During the past 30 years, Bryan Knost's career has focused on industrial construction, maintenance and superfund environmental projects. He's worked throughout the southern U.S. and also overseas in the Middle East.
Today, Knost serves as Wood's vice president of operations for Downstream and Chemicals, where he's focused on how Wood can help customers during the full lifecycle of their assets. BIC Magazine recently visited with Knost to learn more about Wood's depth of service offerings in the U.S., specifically in Texas and Louisiana's Gulf Coast corridor.
BIC: How is Wood working together to better serve the Gulf Coast?
KNOST: We're now in the best position to offer our customers new solutions in new markets and sectors. For example, Wood has always maintained a large engineering, design, operations and maintenance business serving the offshore Gulf of Mexico market, and a large EPC offering in the Gulf Coast downstream and chemicals market. But bringing together our expertise to seek asset solutions for our customers means extending our services across several markets. My role is to bring the strength of our operations and maintenance capabilities to customers in the downstream and chemicals market who may only know us for EPC or other project work. We're excited and ambitious in our plans, which started with the opening of a new office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I'm based.
BIC: What sets Wood apart from the competition?
KNOST: The sheer breadth of our end-toend service offerings and our footprint adds strength and creates robust continuity. In our Americas business, we're a market leader in upstream capital projects, a predominant player in shale facilities and midstream, and one of the only companies with a presence in every shale basin . We also have a significant presence in the downstream market, delivering two of the largest EPC projects on the Gulf Coast today.
We are, however, still very cognizant of having a local approach in the markets where we operate. Our customers benefit from our ability to scale our project delivery, and we pride ourselves on delivering smaller, specialized work for local companies and larger-scale megaprojects for the major players.
BIC: Where do you see an opportunity for Wood to grow?
KNOST: Wood has a long, successful track record of operating in the chemicals and refining markets along the Gulf Coast. Due to the region's high level of infrastructure, its complex market demand and the availability of cheap natural gas feedstocks, the area will continue to see tremendous investment and we want to be part of the region's future growth story. Our focus is on supporting our customers' expansion plans by investing in a more holistic service offering throughout the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast corridor.
BIC: With your new position, what will you focus on first?
KNOST: I'm committed to creating sustainable opportunities for our people and customers in Texas and Louisiana. We have very strong customer partnerships across the continent, but we can deliver more value by being more effective with our customer engagement. I want us to be a partner of choice that brings proven experience, innovation, predictable performance, talented teams and technological advantages to our customers' operations, wherever the location is and whatever the project may be.
I'm focused on building a strong local team that can deliver opportunities for growth in the region. We're a people business; it's our people who bring projects to life and help give us our competitive edge. We want to ensure our people have rewarding careers, so ensuring their safety and success is critical for creating the environment and communities we all want to operate in.
For more information, visit www.woodplc.com or call (281) 222-7546.