"It’s positive and encouraging, but we’re never satisfied with current results because we know we can, must and will continue to improve.” That’s how Safway® Group President and CEO Bill Hayes described the company’s recent performance.
“We can always push the bar higher,” he explained. “We’re dedicated to ongoing improvement. We continue to develop our organization and have added some terrific new people in key roles through both internal development and acquisitions. We’re executing our strategy and posting major wins across all markets, regions and service lines, but the best is yet to come for Safway and our customers. The collective chip on our shoulder to become the fastest-growing SIP (scaffolding, insulation and coatings/painting) player — and, more importantly, to provide meaningful differentiation in our services to our customers — remains firmly in place.”
Safway’s safety metrics also improved another 20 percent in 2015. “But TRIR (total recordable injury rate) is admittedly a lagging indicator,” noted Hayes. “We and our entire industry must improve on identifying and measuring leading as well as lagging indicators. We’re partnering with OSHA, NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), industry experts and academia to better understand the leading indicators of safety and how we use those indicators to eliminate injuries. And while we want to be known as our industry’s thought leader in safety, we will share our findings on leading indicators with our competitors.”
While Safway is growing significantly above overall market growth rates and its safety performance continues to improve, its focus is on being one of the best, not necessarily the largest, industrial service companies. “Big is fine,” said Hayes, “but we want to be the best in our industry, and that needs to be in our customers’ eyes. We believe we’re highly differentiated in safety, engineering, scale, productivity and multilevel customer reach, but we continue to refine and improve on these differentiators to make sure it matters to our customers! We constantly ask ourselves: ‘What’s in it for our customers? Why and how is this important to our customers?’ That’s our bottom line. We have to deliver value on each and every project. We strive to be the best — the most indispensable service provider — from our customers’ perspectives.”
Building a deeper bench
With these objectives in mind, in 2015 Safway joined together with Mobley Industrial Services, one of the largest independent coatings companies in North America. Mobley was the largest industrial services acquisition for Safway to date and brings decades of insulation and coatings expertise to complement Safway’s scaffolding and access experience. But what does this mean for customers?
“Now we have a deeper bench in all service areas and on every level,” explained Safway U.S. Division President Jeff Sprau. “This means when you come to us with a project, we can turn to a team of experts and engineers to design and develop the best possible access, insulation and coatings solution for your unique project. Together, we are able to work at the highest level of efficiency and deliver premium multiservices provided by the best skilled craftspeople in the industry.”
Mobley has 35-plus years of experience in surface preparation, painting, coatings, linings, insulation and abatement to offer customers, along with four premium off-site blasting and coatings facilities. “We have the expertise to do more than provide an insulation and coatings solution,” explained Chuck Mobley, president of Mobley Industrial Services. “Our experienced team can help develop an optimum solution for your facility and deliver it with the greatest efficiency in the industry. We have the expertise to handle asbestos and lead abatement projects. We can manage a corrosion under insulation (CUI) program or set up an asset management program, which can lead to millions of dollars in savings over the life of your facility.”
Mobley offers both turnkey CUI management programs and infrastructure maintenance (asset management) painting programs, which can lead to long-term cost savings.
Proactive asset management programs extend the life of process-related equipment, reduce unanticipated downtime and increase safety. “Being proactive rather than reactive could mean that instead of blasting and painting every 10 to 15 years, your protective coating systems could last for 30 or 40 years by doing routine spot repair and over coating,” said Mobley. “A proactive versus reactive approach is also much easier on your budget. You can make better, more informed maintenance decisions, and there are fewer surprises.”
CUI occurs in carbon and low-alloy steel piping or equipment that has been insulated. Corrosion occurs when water penetrates or is absorbed by the insulation. The piping or equipment begins to corrode as it is exposed to moisture.
“There are five factors in preventing CUI: insulation selection, equipment design, protective coatings, weather barriers and maintenance practices,” explained Mobley. “Some insulation systems are less prone to CUI because they’re nonabsorbent. There are also protective coating systems that are better suited for CUI. This is why choosing the right insulation and coating system is critical, and our team has the expertise to advise you in making the best selection.”
Unique products save time
Insulation and coatings, however, are only part of the equation. “The right access products and solution can cut a project schedule by as much as half,” said Stig Karlsen, vice president of Engineering Services for Safway.
For example, using its QuikDeck® Suspended Access System on offshore projects allows Safway to safely, yet significantly, cut schedules. “When we’ve used QuikDeck on these projects, we’ve been able to decrease downtime,” explained Karlsen. “And at the cost of millions of dollars a day, when a rig is shut down for maintenance, the savings add up quickly.”
Companies all around the globe — with locations in the Middle East, Asia, North America, South America and New Zealand — have reached out to Safway for expertise in turnarounds and products like QuikDeck. A patented and proprietary suspended access system, QuikDeck provides factory floor-like working conditions under areas where scaffold can’t be built up from below. QuikDeck can be “assembled in the air.” Once an initial section is in place, subsequent QuikDeck sections can be safely and quickly added without any support from underneath. In addition, QuikDeck’s rigid, flat surface means equipment on wheels can easily be moved, and numerous people from multiple trades can safely work on a project side by side at the same time.
HAKI® weather protection systems offer another example of a “time is money” solution. Safway is the primary North American provider of the HAKISPAN® and HAKITEC® 750 products in North America. “By using the HAKI weather protection system in a mod yard in Canada, we were able to keep the project — the fabrication of a huge piece of equipment for oil sands bitumen processing — going in spite of 35 below temperatures,” said Karlsen. “We enclosed nearly half a million cubic feet.”
HAKITEC weather protection and containment systems can be designed to cover large, wide, uninterrupted areas and fit almost any size and shape, including pitched and polygonal structures. HAKISPAN mobile or stationary platforms can span large, wide areas. Both are quick and easy to erect with modular components, and applications have included jobsites, storage and warehousing. “HAKI products have allowed us to work while facilities have remained fully open and operational, and in any environment regardless of the weather to keep a project on schedule,” said Karlsen.
Designing better, safer access
The first step to designing access solutions, however, requires accurate blueprints or drawings. “If a customer already has CAD (computer-aided drafting) files, we can import those,” explained Karlsen. “We have the most up-to-date software programs, including AutoCAD®, SolidWorks Simulation, STAAD Pro and RISA, 3D Studio Max and NavisWorks®, as well as Intergraph® SmartPlant® 3D.”
But what happens when there are no reliable drawings of a facility? In these instances, Safway uses SafScan™, a high-definition laser scanning tool. “We are the only access and industrial service company to offer laser scanning,” added Karlsen.
SafScan uses lasers and a computer’s ability to collect and process vast amounts of data to create a three-dimensional virtual model of any space. It’s quick and accurate. Instead of spending months surveying by hand, Safway can create a highly accurate digital image, which can be imported into any engineering program in mere days.
Driving productivity
By bringing together the most experienced names in the industry and having them on the same team, customers can also take advantage of better tracking and project management. “We’re all on the same team now,” said Mobley. “This means more and better communication on every level and throughout every phase of a project. Our customers are not going to lose any days because the scaffold wasn’t set up in a particular area and we have to delay insulation or coatings work. We’re one family now, which means we can work closely together to enhance project management.”
“We can track and share progress reports online in real time on everything from labor schedules to inventory and inspections,” added Steve Wilson, president of Safway Canada. “This allows us to follow a clearly defined critical path, maintain priorities, head off any issue before it becomes a problem and safely increase productivity overall. Every aspect of a project is carefully monitored and measured to ensure that we deliver clear, visible value in the most efficient manner possible. We are able to provide customers with historical information and keep them up to date on key performance indicators.”
Safway offers customers more flexible contract options as well. “These include work activity norms or unit-based pricing and performance contracts, in addition to time and materials or lump sum estimates,” said Wilson. “We are more than willing and able to work with whatever billing and budget parameters our customers may require, and we’re prepared to share in the performance risk with them to drive down costs and exposure hours.”
Local labor and resources
Location is another critical component when it comes to improving performance for Safway customers. With more than 110 branches, locations and regional distribution centers in the U.S. and Canada, Safway can deliver multiservice solutions when and where you need them with the highest degree of efficiency in the industry. How will this help Safway customers?
“In most cases, we don’t need to bring in expertise or labor,” explained Sprau. “Our management and crews are locally based. They live in your community and are ready to go to work, which allows us to be more responsive to your needs. In instances when a project location is remote and a local workforce is unavailable, we’ve been able to implement resourcing or recruiting programs to drive down travel and camp costs for our customers.”
Having more locations also means equipment can be sourced faster and with greater efficiency. “We have locations virtually everywhere our customers have jobsites,” continued Sprau. “Equipment is inventoried at each of our branches as well as our 10 regional distribution centers, and we have the infrastructure to find and deliver the products you need quickly. In fact, we have the largest product inventory in the industry.”
Owning safety
Safway continues to set the bar in safety as well. “Nothing is more important to our customers or our company than safety,” said Hayes. “It’s our No. 1 value and a basic right. Our first and foremost responsibility is to make sure everyone on our thousands of jobsites goes home safe to their families and loved ones every day.”
Ownership and personal responsibility are the cornerstones of Safway’s safety culture. “It starts with the belief that each individual is responsible for safety, not just for themselves but for their co-workers, customers and contractors,” explained Safway’s Vice President of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Paul Amedee. “We have developed programs to communicate and reinforce this idea throughout our company. Safety is infused in everything we do.”
Safway has developed proactive initiatives and processes to continually improve EHS. These include:
- The “I OWN Safety” initiative.
- 10 life-saving safety rules.
- “Stop Work Authority and Intervention” program.
- Job planning processes like site hazard assessments, site safety plans and job hazard analyses.
- Behavioral-based observation processes.
- Ongoing measurement and tracking of leading as well as lagging safety indicators.
- Continual monitoring and training.
- Partnerships with NIOSH, OSHA and The Center for Construction Research and Training.
“We believe that safety drives efficiency and productivity,” added Wilson. “The safest company is going to provide the best quality and performance at the lowest total installed cost. Our safest sites are always our most productive. We have numerous sites that have been injury- and incident-free over multiple years, and it’s not unusual to see our performance-based contracts operating at world-class levels of EHS performance.” (See box with list of recent safety awards for more information.)
80 years strong
“It’s also worth remembering that we’ve been around longer than anyone else in this business,” said Hayes. “We’re not going anywhere. Safway has been in the game — developing new products and expanding services to meet the changing and growing needs of our customers — for 80 years. We have a reputation for quality performance, and we’re dedicated to continual improvement. We’re building on our legacy every day.
“We want to be your industrial service company — your first choice when you need access, insulation or coatings. And we’re willing to do whatever it takes to delight, not just satisfy, our customers. We’re always striving to go that extra degree for you.”
For more information, visit www.safwaygroup.com or call (800) 558-4772.
