Diamond Refractory Services is expanding its complementary services to enhance its usefulness to plant owners, ensure its adaptability in uncertain times and support the strength of its workforce. Beyond turnaround refractory services, Diamond provides bundled services such as acid proofing, specialty coatings, intricate brick installation, fireproofing, abrasive blasting, painting and concrete restoration.
"With these expanded services, we're able to be a complete turnkey contractor and give clients more options," said Project Engineer Martin DeLeon. "Aside from just traditional refractory work, there's a lot of opportunity right now for maintenance contracts, especially fireproofing."
"Where we see value added is in the diversity between our maintenance and turnaround services," said President and Engineering Manager Chase Drake. "Our offerings used to be 20-percent maintenance and 80-percent turnarounds. Now we're closer to a 40/60 split. With that 40 percent, we've hit a happy medium where we're able to utilize our workforce in many different ways. We wear many different hats. But while we have a title called a 'refractory specialist,' that's someone who can do it all, from demo to surface prep to welding to installing the refractory. The benefit of having that person -- and the core of our business -- is being turnkey."
Drake explained that Diamond's Corrosion Division has been front and center in the company's initiative to expand its service offerings.
"We have turnarounds, maintenance and corrosion, and we're seeing a lot of need for corrosion services lately," he stated. "A lot of the need has to do with corrosion under fireproofing, where you can no longer see the metal inside what was fireproofed due to the humidity of the Gulf Coast. That creates the potential for a huge failure.
"If you inspect your columns and your beams and your units, and corrosion's setting in, a critical situation could occur. But the same goes for fireproofing: A lot of plants are getting rid of their 1970s fireproofing and wanting it to be up-to-date, and that gives them the opportunity to see what the structure looks like. With our API 936 certification, we can go in and be the solution provider. Anytime we've had a roadblock, these qualifications allowed us to strive for more."
Saving you money with top talent year-round
Diamond's newly enhanced ability to provide turnaround work and maintenance at the same time is a consistent cost-saver for customers.
"Nobody wants a crew just standing around," Drake explained. "With our maintenance tied in, we're able to take whatever surplus of people are on downtime and put them on a maintenance project that's dayto- day for the whole year. So within the same refinery, we can have two separate contracts: one maintenance and one turnaround."
This integrated strategy enables Diamond to keep a full workforce year-round and better retain craft talent, thereby enhancing the adaptability and sustainability of its business model.
"Our retainment of employees is now 90 percent," Drake shared. "And that's because they don't have to go sit at home and wait for their next job. They're working year-round. Employee turnover is very limited here now."
According to Drake, landing a position at Diamond has been particularly covetable this year because of the economic downturn and "how the company has weathered" the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Speaking of being 'quick on our toes' and our diversity as a company, this year we switched over from oil and gas to paper/pulp and other industries as soon as we got the call that oil and gas operations were limiting any maintenance crews that were nonessential," Drake explained. "When I heard that, the first call I made was to a steel mill, and they said, 'Please bring as much talent as you have. We have an outage going on and we can't shut down; we are essential to the infrastructure of the United States.' So even the month of March was still a really good month for us. We were able to switch gears seamlessly, like a water faucet: one side turns off and the other on."
"We remained active in the industry," added DeLeon. "With our maintenance contracts, we were able to develop a strategy for clients and continue to respond to their needs. We adapted to the changes and rose to the challenge."
Committing to safety in uncertainty
In Diamond's own operations this year, Drake made sure his teams, offices and warehouses never ran out of necessary PPE or cleaning supplies -- even staying late on worknights to disinfect his own office building with protective gear and a backpack sprayer that made him "look like a Ghostbuster."
"We are leaders thinking outside the box," he said. "I spray the office before work, over lunch and after work. It's for my employees. This is serious. What's No. 1 is the safety of our people."
In addition to thorough cleaning, Diamond also used signs and floor stickers to enforce social distancing and mandate face masks if and when anyone else came in contact with an employee's workspace.
"When it comes to close calls, the keys are case management and not to panic," Drake said. "That's why we added a separate door from our warehouse to our office." A digital key pad prevented intermingling between the two.
Diamond has also been conducting in-house silica awareness training for employees on jobsites. "We go through reviews and then testing at the end to show their awareness level from the training," said Safety Director Dan Mendez.
"When we get into the maintenance site, it really comes down to that awareness, because you're there every single day and exposed to so much, as opposed to a turnaround where you're in and out within a month," Drake added.
Along with Diamond's Senior Project Managers Tommy Motichek and Ray Kirkpatrick, Diamond has added NACE certifications for fireproofing and coatings, in addition to API 936 and an R stamp. Diamond has also transitioned management to support its expanded capabilities, including Randy Major as vice president of operations and Nick Rudebusch as senior project manager.
Having rebalanced its company focus for a more sustainable future, Diamond can now use its access to and management of an enormous skilled-labor pool to shift between day-to-day maintenance and turnaround events, providing a turnkey bundle of services for plants spanning a wide variety of industries.
For more information, visit www.diamondrefractory.com or call (713) 378-9200.
