BIC September 17
Austin Industrial, an Austin Industries company, is a 100-percent employee- owned organization. Austin Industries originally began in 1918 as a bridge construction company. As its customers' needs have grown, the company's service lines have grown to provide nearly every type of civil, commercial and industrial construction service. In 1986, Austin began its Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) and became 100-percent employee-owned by the year 2000.
With a company composed completely of employee-owners, Austin has embedded a strong ownership culture throughout all aspects of its business and core values. This culture drives Austin's ability to provide world-class safety, superior customer-centered solutions and a steady workforce of highly qualified personnel. With safety as a core value at Austin, every single employee-owner feels he or she has the duty and responsibility to make sure all employee-owners go home the same way as they arrived each day. They have complete accountability and ownership of the safety of everyone on-site. This sense of ownership is a powerful force built into Austin's culture that helps drive true engagement in safety. The company is continuously managing, measuring and rewarding safety performance and implementing programs to ensure safety remains at the forefront on every job and task. Austin's success in safety is driven by:
1. Visible leadership.
Austin's relentless commitment to zero incidents is fostered through visible leadership. This means all levels of leadership are managing safety where the work is actually happening. By having boots on the ground, Austin has a high expectation that leadership is involved in job safety analysis discussions, auditing jobs, engaging in crew discussions about safety and providing feedback as opportunities for improvement. The company believes each project's safety relies on leadership's involvement where the work is taking place, not from an office.
2. Developing safe-minded employee- owners.
Each employee-owner and potential employee-owner at Austin undergoes extensive assessments and evaluations to determine their safety risk tolerance before consideration for employment. Once hired, Austin requires their employee- owners participate in several training programs to understand company safety policies and culture. The company also has language initiatives and training programs to ensure employee-owners with language barriers fully comprehend safety rules and terminology.
3. Keeping safety in the hearts and minds of individuals.
Austin believes safety programs and strategies should involve all departments of the company. This collaborative approach creates safety ownership throughout the company. Austin devotes a significant amount of resources to implement programs to keep safety in the hearts and minds of individuals. This includes Austin's Brilliant at the Basics program, which ensures the execution level of even the most basic programs is brilliant. Along with safety for planned work tasks, the company also focuses on everything in between through its program called Task Between the Task . Austin also utilizes safety culture surveys to assess how strongly employee-owners feel the site safety culture is and determine opportunities for improvement.
4. Recognizing safety excellence.
Internally, the company has created the Everett Beaujon Safety Excellence Award program to recognize Austin's supervisors for outstanding performance in the area of health and safety. From the rigorous safety selection process of Austin's Everett Beaujon Award to small on-the-spot recognitions, Austin recognizes safe work at all levels. This demonstrates the positive impact individuals have on the company's safety and that through ownership Austin can remain a world-class leader in safety.
Externally, Austin partners with several associations and safety excellence programs. Austin was the first contractor in the nation to become a part of the Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) and continues to have several VPP Star sites. At the 2017 Safety Excellence Awards, hosted by the Houston Business Roundtable and the Houston Area Safety Council, Austin Industrial had several project sites nominated by its customers for their outstanding safety performance and was announced the winner of the "Best of the Best" award for the General Contractor Large category. Through the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, Austin is consistently receiving Contractor Achievement Awards for multiple project sites.
Austin Industrial has been a provider of construction, maintenance, turnaround, specialty and plant services throughout the oil and gas, chemical, power, manufacturing, and pulp and paper industries for more than 60 years. The company is committed to providing superior customer- centered solutions.
One of the key aspects of Austin's success is the quality of its work. At Austin, quality is not a program; it is a part of the company culture. The company holds quality at the same uncompromising standard as safety and manages it in much the same way. Each member of the project team owns quality, from management and operations to suppliers and subcontractors. Austin has an ISO-based quality management system and creates quality execution and inspection and test plans (ITPs) specific to each project, as well as code work. Austin has specific supervisor and craft quality training on its proprietary weld quality program, and all supervisors are trained to perform visual weld inspections. These programs and processes have led to Austin's industry- leading weld performance.
Creating a partnership with its customers is another important aspect of the mutual success on all of Austin's projects. Austin understands the goals of its customers from a corporate perspective as well as at the plant level, and the company aligns its goals and plans specif ically to each project. Austin does this throughout each of its service lines.
In the company's maintenance service line, Austin has the proven ability to perform as a single-source provider. Austin's total maintenance services support a wide variety of highly technological, productive manufacturing and support equipment. From raw material processing through highly sophisticated finished product quality assurance and control equipment, Austin provides comprehensive maintenance and reliability services in close coordination with customer engineering, maintenance and operations management groups to achieve the lowest total cost of operations. Austin's business model utilizes key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure its maintenance work processes are effective and strategically optimizing the work, and its reliability improvement programs and strategies, continuous improvement programs and standards-driven processes are all targeted to improve the customer's bottom line (safety, quality and/or throughput).
In the company's construction service line, Austin offers project predictability and total project management to its customers. With Austin's record of exceptional construction performance, it is able to estimate projects and ensure it delivers projects within budget and on schedule while meeting the customer's expectations and KPI drivers. Austin trains its management team to understand the total project goals along with the customer's overall needs and how Austin's portion of the project fits into those needs. This allows employee-owners to see the big picture and the importance of their role in the total project.
Throughout the company's turnaround service line, Austin can not only generate the project schedule but also perform reviews of customers' schedules and has the expertise to validate budgeted work hours, reduce labor and adjust the project schedule to deliver a lower-cost project.
For the company's specialty services, Austin has the technology to track labor productivity and scaffold costs in real time to generate key performance reporting and ultimately provide cost savings for its customers.
Austin's core business is its people. "We believe in hiring the right people for every job and developing every position," said Barry Babyak, Austin Industrial's president. "Austin's investment in its people, paired with the strong ownership culture and ESOP, is reflected in our outstanding performance." Austin performs extensive new-hire screening and assessments for every opening to determine if the potential employee-owner is the right fit for the position and company culture. Once hired, Austin employee- owners complete an onboarding that immerses them into the company culture. The company has various programs to help develop these employee-owners and help them grow within the company and their careers.
At Austin, every employee-owner is enrolled in a continuous improvement and training program. For entry-level employee- owners, Austin has a helper progression program and mentor program. In these programs, the new employee-owners are paired with an experienced Austin employee-owner to learn the company culture and procedures for work. They then spend time with the various crafts to understand what each one does to help determine a career path.
Once an employee-owner has identified a career path, Austin will support the employee-owner in obtaining the necessary training, certifications and accreditations for his or her role. Austin Industrial was one of the first companies to participate in the development of standardizing curricula and industry-wide credentials, now known as NCCER. Austin continues to have heavy involvement with NCCER, encouraging its employee-owners to obtain certifications through its programs. Austin also provides training through technical and trade school education, tuition assistance and online training programs.
Once an employee-owner moves into a management role, the company continues to grow his or her leadership abilities through its numerous management and leadership training programs. This includes Austin's Cornerstone Leadership Training, Step-up Program, Leadership Excellence Program and Supervisor Training Program.
Along with its internal development of its workforce, Austin also partners with numerous external associations and schools to develop the workforce and help bridge the workforce gaps the industrial industry is facing. Austin is heavily active in the workforce development efforts of PetrochemWorksâ¢, Construction & Maintenance Education Foundation (CMEF), Junior Achievement and local community colleges.
As employee-owners, Austin's people are compelled by a sense of responsibility -- a responsibility to ensure quality in every aspect of their performance; a responsibility to operate with a focus on sustainable business practices and processes; a responsibility and commitment to their customers, communities and fellow employee-owners; and a responsibility to perform with uncompromising integrity in all they do.
For more information, visit www.austinindustrial.com or call (713) 641-3400.
