Think Different. Build Better” puts a name to something JV Driver Group has been doing throughout its existence. Innovative solutions and strategic planning are what JV Driver has become known for. The company has a drive to build great things and to do so better than anyone else.
“At JV Driver, you’ll find every employee thinks ‘outside the box,’ striving for continuous improvement and embracing innovation,” said Roger Gossett, president of JV Driver Group. “JV Driver has a commitment to excellence in safety, quality and productivity, which is taken even further through our Once Right approach. Through teamwork, ingenuity and commitment, customers keep coming back to experience the JV Driver difference.”
For more than 25 years, JV Driver has provided industrial construction, turnaround and fabrication services, and carries a history of proven results in the oil and gas, energy, petrochemical, forestry, mining and manufacturing sectors. In 1989, Bill Elkington, chairman of JV Driver Group, and his colleagues launched the company. In its first year, JV Driver earned $8 million in revenue. Today, JV Driver has completed single projects with values exceeding $1 billion.
JV Driver’s services are as diverse as they are extensive, and its industrial experience spans several industries and regions. The company is currently working primarily in the U.S. and Canada, building its density, depth and bandwidth in those areas. Whether in oil and gas, power, pulp and paper, or the manufacturing industry, JV Driver has a presence and will continue to build its work capacity.
Experts on advanced work packaging, workface planning
There are a number of factors that have contributed to the success of JV Driver. Chief among them is its reliance on advanced work packaging (AWP) and workface planning (WFP). AWP and WFP are keystones in the foundation of the firm. Today, AWP and WFP are implemented in every project the company builds.
“We find our best-planned projects are not only our safest projects but also our most financially rewarding projects,” Gossett said. “Ultimately, what has enabled JV Driver to exponentially grow to over $1 billion in revenue is ‘planning the work.’ AWP and WFP have allowed us to build great things. We have achieved really good performance with a small number of people doing great work. We pride ourselves on building great teams.”
For example, JV Driver’s effective WFP programs used in the constructability phase shrank a turbine building by 75 percent, saving its client millions in construction and one month of schedule.
World-class fabrication
JV Driver has fabrication facilities in both Phoenix and Houston. The Phoenix facility features approximately 100,000 square feet of fabrication space that includes both pressure pipe and structural fabrication.
“In Phoenix, JV Driver created an operation that mirrors our existing facility in Alberta,” said Corey Callahan, vice president of JV Driver Fabricators. “The shop has the ability to pass 20,000 metric tons annually through the steel shop, along with 350,000-400,000 inches of pipe through the pipe shop. This facility is truly world-class and allows JV Driver to execute its fabrication work safely, efficiently and on schedule.”
The Houston facility, which primarily focuses on specialty welding in support of its construction services, features 30,000 square feet of pipe fabrication capacity and puts out approximately 300,000 inches of pipe annually.
According to Gossett, one way JV Driver has addressed the workforce issue is through superior logistics (i.e., strategically planning where certain work is done).
“Our state-of-the-art fabrication facility in Phoenix also has 30 acres for modular assembly,” Gossett said. “We have a significant advantage there in Phoenix without the worker competition compared to Houston, and this is going to continue to grow. This strategy will take the need for thousands of workers off the Gulf Coast area and not put any further stress on this labor market.”
JV Driver’s safety culture
In an environment where competition for the right people at the right time is fierce, JV Driver has a unique advantage over others. JV Driver has used a world-class safety program to attract and retain the right people at the right time in the right numbers.
The group’s team consists of long-term employees who have now made a home with JV Driver. With more than 25 million hours lost-time-accident-free, JV Driver’s core value of taking care of each other translates to one of the best safety records in North America.
“Safety is not viewed as a concept but a core value of taking care of each other,” Gossett said. “To be successful at JV Driver, you must believe there is no good reason to put people at risk. Our safety program — whether it’s in the field, in the JV Driver fabrication facility in Houston or at the JV Driver fabrication facility in Phoenix — ensures everyone goes home to their families at the end of the day in the same state as they came. With strong support and programming from our entire business group, JV Driver’s safety record is impeccable: JV Driver has logged over 53 million man-hours without a lost-time incident.
“At JV Driver, we are also fanatical planners. If we have a poor safety record, we’re not planning very well. We really put a lot of focus into our work planning. And today, according to our most recent statistics, we’re at 0.11 for our total recordable incident rate, which is world-class in the industry.”
JV Driver has an integrated safety program called “Vigilance,” which incorporates a thorough on-boarding training process for all new hires and the use of E-Tracker technology to aid workers and supervision in increasing the number of interventions per jobsite so recordable incidents are prevented altogether. E-Tracker allows for real-time project data to be accessed by supervisory staff so adjustments at the workface level can be made immediately if necessary. Employees earn different rewards for completing intervention submissions, and the program has proven an integral part of jobsite culture.
Industry recognition, participation
JV Driver is taking innovative concepts like radio frequency identification (RFID) and additional cutting-edge ideas from other industries to bring higher levels of safety and efficiency to the petrochemical construction industry. This technology recently helped JV Driver win numerous projects, from multiple billion-dollar oil sands projects in Alberta to a 10-year lump-sum corrosion control contract in Texas and Louisiana.
One of JV Driver’s proudest accomplishments is working with Intelliwave Technologies to win the Bentley “Be Inspired” Award for Innovation in Construction. Charged with expanding a major oil sands operation in northern Alberta, Canada, JV Driver faced numerous challenges that would have made the successful, on-time completion of the project difficult if not impossible without the creative implementation of a number of true industry innovations.
To overcome these barriers, JV Driver turned to Intelliwave Technologies to create an innovative solution that would allow it to leverage technology to successfully complete the project using fewer crew members than usual. Working closely with JV Driver, the two companies responded to the challenge and developed the revolutionary integration of Bentley’s ConstructSim workface planning software with Intelliwave SiteSense® RFID sensor technology to enable the successful installation of more than 200,000 linear feet of pipe and the facility’s tagged equipment pieces.
JV Driver is also an active participant or member in several industry associations, such as the Advanced Work Packaging Conference, Engineering and Construction Contracting Association (ECC), Construction Users Roundtable (CURT®), Economic Alliance Houston Port Region, Louisiana Chemical Industry Alliance (LCIA) and Texas Chemical Council (TCC).
“JV Driver has been a champion for advanced work packaging since before it had momentum here in the United States,” said Lloyd Rankin, president at Ascension Systems Inc., which hosts the AWP Conference each year. “Their involvement with the global AWP Conference since its inception in Houston in 2014 has been invaluable. JV Driver Group has consistently given time, resources and financial support to the conference in furtherance of the big-picture goal of shifting the construction industry toward AWP. I am proud to work alongside Roger Gossett and his team as we build our agenda for 2017 and the years to come.”
In addition, JV Driver is a partner-level member of the Economic Alliance Houston Port Region, the regional economic development corporation responsible for attracting capital investment to the area primarily through the negotiation of tax incentives for the petrochemical industry.
“JV Driver has provided significant support to our organization, not only as members of the board of directors but also by being champions for the industry,”
said Chad Burke, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance Houston Port Region. “As the president of the regional economic development corporation, I am often asked to make connections between people and businesses in the region. Roger Gossett and his staff have been an integral part of the networking taking place at the Economic Alliance, thanks in large part to the extensive client base of the JV Driver Group. JV Driver has hosted multiple board meetings at their offices and were our first private-sector platinum sponsor for the Gulf Coast Industry Forum in 2016. They have also committed again to sponsor lunch for the event in 2017. I couldn’t be more pleased with the partnership between our two entities.”
The future of JV Driver
Currently, the company is focused on growing its four main service offerings along the Gulf Coast: new construction (large/small cap), maintenance, turnarounds, and fabrication through the use of innovative technologies and precise systematic programs. In a mere 12 years, JV Driver has gone from a $50 million company to a $2 billion company, and that positive trajectory is a testament to the quality of work performed as well as corporate culture.
JV Driver has the unique benefit of a ready supply of expert supervision prepared to deploy to the Gulf Coast from recent project work in Canada and a nimble corporate culture that can quickly adapt to the ever-evolving market dynamics of the Gulf Coast and respond with creative contract structures others may not be familiar with. It is these unique benefits, coupled with a near-flawless safety record and a great depth of service offering, that will enable JV Driver to continue to see growth in the next decade as it has in the past decade.
“The variety of what we can do on a project separates us from our competitors,” Gossett said. “Our companies are interconnected and feed off each other. We have entities and resources from filling key staffing needs to fabrication. In addition to single-source construction, we perform industrial services work, including turnarounds, maintenance and follow-up services. We will continue to work on acquisitions that give the group more capacity and fit our single-source model.”
For more information, visit www.jvdriver.com or call (713) 338-2469.
