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Featured Articles
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Nov 2008
| Source: Oilweek Magazine
| | | Supplier of the Year: Recipe for success
| | | Mixing safety, a full suite of services, and a commitment to finding solutions makes HAZCO Environmental Services a supplier of choice for industry
| | | by Tricia Radison
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| "We are a weird contractor."
HAZCO Environmental Services´ president, David Mattinson, laughs while making the statement, but he means it, in a good way. HAZCO is unlike any other environmental services contractor in the province, and perhaps in North America, supplying a wide range of services in a number of geographical markets to a variety of industries.
And if being different means being weird, that´s okay with both HAZCO and its clients in the oil industry, some of whom helped vote the company Oilweek´s 2008 Supplier of the Year.
Since 1989, HAZCO has grown from a small soil remediation and waste management operation to a multi-million-dollar business with a focus on providing innovative solutions to clients´ environmental problems in the areas of waste management; remediation of soil and groundwater; recycling, asset recovery; and environmental construction, demolition and decommissioning.
Mattinson joined HAZCO in 1991, working alongside founders Don Friesen and John Thompson, who have since retired.
"I don´t know if [the founders] had visions of being as big and all encompassing as we are now. They were excited to find a job, do the job right, and get the job done," says Russ Domville, who is now HAZCO´s vice-president, business development.
And they were always looking for opportunity. Waste management was the first area in which they saw a need. "People generate all kinds of waste and they didn´t know what to do with it," says Mattinson. "We were able to [put] disposal options together and transport and broker the waste for those facilities."
Soon after, HAZCO decided to take its waste management and soil remediation experience and equipment into British Columbia´s Lower Mainland.
"That was mostly because we were small. We didn´t have any money and when it got cold here, you couldn´t dig. So we thought we´d take our equipment over to B.C. because it doesn´t get cold there," laughs Mattinson.
The move was a success. About 250 people are now employed by HAZCO´s Richmond operation and satellite operations have opened in Kelowna, Fort St. John, and on Vancouver Island.
One-stop shopping for environmental services
Further geographic expansions followed, some by acquisition; there are now 13 locations across Canada.
"With our skill set, managing contaminated soils and contaminated materials, it doesn´t matter where you are," notes Domville. "It´s still dirty dirt that has to be excavated in a safe way and disposed of."
In 2005, HAZCO joined the CCS Group of Companies, a strategic move that allowed HAZCO to broaden its range of services and increase its volume.
CCS was a good fit; its corporate goal to provide world-class, world-leading environmental energy services to the oil and gas industry, as well as other industries, matched the vision of HAZCO´s management. The larger company´s strong presence in the oil sector and complementary services served to strengthen HAZCO´s offerings to its clients and provide the environmental contractor with a larger client base.
The move also brought with it an unexpected problem that has spawned an entirely new-and very successful-business model for HAZCO.
"Once we joined the CCS Group, which has its own marketing people, some of our customers were literally seeing six or seven people from the same company," says Mattinson. The situation didn´t make sense. "Number one, we´re bogging people down with marketing people who want to talk and number two, we´re wasting a lot of resources."
The new model, called Integrated Services, gives clients one point of contact from which HAZCO´s 15 services and entire range of expertise can be accessed. Everything from the collection, management, and disposal of routine facility waste to cradle-to-grave project management for environmental reclamation, construction, demolition and decommissioning projects is available through one person. In addition, HAZCO´s growing spill response unit provides peace of mind in an industry where a pipeline break has severe negative consequences, both in terms of the physical mess but also in public perception.
The business model results in big benefits for clients. "They can go to one person for 15 different services versus having to go to 15 different companies," says Domville. "It reduces their invoicing, it reduces their internal costs, and it allows them to concentrate on what they do best."
A safe approach
"What really makes us different from our competitors is that health and safety is a core principle of our company," explains Domville.
Safety excellence is HAZCO´s number one concern and it invests significant amounts of time and money to ensure its staff is able to maintain the kind of environment and safety record clients want-and need.
Safety training begins on day one for HAZCO staff. New operators are given a physical as well as drug and alcohol testing to ensure they´re fit for the job. Within a week, they receive a number of safety training courses.
HAZCO promotes a culture of behavior-based safety, in which any employee has the right to stop work at any time if safety is at risk, with the full support of the company. "We want everyone to think about safety, to stop before they do a task and ensure that all hazards are identified and controlled," says Domville, adding that all levels of HAZCO participate in safety meetings and programs.
The results? With 1,300 employees, 60 of whom work in Peru and other international locations, HAZCO has an enviable total recordable incident (TRI) rate that hovers around one.
Much of the company´s work, particularly in Alberta, is focused on the oil and gas industry, where safety standards are high. Thanks to its health and safety program, HAZCO qualifies to work on the sites of extremely safety-conscious operations and has won awards for safety from such companies as Shell Canada, Imperial Oil, and BP.
Recognition comes in other ways as well. Domville points proudly to a picture of a petrochemical facility. "We are working here within close proximity of live chlorine gas lines. I can´t think of another contractor in Canada who would qualify to complete demolition work within a live plant, especially when dealing with chlorine gas."
Where there´s a will, there´s a way
While a well-developed health and safety program may get HAZCO onto sites, it´s the company´s desire to help clients solve environmental problems in a cost-effective, environmentally sustainable manner that results in long-term relationships.
Thanks to specialized expertise, the HAZCO team is able to come up with innovative ways to save clients money while protecting the environment. "We can take certain types of hazardous waste, treat them and alter them so they can be classified as non-hazardous waste," says Domville. The waste can then be transferred to a CCS-owned landfill, cavern, or treatment, recovery and disposal facility rather than to a more costly Class 1 landfill or to other disposal sites outside of Alberta.
Often, HAZCO buys or builds equipment to solve a problem or complete a task. The company owns "well over 100 pieces of iron," according to Domville, most of which are common in the construction industry. The HAZCO team puts the equipment to new and often innovative uses in the environmental field.
One example is the use of long-reach excavators to clean sediment from ponds. "We can clean the pond out from shore, keep the pond in operation, and not have to put manpower and equipment into the pond," says Domville.
Experience also helps HAZCO help its clients. Mattinson cites a case in which a company was trucking oily produced water to facilities across western Canada in the wake of a well blowout. Having recently purchased the land, management wasn´t aware of the existence of an on-site pit providing a suitable-and much cheaper-storage option. "We knew where all the assets were because we´d been working in that field for 10 years [for the previous owner]."
Stepping up and offering such solutions has helped HAZCO position itself as much more than a service company. Today, many of the company´s clients call when they have a seemingly unsolvable environmental problem.
"We´ll sit around a table and brainstorm," says Domville. "With our experience, we can advise on what methodologies will and will not work for a client. There are always several things to consider when developing a solution, including distances to disposal options, climate, time of year, access and equipment availability, and our expertise helps clients ensure they are utilizing an option that is going to work for their particular situation."
HAZCO´s reputation with clients has led to the establishment and rapid growth of the company´s demolition division.
An aging industry and evolving technology leave oil and gas clients with equipment and facilities that need to be demolished. "Our clients have been asking us for about eight years to get into this industry, because we´re on the plant sites, we qualify for their health and safety operations. ‘While you´re there doing that reclamation work, can you take this facility down?´" Domville explains.
According to Domville, HAZCO is now the largest demolition contractor in the nation.
Turning trash into treasure
Waste management is still a primary business unit within the company. Waste streams are collected from facilities across western Canada and brought to transfer stations where the material is sorted and consolidated and assets are recovered and reintroduced to the market.
About two and a half years ago, HAZCO acquired HMI Industries in Red Deer to facilitate its ability to recycle ferrous and non-ferrous scrap for its clients. HMI´s expertise lies in the efficient processing of scrap as well as in its knowledge of the market.
"Commodity prices have come up significantly in the last few years, so if [a client] is in the position where [they have] lots of non-ferrous materials, we are in the position to actually pay companies to go and demolish their facilities," says Mattinson, adding that knowing how to play the game helps HAZCO manage the risk of dealing with a cyclical commodity.
HAZCO gives one client a cheque every month; much of the client´s waste is suitable for resale and HAZCO understands how to get the best price for each material. That situation isn´t the norm, but the majority of clients are pleased with cost offsets created when what would otherwise be waste material, like the oil clinging to cloth filters, is returned to the marketplace.
"I think a thing that gets overlooked is that this is not just a cleanup and disposal type of operation," says Garry Smith, vice-president of HAZCO´s Waste Services division. "It´s asset preservation, whether that´s recycling, reusing, cleaning oil. Your asset stays an asset; it´s not a waste."
Waste services is the most labour-intensive division within HAZCO, employing over 20 per cent of total staff. Business has been so successful, the company recently built a new, 20,000-square-foot waste transfer station in Calgary.
"We were stepping all over each other in the old one," says Smith of the 8,000-square-foot facility that´s now decommissioned.
Although the new facility will provide some excess capacity, the original design created three years ago has already undergone one expansion. Still, the new facility, with state-of-the-art equipment, will allow HAZCO to process higher volumes and increase its ability to recover valuable materials, simultaneously decreasing the costs and environmental footprints of its clients.
HAZCO does, as Mattinson puts it, "a lot of stuff." The company plans to continue expanding geographically, by volume, and through the addition of more services. But management also knows its limits.
Says Domville: "We´re very cautious of our sandbox and knowing what our services are, and we don´t want to travel too far outside our sandbox. Our customers don´t want us to get too diverted."
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