Nearly a year has passed since Hydrochem and PSC joined forces to consolidate services and reduce customers' contractor counts. BIC Magazine recently sat down with Bob Pfeiffer, president of HydroChemPSC's Downstream Business, to discuss the merger.
BIC: How's the combination of HydroChem and PSC going so far?
PFEIFFER: Really well. We've assembled a strong senior leadership team comprising leaders from both legacy organizations who are committed to working together toward a common goal, taking the best practices from each and creating a unified vision for the future. I'm really proud of how quickly our entire organization has adapted to the change. Literally within days of the deal being signed, our folks were "reaching across the aisle" for labor and equipment support.
HydroChem and PSC were two proud leaders in the U.S. industrial cleaning business. Together, we can now offer more to our customers than any other provider. Our collective national footprint and vast array of services allow us to truly become that "onestop shop" for our valued customers.
BIC: How will the combined company prioritize safety?
PFEIFFER: Both legacy companies have made significant strides in safety performance over the past several years, achieving sub-0.5 TRIRs, but they came at safety from slightly different perspectives. HydroChem focused on technology as a means of designing equipment to be safe. Its in-house development and continued refinement of hands-free hydroblasting equipment resulted in a great reduction of injuries commonly associated with manual hydroblasting. While PSC was also making great strides with automation, its emphasis was first on behavior-based safety, adopting the Loss Prevention System (LPS) in 2012, which resulted in significant improvement in safety performance. We are excited to bring the best of HydroChem's technology together with LPS to truly become the industry's safety leader.
BIC: What else makes HydroChem and PSC such a great fit?
PFEIFFER: Joining HydroChem and PSC made sense for a number of reasons. When you overlaid each company's national footprint, you saw HydroChem was much stronger on the Texas Gulf Coast, whereas PSC had a stronger West Coast presence. With regard to service lines, HydroChem's chemical cleaning business was about four times the size of PSC's, whereas PSC's tank cleaning business was about four times the size of HydroChem's. PSC had also launched its own vapor control and degassing service line in 2011, a service HydroChem had to outsource to third parties. PSC also brought three significant businesses to the overall portfolio: leak detection and repair, upstream oil and gas, and an environmental management program for major metropolitan utilities. We are truly stronger together.
BIC: What is your biggest challenge?
PFEIFFER: By far, it's finding people to perform the work. Though we know everyone struggles with this, our strategy is to become "the employer of choice" by offering all entry-level employees a career development track that provides wage progression in exchange for completing specific training milestones. We want to hire the best people; operate the newest, most technologically advanced equipment fleet; and serve customers who value great, safe service.
BIC: What's next for HydroChemPSC?
PFEIFFER: Growing! We have developed a great industrial services platform we can use to attract additional acquisitions to help us expand into new geographies with a continuously evolving suite of services. I am excited about what the future holds for HydroChemPSC and the great people that make it work.
For more information, visit www. hydrochempsc.com or call (800) 934-9376.