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 second episode of Shop Talk, we explore how Enerfab tackles the seemingly impossible during the most critical 48 hours following a Rapid Response project request.
Read the Full Transcript
Dan Creech (Executive Vice President, Process Fabrication): I remember you and I went down to a customer on a rapid response project. And if I’m right, you actually had the vessel engineer drawn and materials released, from the time we left to plant and the five hour drive home.
Jeff Pleas (Project Execution Engineering Manager): We did, yeah.
So we spent the whole day with the customer, you know, really understanding again, the specs – what they want, you know, what do they want to change? What improvements do they need to make? So throughout that entire day, I was creating the drawings that we had. We had it up on the screen just like this, we had a room full of engineers. So we actually engineered right there on the fly.
We do produce a lot of the drawings actually in the back of your car. You know, and you’re driving 75 miles an hour through the Appalachian mountains, I’m getting sick in the back, but I’m still typing away. As soon as I get back on Wi-Fi, you know, I’m releasing drawings to Dan. They’re up on the kiosk. I got material over to Dan to buy.
And at the end of the day — beginning of the day to the end of the day — we had a complete design, engineering drawings, a complete bill of materials and Dan was able to start building the next day.
[Intro music]
Dan Creech: So welcome to our Building For Real Life Shop Talk series. Thanks for being with us today.
Today, we’re going to talk about the first 24 to 48 hours or the start and the criticality of the start of rapid response projects. Dan Delaney, Managing Director of Procurement, Danny Wall, Plant Superintendent, and Jeff Pleas, Project Execution Engineering Manager, are here with me today.
The three of you are here because you’re actually very vital in the first couple of days of a rapid response project, right? Engineering, labor, purchasing — the three critical things we talk about getting off to a good start, engineering-wise, right? We get a rapid response project, we immediately go into engineering mode, right?
So, talk to me a little bit about what you’re doing differently in a rapid response project and engineering, versus just a normal project.
Jeff: Yeah, normal project, you know, it can last through engineering four, five, six weeks and rapid response is four to five days. So, what we have to do is collect all the information that’s important to that, to that project, get it together and then set up a meeting with the customer, you know, and get them off on the right foot, make sure that they understand the rules of engagement.
We have to move fast. We have to get material ordered. We have to get drawings on the shop floor really quick.
Dan Creech: You said something important there about rules of engagement. Normal project’s rules of engagement — we might send a schedule to a customer and we might tell them, you know, here’s your engineering durations. You might get a week to review drawings or two weeks to review drawings. But in a rapid response project, since the entire project might be a week-long or days or two weeks, how could you possibly engineer a job, a complex vessel in days?
Jeff: So, most of the time, these pieces of equipment are replace in kind, where there was a failure of some sort. So, there is an existing design that already exists. So the nozzles are in the certain location, certain elevation, orientations – we just have to match that. If we’re replacing in kind, they’re going to take out the failed piece of equipment, and they’re going to replace it.
So most of that engineering is done. It’s just we have to produce a set of drawings to match that and make sure that if there are any changes that they want to make, you know, improvements that they want to make, you know. So, you’re not starting from the ground zero or from scratch, basically — you’re reproducing what was already built.
Dan Creech: You made a good point. A lot of this comes from an unfortunate event at a customer, right? A discovery during an outage or a failed piece of equipment they weren’t expecting. So replacing in kind, you’re making an investment in a new vessel.
Customers have specifications, right? Customers have AMLs. Maybe, Dan, you could talk a little bit about that because we have rules of engagement that we have to follow from a specification standpoint, whether it’s approved manufacturers list or can’t buy from this certain country or origin in these particular situations, we’re moving so fast. How do we present that to the customer? I mean, how do we- they have to be nimble, I would assume in some ways- how do we do that?
Dan Delaney (Managing Director of Procurement): I think ultimately, we want to give the customers what they’re looking for, right? And if they have an AML or a country of origin that we need to meet, I think our default is to find material that fits within those boundaries. But ultimately, what I try to do on those types of projects is also find alternate, right?
If there is a forging that has to be from a certain manufacturer, you know, I will go out and look for that. But I also look for options in different manufacturers and present that to the customer. It’s all about – the customer has a goal of getting a piece of equipment back up and getting as quick as possible, and, you know, we want to just provide them with options on how we can achieve that goal for them.
So it’s really just about looking for options.
Dan Creech: It’s hard. It’s hard for me to imagine during these projects as we know that building a complex vessel, the average time frame – and Danny, you’ve done this for a long time – projects might be 15 weeks to 50 weeks, right? And again, I’m going to go back to a rapid response – one week. So obviously the first 24 to 48 hours is so critical. How is it possible that you’re releasing material that fast and he’s buying it within the first couple of days?
Jeff: Yeah. The most important thing is that we have to build a vessel that is to-code and is safe. So that’s the first line is that we have to do code calculations. We can do this pretty quickly, verify that, you know, the thicknesses may change based on the new code. You know, the code when that vessel was built may not be the same as it is today. So our first step is to make sure that the code capture is correct and that we’re buying the correct thickness of material. So that’s the first step.
The second step is to make sure that what we’re building matches what the customer wants, right? So, those two key things and oftentimes we’re doing that even before the customer gets a set of drawings. You know, we may just give them a sketch. You know, we may just go off of their specifications, their drawings, you know, their existing drawings of the vessel. So that’s really, you know, that, we have to react quick and get the material over to Dan.
Dan Creech: Danny, I’m going to ask this question to you because from a from a speed perspective, I know that we need to get everything in our hands and we got to stay out in front of you, right? From a shop-labor standpoint, from the actual execution hands on welding, fitting, cutting, the building of the vessel. From your standpoint, what are you doing in the first couple of days?
Danny Wahl (Plant Superintendent): We’re not – in the shop, we’re not doing anything, ok? From what I need to do based upon the job, how quick Dan can get things in here, is basically organizing the shop. How big is the vessel? How many of them there are? Where can I build it at? Who’s going to do it? Is it nickel? Is it carbon? Is it stainless? Who’s the welders that can go on this? Who’s the quickest fitter? Can I break this thing down in four or five pieces?
I need to see a drawing, some type of a sketch from Jeff that says, you know, this thing is 200 feet long or 20 feet long. And how many people can I put on it? How am I going to build it?
And that’s what I go through and try to set the shop up in a situation that I can do what it takes to get it done. You know, trying to get the material in here from Dan is – I guess when you know you have a rapid response job, material can’t get here quick enough because you got everybody pumped up. You want to go, and like I said a while ago, the last two big jobs we’ve had, it always sits on a weekend.
Dan Creech: You know, that’s interesting you say that because I was going to bring it up. It seems by happenstance, maybe by sheer luck and the 15, 20 projects we’ve done, it always seems like something comes on a Thursday or a Friday. And I think, Dan, we push really you and Jeff the most, right? The criticality of getting material in on the weekend so that we can get the weekend jumpstart.
Talk to me a little bit about our vendors, right? And the subcontractors that we use for material, for forgings, for heads. How is it possible to get them to act the same way we do, to jump through hoops?
Dan Delaney: Our process on a rapid response project is much different than your standard project, right? On a standard project, when it comes in, we have kind of a siloed approach where it comes in through sales, goes to pre-contract engineering, goes over to estimating, goes back to sales. You know the flow where it’s very siloed back and forth to the customer, communication back to us, maybe modify. You know, a lot of that happens before we get the project, the PO, right? And then a lot of times I’m not even engaged in projects until a couple weeks after a PO is received.
With these rapid response projects, we really stack everything on top of each other. You know, when Jeff’s in the engineering groups doing their design, I’m trying to source material at that time at the same time estimating, building the estimate. Same time, sales is having the communication with the customer, right?
It’s all happening at the same time, which really condenses a lot of that back and forth and normal projects down to a very small amount of time, right? And during that time, even before PO, I’m having communication with our vendors and setting that expectation.
On these projects, what I do, you know, we’re not trying out new vendors on rapid response projects, right? That’s not your time to vet new vendors, right? So we’re going to our partners that we’ve worked with for a long period of time that we have established relationships with. And, you know, I just communicate the project that we’re looking at, what we need to do, the expectationnd with that, we find out who can get in that boat with us, right? And it’s not about any surprises, post a quote or post award. We want everyone to know what the expectation is and price it the way that meets that expectation, right? If there’s additional freight that needs to happen, if there’s overtime on there and that needs to happen, build that into your pricing so we get the product that we need at the time that we need it, right?
So it’s all about communication on my part with our suppliers and just getting them in that boat with us.
Dan Creech: Yeah. And I remember you and I have had conversations in the past about getting your vendors to think like we think, right? They may give you a delivery and we may say, that’s great, thank you very much – is that the fastest you can do, right?
And we need to make sure we’re communicating not just to our vendors, but internally. You might kick out an expedited schedule, well we might say, is that the fastest you can do because our customers are expecting during an outage, they’re down, right? And we don’t know how much money they might be losing a day or, you know, what the critical metrics are.
But when someone says as fast as possible, we have to make sure we communicate that to our, to our partners. And it might not be good enough for what we say, and we go back and challenge them.
How can you convince someone that their fastest isn’t fast enough?
Dan Delaney: Yeah, I think I like to- I don’t like to use words that are relative words. Fast, you know, what is fast? Fast is different from me to you, right? And different to our customers. So, you know, we really like to be very definitive in what we’re trying to achieve. I need this next day, right? Put a dedicated load on it, don’t put it on your table, don’t cut this piece of material. You take it off your shelf, put it on a truck, send it to me tomorrow. Try to be very clear in expectations.
But to your point too, we do bonus people at times. The subcontractors, if they’re doing a machining or forming for us and they say, this is the best we can do based on machine availability and anything else that’s going on. we appreciate that, maybe we build that into our schedule, but then we also offer bonuses to say, “Hey, if you can shave a day off of this, it’s important to us, and I know that costs you money. You know, we will bonus you to, to decrease your lead time on that.”
Dan Creech: And that’s critical for us to get that set up, right? I mean, because in a rapid response job, I mean, the four of us, we’ve worked on a lot of these together, right? And we understand that getting engineering and procurement completed and in Danny’s hands as fast as possible is so important.
And I’m going to direct this question to you, Danny. Why is that so important that you have everything there? What’s that do for you?
Danny: Gives me the flexibility to start on any part of this vessel or whatever it is that I can have different crews do different things. Like I said, if it’s 200 feet long, I might bust it down into four or five sections. So I got to have four or five guys, or crews working on those different sections. I need everything there. So when it, when this section gets done, that one’s done, I can start putting it together. It’s a big deal.
If I go through a job so fast that I get a certain part done and I don’t have any more material, it takes the air out of my sail and the people out there, it’s like, what the heck’s going on? So having everything there all at once. And if Dan goes out there and buys bar rings, you know, tray rings, downcomer wings and to get his customer to get it into me quickly, so I have it there laying on the floor, I can just start putting it in. It’s a huge deal.
Because the last thing we want to do is stand around and wait. We don’t have time for that. You know what I mean? You just don’t have time. And I appreciate everything in the rapid response job, I kind of want to, like, to have every job be at a rapid response. And Jeff ended like, you’re out of your minds. But what it does, it just keeps the whole flow going out there. You know what I mean? So I can pick and choose different people doing different things. First shift, second shift, how are we going to do it? Different welders. It gets really exciting out there. It really does.
Dan Creech: How, during a rapid response project, cause typically during projects, you know, like Dan had mentioned earlier, you have a flow, a system with how things play out, right? You receive the P.O., you go through a commercial review, you kick the job off. It goes to engineering, engineering has their duration. Then material procurement has their duration, and then it goes to the shop.
But in a rapid response project, this, like you had mentioned, everyone’s running together, they’re running the same race, right? Cohesively. How does engineering and the shop work together? So as you’re not getting too far ahead, you’re staying up with them. Talk to me about some of the critical points, Jeff, of really engaging our customer to make sure that they can run the speed we’re running.
Jeff: Depending on the complexity of the, of the vessel that we’re building, for example, the rapid response that was the 267 foot tall in 62 days. You know, that, that had to be broken into phases. I had to feed Danny what he needed to build today, tomorrow, next week, three weeks from now. We had to engineer it in those phases and we had to present it to the customer in those phases, so they would approve us in, in pieces, in those phases.
So, the skirt, for example, you know, we wanted to build that skirt first. So, design the skirt, get the material in quick, start getting drawings out in our shop as quickly as possible so he can start building a skirt.
Then the shell cans, then the nozzles, then the trays, then the platform clips, then the vacuum ring. So, break that out into consumable chunks, that is easy for him to use and build in a, in a, you know, a concise way that, that’s, that makes sense for the way you want to build something.
Danny: Yeah, it’s really funny. In the last rapid response we did – the five tanks, okay? When we got the first set of drawings from you, they wanted a different material and we ended up with something else you found. And pretty much that material, you bought it all over the country. And we- Dan’s like here it is. It’s looking like a quilt. So Jeff gets what he’s bought and is like, he starts putting it together, like a jigsaw puzzle. And this part goes here and this part here. And you got to cut that and then weld this together to make this shell and it was just amazing how all that worked out. And at the end of the day gentlemen, with everybody’s help, it was five tanks without post-weld heat treat and all the, we built five tanks in five weeks.
Dan Creech: Yeah and I know the project you’re talking about. I mean, that was, that was an interesting one, right? How do you deal with, I think about this from a specification standpoint, when you add in solution and healing, you add in post-weld heat treat, you add in acid wash, right? And this was the complexity of this project. The vessels themselves quite honestly, replace in kind, weren’t that complicated.
But if I remember, we had to change design because material wasn’t available, right? We actually had to change a significant piece of that design as far as access opening, because no matter what we did, we couldn’t quite get the forging in time. So we had to make an adjustment. Is that right?
Dan Delaney: And we, we couldn’t get the body flanges in time to support the schedule that we needed, yes. But then with conversations with the customer, we found out the reason for the body flanges was to access a screen on the inside of the vessel. And really, what they needed was at least a 24-inch access opening. And so we were able to put a manway in there, achieve what the customer needs, and still meet the schedule.
Dan Creech: From an engineering perspective, we all know, and we can laugh about this, right? And engineering decisions normally don’t get made quickly, okay? I think what I found out in my experience and Jeff, and how critical was it on this project, that you have to have someone from both sides that can make decisions?
Jeff: Yeah. So, so, you know, at the onset of the project, you know, one of the things I want to talk about is how we communicate the speed that we need to move with the customer. So, you know, I’ll get a text on Friday night from Andy Koenig saying, “Hey, we got a rapid response. Can you be on a plane tomorrow morning?” Sure, we can do that.
But to do that, we got to get a plan. We got to understand what the, what the spec, what the, what the specs are, what we have to build, you know, what, what the existing vessel looks like. So, we have to gather that information. But then once we get in front of the customer, we need to explain, you know, we have to move fast, we have to make decisions fast. And their team has, they have to build a team just like we have a team. We have a team of, we have our engineers, we have our sales team, we have estimators. We can all get in the same room together. They need to have a team as well that can answer those questions. They need to have their inspection team, they need to have their plant engineers, they need to have their process engineers, they need to have their structural engineers.
Everyone on their side really needs to engage so that we all can move fast and make decisions fast. We have to make fast decisions, but we have to make smart decisions. So having that whole team and having all of them engaged is very important.
Dan Creech: And I remember you and I went down to a customer on a rapid response project. And if I’m right, you actually had the vessel engineer drawn and materials released, from the time we left to plant and the five hour drive home.
Jeff: We did, yeah.
So we spent the whole day with the customer, you know, really understanding again, the specs – what they want, you know, what do they want to change? What improvements do they need to make? So throughout that entire day, I was creating the drawings that we had. We had it up on the screen just like this, we had a room full of engineers. So we actually engineered right there on the fly.
We do produce a lot of the drawings actually in the back of your car. You know, and you’re driving 75 miles an hour through the Appalachian mountains, I’m getting sick in the back, but I’m still typing away. As soon as I get back on Wi-Fi, you know, I’m releasing drawings to Dan. They’re up on the kiosk. I got material over to Dan to buy.
And at the end of the day — beginning of the day to the end of the day — we had a complete design, engineering drawings, a complete bill of materials and Dan was able to start building the next day.
Dan Creech: I’ve been in situations where I’ve seen the two of you in a room, and this room in particular, where you’re engineering and you’re releasing POs simultaneously. And I think people need to understand that’s what it takes, right? And, and I can say it can be done because we’ve done it, right?
But I have a question about material, because you brought something up earlier about building a quilt, what’s available? We get really specific on our engineering with these vessels based on calculations and things like that and thicknesses. How are you buying material that fast if that thickness isn’t available? What are you doing to make sure that the jobs continue to progress along at the speed with which we need to proceed?
Dan Delaney: Well, I mean, it really, it depends case by case, right? And so if, if a certain material is not available in the thicknesses that we need, you have options of potentially going thicker, which we have done in some situations where we’ve increased the thickness, but you still say, keeping with the same material type.
We’ve also had other situations where we’ve worked with customers to see what other materials will work. We’ve changed designs, bought different materials, and found out what is available.
Dan Creech: Yeah, I think the communication up front with the customers, like you said, getting their team set, that team has to be, they have to understand the rules of engagement for us. And that first, really the first 24 hours, all that stuff has to be set up. And their customers have to understand it’s us communicating to them. We have to move at this pace, and here’s, through our experience, some of the things that might happen, you guys got to be ready to make these decisions.
Jeff: Yeah. A good example of that is, you know, a vessel that may already be out in the field. It may have a pipe, a flange, a race face flange, let’s say, and a re-pad. Well, that’s a lot of welding. Also three parts, three pieces of material that you have to buy. We could change that to a long weld neck, one weld, one piece, much faster to buy, much faster to produce, much faster to install.
So, it’s being creative on how we approach the project, you know, in a rapid response. And, you know, not that we’re not doing that creativity on a regular project, but there are different, different circumstances that make you have to be more crafty.
For example, you know, material, you talk about materials, you know – so instead of buying bar to do your vacuum race, we might make the vacuum ring and the shell the same thickness. Then cut those, cut those vacuum rings out of the drop from the shell, buy that plate a little anchor, and get the vacuum rings out of there. You control the material.
You got, you got vacuum rings and shell all in one shot out of the plasma table.
Danny: Makes it nice, when we can, when we’re able to do that.
Dan Creech: Let’s talk about labor for a second. On a rapid response project, I’m assuming that on most of these, if not all of these, we’re working multi-shifts around the clock, right?
Jeff: Correct.
Dan Creech: This is seven days a week, it is all out. In the real world, right, people get sick, people have situations at home, maybe people don’t show up to work for whatever reason that is. How do you, how do you keep the job going along over an eight-week job, which we’ve done in the past, or a 24-week rapid response job, or a one-week job? How do you assure our customers that we are always going to man up the job, understanding these real-life situations happen?
Danny: Yeah, so I think, we are, very lucky, okay? Whether it’s a one-week job or it’s a, you know, 24-week job, whatever it may be. We have great people out there. And with the people, yeah, everybody’s going to get sick sooner or later. Something’s going to happen – there’s going to be a death in the family, you got to take off, whatever it may be.
And you have to understand that going into it. What if so-and-so is not going to be here? I’m going to put him doing this. Who can I replace him with if he’s not here? He can’t work this Sunday because of whatever. You got to plan ahead and get that going, and one thing that makes a big deal to me is the schedule. So as quick as I can get that schedule in my hand and go over that to look at what everybody’s decided on, because do you have an end date and you got so many people, right, on that schedule? It’s got to be done here to try to beat that schedule.
Try to figure out when you look at that vessel, how are you going to break it down in your head to make it go quicker than what they’ve got on that schedule? But the people out there are, like I said, we’re very lucky. They’ll work seven days a week, they’ll work 12 hours a day, over and over and over again. And we have a lot of very talented people that can do different things than just one thing.
Dan Creech: So, I hear when you say that, I hear redundancy, right? We plan in redundancy, we have to. I think we do it with drivers logistically, right? We do it with engineering redundancy. But in the shop, when you’re talking about an environment where labor is charged to jobs, right? And we have a bunch of other jobs already going through the shop and a bunch of different customers, right? You got to have redundancy in these situations.
So, are you bringing more people in that maybe said that job may not be on overtime for us, but you’re bringing more people in just in case maybe someone on this expedited job doesn’t show up, you can always take from? Is that the kind of redundancy you’re talking about?
Danny: That happens, yeah. That happens a lot. We talk when we get into these rapid response jobs, based on how big the job is or how long it’s going to take. The other customers out there, we’re looking at their jobs and say, OK, this job’s got a ship here. We’re, you know, we got to really go on this one. But we go to basically you and say, OK, who are you going to go to? Who are you going to talk to? Who are you going to tell that we’re going to be not on schedule?
Because we’re going to pull people from that job to fulfill this job. Because I can’t do it all. And so that’s what we do as a company. We have to make those decisions, you know what I mean? And yeah, I’ll pull people from other jobs to get this one done.
Dan Delaney: Hey, can I add to that too?
Dan Creech: Yeah, absolutely.
Dan Delaney: You know, I think the other added benefit that we have is we do have the multiple fabrication facilities too, right? And we have, on rapid response projects, done portions of the work at one shop, done portions of the work in another shop. So we do have those redundant capabilities, and additionally, we are very vertically integrated. And within our shops, we have redundant pieces of equipment – multiple plasmid tables, multiple plate rolls, multiple highly talented people that can do the welding.
You know, so we have redundant equipment and people within our shops too, that help us accomplish what we need to do.
Dan Creech: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. I mean, in normal projects, we’re in competitively bid situations, right? These projects aren’t like that. We’re telling the customer, “This is the cost to get it to you by this date, right? And that’s the fastest we can possibly do it. We don’t have the luxury of going out to, like I think you said earlier, multiple people – we do the people we trust.
However, I think you made a really good point. The vertically integrated that we are in our shop, we don’t subcontract out a lot out of this shop. We have the availability of equipment, the types of equipment, to pretty much self-perform everything in our shop for that very reason. It might not always be the most cost-competitive way, but we have that ability, which is really important. I think that’s a really good point by you.
We started this whole podcast right here, this shop talk is about the start. Let’s go from the start then. A salesperson comes in, right? They said they got a call from a customer. Just talk about how we get started, right? And anyone, I mean, Jeff, how do we get started?
Jeff: Yeah, so I kind of talked about this earlier, you know, we have to understand that what that vessel is. We have to understand what was sold, we have to understand the customer’s expectations. So, the first step is to get a package together on our side that we can go to the customer with and either do a face-to-face or a Teams meeting and then start that ball rolling, you know, and that can happen within hours, it can happen within days.
But, you know, we just have to make sure we understand what we’re building. It’s very important to get off on the right foot, that the customer understands that we’re going to move fast. We’re going to ask questions. We need to read quick answers. We need smart answers, but we need quick answers.
Dan Creech: Yeah. Do we validate with a customer that this is a rapid response opportunity, right? I mean, they might call in saying something happened, we need it that quick. But I mean, there’s got to be a level of validation so that we understand what we need to do, right? And I would think that that has to start off, I mean, do we, do we challenge the salesperson? Do we have the salesperson go back and challenge the customer to say, “You say fast as possible, let me help you understand what that means, okay?”
Jeff: Fast is a relative term. It may not need to go as fast as they, as they’re thinking, but then it may actually need to go faster. There’s, there’s, you just have to understand what the expectations are from the customer.
One thing I wanted to say was – 20 years ago, we built a rapid response. We didn’t call it rapid response back then. It was a, it was a column. We built it in, what, 30 days. It was fairly simple, 4-foot diameter, 70, 80 feet long head. It was a trade column. I guess I shouldn’t say it was simple, it was actually a very complicated column. As far as it had a lot of components that it was, it was insulated. We actually had to insulate it. You remember what job I’m talking about? Yeah.
So, you know, we didn’t call it rapid response back then, but we all pushed ourselves to the limit. It was a previous generation, about- also in the shop and also in engineering. And, you know, I’ve been here for 30 something years, you know, you’ve been here longer than me.
So, we’ve seen the growth. We’ve seen the, the hurdles that we’ve gone through. Back then, you know, it took, you know, six, eight months to build the vessels, you know – that was our relaxed schedule. You know, we could do it back then. But when we were presented with a challenge to build something fast, we did it. Now we were all exhausted at the end of that, we all needed a breather, we all wanted a break. You know, we’re practiced now. We’re, we’re, we’re good at what we do to your point, Danny. We are good at what we do, we are practiced, we have, we have been tested, and the more of these we do, the better we’re going to get.
Dan Delaney: Yeah, can I add to that, you know, it’s very much a team effort to get these done. And we do our due diligence at the planning phase to ensure that we can execute what we’re going to say. Because we understand with this program, we’re, we’re asking a lot from our customers with their involvement in these projects, we’re asking a lot from our, our resources internally. But we understand, too, that if we don’t execute, the program’s worthless, right? Rapid response means nothing if you don’t hit that date. And so, we know when we put a proposal out there for rapid response opportunity, we are 100% confident that we’re going to hit that date.
Dan Creech: Yeah, and that, that’s a fantastic point, because, think about that from, from a customer standpoint. Customers are paying sometimes three, four, five, and in some cases, to be honest, you six X what they would normally pay on these projects, right? That’s tough, that’s tough to swallow. When you combine that with our brand, right? And who we are in the industry, to execute on those projects when they are investing that, you got to come through, right? You don’t have a choice, you got to come through because there’s so much at stake, right?
The people that made the commitments from our customer standpoint, our commitment, you know, to our brand, our commitment to our ownership, our commitment to our customers and what we said we were going to do. And Dan, I think you make a fantastic point. And that’s why our performance is pretty strong on that, right?
I want to go back to something you said earlier, because you talked about the pioneer project for us. The one that we were faced with the challenge because it was an outage situation, and that was a situation where the customer came to us and said, can you do it in this time frame? And I remember that because there was about five to seven days of planning up front, back and forth with the customers who bid the project. But when they said go, it took us 19 days, okay?
Danny, I watched you in the shop on this project and I want to talk a little bit about, we’re talking about the start of this project, so you have to have a mentality of planning this project. That one still resonates with me more than any of them because you somehow had it in your mind. And I think it was the piece of equipment that allowed you to do this, but you somehow planned in your mind, can you talk about this a little bit? Where you were going to put four, five or six welders on the round-seams at one time and a coordinated, let me say it like this, a coordinated strike, if you will, right?
And I don’t think we had a weld theory on that project, but we did some things that were so unorthodox. How do you, how do you think to plan that way, differently than a normal project?
Danny: You know, to be honest, I learned a lot from that job. And going forward on what you can do, just on a normal job, on how to speed that and how to save man hours. But, uh, yeah, we, we were welding inside, uh, sub-arcing inside. And then when the guy on the inside got done, he moved to another seam, then a guy on the outside, would start air arcing it out. And that air-arcer followed that sub-archer. Well, then behind the air-arcer was a grinder and he cleaned up the seams and he dye-checked them. And by that time, then you got another guy, when that sub-arcer got done inside a tank, he just came right back to set it up and just kept welding.
So yeah, that was, that was pretty unique, um, back then, and we still use that same technique today on certain things. Yeah, like I said, there was a lot of organization of a job when it starts in the shop. I think is very critical, uh, where you’re going to put it is a big thing, and then how many guys can you work on it and be efficient? And then you have first and second shifts and that job there also ladders, platforms, insulated sheets, painted, um, the whole nine yards, and it went out the door. So yeah, I’ll never forget that.
Jeff: Oh yeah. I can remember that rolling out the door and thinking, why don’t we do this all the time? You know, and I got my wish – we’re doing it.
You know, I, and to your point, Dan, we’re, we’re, we’re practiced, we understand, we started the lessons, we build on those lessons. We teach those lessons to the next generation of, of craft, and it pays off when we, when we get these, you know, three, four, five day deliveries, we can execute. We know how to execute.
Dan Creech: Yeah. I think it’s, it’s funny when I’m out talking, I spent most of my career in business development. So, I’m out in front of customers all the time and this program comes up a lot. And my message to them is, these run better – customer-vendor relationships, they run so much smoother at this pace, and, and it would be great if we could run them all this way.
Jeff: You know, one of the things before we wrap up, I wanted to say, you know, to the customer side of this, you know, they, when we explain the rules of engagement, when we explained that we needed to make decisions, smart decisions, fast decisions.
You know, we also have to set up, you know, that we need, we need to have meetings, you know, every day, every other day, every once a week, depending on the schedule. A lot of times it’s every day. And it’s every day, you know, approve this phase of the drawings, approve these calculations, then approve the ITPs, approve the weld procedures. There’s a lot of approval that has to happen.
We put a lot of burden back onto the customer for them to have a team that’s, they have to be willing to, to push as hard as we do on their end. Because we’re not successful if they’re not helping us.
Dan Creech: I know a lot of projects, we set up a meeting day one, a standing meeting that every single day we’re reporting out to the customer, just on where we’re at. I mean, they’re owed that, right? I mean, they’re making this investment, it’s that critical to them. They’re making promises to their management ownership that they’re going to have this vessel back up and running; “We went with Enerfab on this one, and this is what they’re saying to us.”
So it’s critical that they get a comfort feeling throughout this project, because they’ve got other contractors at site that are waiting to receive whatever it is we’re doing, and so I think that’s a really good point. I mean, you think about the vessel at hand and how fast we can build it. So many other pieces to this puzzle and project to our customer and why it’s so critical, you know? But I think the message is, and I know we’re talking on the start of projects and getting off to the right start, but I think the message with these projects is that, we want to get out to our customers: don’t assume it can’t be done, right?
Call up the guys that have the experience, ask them the question, tell them this is the fastest I need, “I need it next week.” Don’t assume it can’t be done. Let us be the one to determine whether it can or can’t, and that’s kind of the message I give the people is, let us be the ones to exhaust all the options for you. And so that you can go back to whomever you need to, to tell them this is the best we can do.
Let me end on this final question, and I’ll let you guys all answer it yourself. Why Enerfab and rapid response?
Dan Delaney: I think Enerfab has a lot of unique strengths that give us the ability to execute these projects.
One, I think we touched on a little bit here is the people within the organization, right? And if you look around the room, just the four of us, we have in excess of 100 years of experience within Enerfab, right? And that’s not uncommon within this organization – there’s a lot of tenured people here, and what that gives us is the ability to have people that are, you know, they’re specialists. Jeff’s definitely a specialist in what he does, Danny is too, but they’re also utility players, right?
They know enough about estimating, enough about sales, enough about purchasing to keep projects moving along, right? And so we have an organization of people that are highly tenured to have that utility-ness to them where they can be flexible and they can keep these projects moving, right? So I think that gives Enerfab a unique ability to execute these projects.
The other thing is, too, within the organization or within the family of companies, we have Brighton Tru-Edge who fabricates the heads, right? Typically, a long lead item for pressure vessels, and we’re able to control that more, and then we have other pieces within the organization that do structural steel fabrication, right? Ladder, think ladders and platforms, stuff that’s typically a longer lead. And you don’t need that towards till the end of the project, but still they can come with a significant lead time. With that, being that within the organization, we’re able to control that more. So I think Enerfab, through the people and through our organization, we have the ability to control projects, and move them along quicker.
Dan Creech: That’s a good point, and I appreciate that. We’re going to end on this, Jeff. Since the first, since this is about the start of a rapid response project and the criticality, it could be a one-word answer, it could be a two-word answer – what is the single most critical thing to start a rapid response project to guarantee its success?
Jeff: Communication. Communication. We can build anything, we can design anything, we’ve proven that. Communication is key. We have to have a, a…someone on the other end of that call, the other end of that email, the other end of that Teams meeting, that can answer our questions, that can keep us moving forward. You know, without being able to move forward, we’re stopped. So, communication is key. We have to, you have to be able to, to, to get an answer quickly and accurately and smartly, you know, that’s a…
Dan Creech: And availability, right?
Jeff: And available. Yeah, and that’s the other thing too, is, you know, it’s, you know, built, the customer has to have their team that is willing to, to be available. You know, 24/7, you know, when we call, when we send an email, we need an answer quick and that’s, that communication. That’s the key.
Dan Creech: Good. Guys, thanks so much for coming on and chatting with me today. To our audience, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to check out our next episode.
[Outro music]
