can keep the quality that we have and make sure we have everything, all the Ts crossed, Is dotted, but do it so much quicker and much more efficiently. Basically, we take all of our experience, and we put it into a system that’s able to make it quicker, you know?
Kelly: When we first started out, we got the buy-in from our team, production, higher-ups, everybody, our team. Do you have it in you? Can we do it? What’s it going to affect if we take this on?
And, we have to think about the other customers. Sometimes we can call the other customers that are on the floor and say, “Hey, listen, we have an emergency here for a customer. Is there any way you can move yours out?” Some will gratefully say, “Yes,” and some can’t — they have a deadline. Then we work with that.
And that’s how we started to develop our plan around what we have in process, what cannot move in process, what equipment, what do we need to be successful, but also have the people that are building it, our team that is building it, buy-in…can you do it? What do you think? And once we get that buy-in, we have success.
Greg: Well, you know, I think it all starts with estimating because, and I don’t know how other companies estimate, but we have a very granular process.
We are listing out all the materials, we are listing the subcontractors, we are listing the man hours on a granular basis. And so, you have to start with a good foundation. If that estimate is way off, if it’s half the man-hours of what it’s really going to take, we may overpromise.
But through our very granular…and there’s a lot of experience in our organization…most of, there’s so many employees that have been here 30-plus years. And we know the industry, and we know what it takes, and sometimes you have to challenge decisions. And Kelly, you said the team…there was one a couple years back that one of the senior managers/directors said two weeks. And I said, I don’t feel comfortable. It’s three weeks.
And, it was two weeks and like six days. We got it there. So, it’s…and that senior employee listened to me and that was really important. So that to me, starting with the estimate, the estimate’s got to be right.
Dan: No, I think that’s a good point. I mean, it sets us up. It sets the team up. Is it believable, right? You know, you got to, you all have to be one cohesive unit.
I remember there was a customer — and I’m going to take this back — that we said X amount of weeks, which was an incredible pace, and they challenged us back and said, “Can you do faster?” Right? And, instead of us saying yes on the phone, right, and being that we didn’t. We had to regroup with our team.
How can we make this happen? And the communication that we give to them, right?
It’s not always guaranteed, saying yes. It’s sometimes, you know, “We don’t know. We gotta look into this.”
Nick: Greg, I did want to build off of what you just said there where it starts with estimating. You know, being on the engineering side, you know, you, Kelly, and the rest of the team are very knowledgeable in pressure vessels.
So even though, you know, we deal with the code, you guys know it almost just as well as we do. So, you guys challenge us going, “Hey, I estimated this way because it should be able to be done this way, and this is where it is in the code.” You know? So, everyone is very knowledgeable. It’s not just the engineers who know it. Everyone does and everyone’s able to build off one another.
So, I think that’s part of another reason why we’re so successful is we challenge each other, and we all know, kind of, what the end goal is through that.
Greg: Yeah, and I like how the team works together because one of our most recent Rapid Response was just a month or two ago.
We were all…all four of us were in an offsite meeting, and Kelly got the phone call that they needed this vessel. And we’re on the break from the meeting and gathering — alright, Rapid Response team gather at table six.
And we, and you know, people are throwing numbers around, and we estimated that on break and got the order and had the tank delivered in eight days or something like that and saved a customer when their production was down.
Kelly: That was unique.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, so the team works really well together. That’s the good thing.
Dan: Well, and that’s key for our customers, right? I mean, the last couple of projects we worked on, I think it’s tough for our customers to understand how you have to work together on this, even internally from their company standpoint, right?
The last couple of projects that we’ve had, I think that the team from the customer’s perspective, their team, I mean, has been incredible to work with, right? I mean, their knowledge, but listening to us at what it takes is key.
And, sometimes, that’s not the easiest thing in the world to have a fabricator or a vendor telling them what to do, which is not how we phrase it. But, I mean, at the end of the day, we have to educate them on what it takes to stay up with us. And we’ve had some really good teams from our customer standpoint, and you can’t have success without them, right? So that’s what’s really important.
So, one question has come to mind as we’ve been sitting here talking, and I think this is really important. You know, when the customer or any of us hear speed, right? I think in my mind, when you couple speed with quality and safety, I think of the famous fable, the tortoise and the hare, right? How do we maintain quality? You’re running through these projects this quick — the customer’s going to want to know, “How do you guys not sacrifice quality? How do you not sacrifice safety?” Kelly?
Kelly: We build it in. We engineer it in. We have an ITP that’s set up at the Day One of it, and we do not miss a beat on safety, quality.
You talk about safety, let’s talk about safety. We have guys and gals that are working out 84 hours a week. We have to maintain them. Sometimes, it’s in the hot of the summer, you know, and always making sure that they’re okay. So, we always have our mind on our employees that are doing the work, as well as engineering.
A lot of people are working a lot of hours, and engineering sitting in one spot is just as bad as being out in the hot, you know, so we’re keeping that, but quality control is built in. There is no way around it. We will not sacrifice quality or safety. We develop it right away as Nick’s team is doing the drawings. Quality’s right behind on each point.
Dan: Yeah, and I know Greg. You’re chomping up, but let me just say one thing here real quick here is, is we, and I guess it’s important for our customers to know, we do price into our cost for them extra people being on the job on standby, right, so that we can maintain the level of quality. We can maintain the level of energy. We can have somebody there in case for some reason, someone does not show up for whatever reason. Someone turns up ill or, you know, so I think that’s really important for our customers to know that we factor these things in. I think you said it great. You factor this in, right?
You have to think about these things. Greg?
Greg: Well, our culture — ingrained in who we are — is quality.
And so, there’s never a thought that quality is ever going to be sacrificed in a Rapid Response. In fact, our motto is, “Our quality is our customer’s safety,” so, it’s safety and quality in everything we do. So that, and the statement in Rapid Response is safety and quality are never compromised. That’s not part of the equation to move that aside. It’s ingrained in who we are.
Dan: Yeah, well said. Nick?
Nick: Yeah, you know, and I’m gonna focus on the engineering real quick. You know, on a typical project, it’s send out drawings, send out calcs, let them mark it up and come back, which that worked on a normal job. But, you know, we’re willing to go the extra mile of, “Hey, Mr. Customer, the drawings are coming out right now.”
We have a two-hour call blocked off where we’re going to go through every single drawing, every single detail, and we’re going to make sure that we’re providing you exactly what you want. We’ll make adjustments on the fly and tell the shop before you even get off the phone that this is what you’re going to be building.
I feel like that’s what our team does, you know, even with some inspectors that come in like, Hey, I would prefer to see this, okay? ITP’s updated. We’re going to change it this way, or we need this adjusted.”
You know, we’re willing to do what’s needed to get them the product that they want.
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