“If you want to get a project done right with no worry, use Team! Our relationship is one of firm trust that has only gotten better over the years. Team is committed to the area, and they are continuing to expand their services and capabilities. The future looks good!” — Greg Mancina, maintenance resource supervisor, Rubicon

A lot of people are talking about Team Industrial Services — from its large client base of repeat customers to the magazines that research companies to name them among the best in the business.

“Fortune Magazine” has named Team Industrial Services to its Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies List in 2007 — the fifth time in six years that the company has made the nation’s top businesses list.

Team was chosen for “Forbes Magazine’s” Best 200 Small Business Companies (with annual revenues under $750 million) List in 2005, and “Fortune Magazine’s” Top 100 Small Business List from 2002 to 2004 — one of only three companies ever to be named to this list three years in a row.

So what keeps Team’s name on the best of the best lists?

Top-notch service leadership and innovation are keys to Team’s growth

Team has become one of the largest specialized industrial service companies in North America through service leadership and innovation. Today, the company’s more than 2,800 trained, experienced, safety-oriented technicians provide specialized services and products for approximately 6,500 customers worldwide. These services include:
    • Onstream leak repairs (vacuum to 6,500 psig, -320 F to 1,700 F).
    • Hot taps and line stops (to 1,350 F, 2,600 psig).
    • Line freezing and hydrostatic test freezes.
    • Field machining.
    • Mobile machine shops.
    • Technical bolting.
    • Valve repairs (inline and on site).
    • Field heat treating.
    • Heat-treating hardware and products.
    • NDE, NDT and inspections.
    • Emissions control services (LDAR).
    • Pipe isolation and weld testing.
    • Pipe repair clamps, enclosures and products.
    • Pipeline services.
    • Composite wraps.
    • Turnaround, shutdown and outage services.
    • Transformer and circuit breaker leak repairs.

The large service offering available through Team is unmatched, and the company’s customers appreciate the added convenience with no quality lost.

Team began monitoring volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for Rubicon LLC in Geismar, La., in the early 1990s. In 1996, a maintenance engineer who previously worked with Team at a Texas Eastman chemical plant and was familiar with Team’s other service capabilities suggested Rubicon expand the relationship.

“Over time, Team’s credibility and reputation grew,” Mancina said. “Team became our primary service provider in 2001.”

Team began to provide additional services, including process and utility leak sealing, field machining, hot tap and field torquing. Using all of these services from one company provides an added advantage for Rubicon.

According to Mancina, Team’s products and services are just a sampling of the company’s top-notch offerings.

“The company has assembled an exceptional team from technical backup to field service and sales,” he said. “A particularly strong area is Team’s engineering documentation. Information is quickly generated to meet the needs of our management of change process. Also, Team’s field office is backed up with the huge technical resources of its home office.”

Team accommodates Rubicon’s various needs, all while maintaining overall excellence at the site.

“For the maintenance personnel in the field, there is great comfort in turning a job over to Team and knowing it will be done correctly, safely, quickly and documented to our needs,” Mancina said. “If we have to have something done immediately, they make it happen. Their local shop stocks standard hardware, which reduces delays and improves their efficiency. Scope changes are dealt with quickly and have never been a problem at our site.”

At the start of each project at Rubicon, Team technicians verify parameters of the work and consult with their office before work proceeds, thus ensuring that no unnecessary chances are taken. This attention to safety aligns with Rubicon’s commitment to safe operations.

“Since the early 1990s, Team has had no injuries on our site,” Mancina said.

All of the above leads Mancina to give Team his highest recommendation.

Team training programs provide service leadership, help company grow

Team trains and certifies all technicians through formal, year-round training programs. Certification and safety training records are computerized and available to customers online.

Additionally, Team provides its field managers and supervisors with formal training programs that cover the essential skills of leadership, communications and goal and standard setting.

Payback to the company for indirect costs associated with these full-time training programs begins with Team technicians’ abilities to consistently provide customers with safe, highly specialized on-site work.

This on-site service expertise in turn triggers callbacks from customers for future jobs and has been an essential part of Team’s continuing double-digit growth over the preceding years. It also leads companies to trust Team technicians to work on their high temperature, high pressure piping and hardware, and on lines and vessels containing VOC processes.

Once certified in their specialties, Team technicians operate through a network of 84 permanent branch locations near the major industrial centers throughout the United States, Aruba, Canada, Trinidad, Venezuela and Singapore.

Team also licenses its proprietary techniques and products to select companies in other parts of the world.

Team has been providing inspection services, mechanical integrity, vendor quality assurance inspections and welding engineering for Lexington Group International (LGI Dallas) for a few years. John Klim, operations vice president for LGI Dallas, speaks highly of his relationship with Team.

“Team is a national company, so they have locations and personnel in every major refinery sector in the United States ready to inspect equipment,” he said. “They are very responsive.”

Team’s commitment to safety is evident to Klim.

“They are very knowledgeable on process safety management,” he said. “Their safety record is one of the reasons we work with them. They are coming in to perform work on active hot lines, and you want someone with an impeccable safety record for that operation, and we have had no safety incidents with Team. There is a lot of potential for safety incidents, explosions and hazards of that nature, and that is what Team is trying to prevent.”

Klim gives Team a high recommendation.

“Team is an excellent company,” he said. “They are extremely competitive on inspection prices, and they provide timely services and scheduling.”

Key priorities are applied on every job

Whenever Team technicians enter a customer’s plant to do a job they have — in addition to specialized skills — a set of key priorities in mind. 

First is the understanding that it will take a safe, successful completion of that customer’s job to re-earn his confidence — regardless of the number of jobs they have completed for that customer in the past. They also:
    • Approach each job as a service opportunity.  
    • “Sweat” every detail at the jobsite.
    • Stay with a job until it’s completed.
    • Make sure the job is completed to the customer’s and Team’s standards.
    • Ensure the customer is fully informed and completely satisfied.

Team technicians have applied these priorities and safety standards on more than 100,000 successful, on-site jobs.

Having Team’s field experts on a project means the company’s clientele can rest easier.

Charlie Guidry, contract administrator for Turner Industries, has worked with Team on a couple of plant projects where Team performed pipe cutting, torquing and tensioning. Team’s personnel stood out most to Guidry.

“The project supervisors were very professional about the work scope and were always there when needed,” Guidry said. “Additionally, the quality of work and Team’s safety were great!”

Innovative products help heat-treating customers

Industrial facilities with special or emergency needs often require innovative products to handle those needs.

For example, customer requests for special, on-site mobile heat-treating equipment prompted Team to order several new, custom-manufactured, completely self-contained mobile heat-treating rigs that could be parked at a customer’s facility and operated around the clock.

Completely equipped with their own diesel generators and enough fuel to provide generated heat for 24 hours, Team’s new state-of-the-art heat-treating rigs house a fully enclosed control center as well as cabling, control and power equipment to manage up to 24 points of electrical resistance heat. 

These heat-treating rigs are safe, provide protection for Team technicians as well as surrounding personnel and property, and come equipped with onboard, automatic fire suppression systems as well as lower explosion limit (LEL) combustible gas detection capabilities.

Generators on board the new rigs are tier III diesel engines that meet current emissions standards.

Bucyrus — Surface, the surface mining equipment division of Bucyrus International Inc. located in South Milwaukee, calls on Team Industrial Services to set up heating elements and blankets to preheat many of the castings Bucyrus welds. Team also sets up and runs stress relief procedures for the company.

“Team came highly recommended to us,” Mark Tarnowski, welding engineer in Bucyrus’ quality department, said. “Team’s personnel act professionally and are helpful and prompt.”

One thing Tarnowski appreciates is the efficiency with which Team responds to Bucyrus’ needs.

“Team is located nearby and can respond quickly with people and equipment, requiring less lead time,” he explained. “We try to give Team a two-day advance notice of our requirements, but they have been able to respond to us on short notice many times.”

Tarnowski gives Team the same high recommendation that the company came to him with.

“I would recommend Team to anyone,” he said. “We have been quite satisfied. Team’s pricing seems to be competitive, and they seem to be willing to work with us very well.”

Team expands inspection services into Canada

Team expanded its NDE/NDT and inspection services into Canada in mid-2007 with the acquisition of Aitec Inc., one of the country’s largest inspection companies with 13 service locations.

The acquisition complemented Team’s mechanical and heat-treating services already operating in Canada, allowing the company to offer Canadian customers the same full line of inspection services it offers industry worldwide. These services include:
    • Inspections, mechanical integrity and quality assurance programs.
    • Digital and film radiography utilizing X-ray and gamma sources.
    • A-, B- and C-Scan ultrasonic inspections.
    • Immersion ultrasonics.
    • Alternating current field measurement (ACFM).
    • Long-range guided-wave ultrasonics (GUL Wavemaker) for pipelines and piping.
    • Visual inspection including API 510, API 570 and CWI services.
    • Tank inspection (API 653).
    • Eddy current/electromagnetic examination for tube and surface applications.
    • Boiler mapping programs for tube erosion/corrosion analysis.
    • Positive material identification.
    • Dye penetrant testing.
    • Pipeline location and coating assessment.
    • Magnetic particle examination (dry/wet fluorescent).
    • Destructive testing.
    • Metallurgical/replication.
    • Metallurgical and chemical analysis.
    • Ground-penetrating radar (GPR).

Team also operates world-class testing labs for customers who require sample or full-run testing of components — from simple to complex, including composites and alloys.

Using metallurgical, chemical and metrological evaluations, Team can test all components in accordance with the most stringent industry and corporate quality control specifications.
Team provides state-of-the-art valve testing services

When Team customers asked for greater measurement accuracy and sensing for critical set point accuracy for pressure relief valves (PRV), Team responded with its  TeamTest® system.

This all new, state-of-the-art safety valve testing system verifies the integrity of PRV to make sure they’re calibrated for set-point accuracy and seat integrity. 

Calibration, test operation and results reporting are completely automatic. The system’s software eliminates human error, provides immediate data access for tracking and printing result, and is compatible with Windows XP, 2000, 98 and NT 4.0.

Other advantages of the TeamTest system are that it:
    • Tests under full load, producing immediate benefits.
    • Eliminates the need to over-pressurize, lower load, take equipment off line or remove a “weld-in” valve.
    • Saves energy and reduces delays.
    • Minimizes erosion of valve seats.
    • Quickly identifies problem valves and diagnoses set pressure accuracy. 
    • Calculates set pressure with extremely high accuracy (within 0.5 percent).
    • Provides repeatability and consistent tests within all ASME codes.

TeamTest is part of the company’s mobile field repair services that includes total valve inspection as well as valve machining, welding, repair, repacking, testing and documentation.

Team is listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange (Symbol: TISI).

Additional information about Team may be obtained by visiting www.teamindustrialservices.com, calling (800) 662-8326 or by writing Team Inc. at 200 Hermann Drive, Alvin, TX, 77511.