CerPro

Source: Energy Digital

Date :2/18/2008 2:02:08 AM

CerPro Energy Services President Peter Pleskie explains how his company employed a straightforward strategy to capitalize on southern Canada’s oil boom

Written by Emmet Cole and Produced by Michael Alexander Jones

CerPro Energy Services is a company focused on simple, but essential, business values. Do quality work. Increase client value. Be rewarded with more work. And, most importantly: Never say no. “It’s simple really,” says Pleskie, who founded the company four years ago. “If one of my clients has a 50-well drilling program and we can do that kind of work for under their budget and leave them a little jingle in their pockets, then maybe they’ll drill ten more wells.”

Pleskie built CerPro from the ground up, translating an intense focus on quality, a readiness to diversify, and a commitment to its own employees, to become a rapidly growing force in the energy service industry.

Quality work

When oil prices began their ascent toward $100 a barrel and the oil and gas boom started in Alberta, Pleskie had more than 20 years in the industry and, alongside a small group of industry colleagues, he recognized an opportunity. “We shared the common goal of being quality tradesmen and providing the kind of quality work that creates value for your clients,” explains Pleskie. “We never say no.”

Currently, the Medicine Hat, Alberta-based company employs 250-300 people and boasts an exceptional employee retention rate in an industry notorious for free-flowing entry-level labor. CerPro also maintains a modern and well maintained equipment fleet of 200 units.

Amidst the enormous growth, CerPro has taken several steps to maintain the quality of its services. The company employs a full-time professional engineer and quality manager, uses a registered Quality Control System, and is pursuing registration of an ASME “U” stamp in order to construct pressure vessels.

In engineering, CerPro emphasizes use of piping design software, which includes the programs AutoCAD 2007, CadWorx Plant 2007, CodeCALC 2007, and Solid Works 2007, allowing for the company to design pressure vessel components, facilitate its structural manufacturing department with 3D models, and to build elaborate facility projects and isometrics. It even offers finite element stress analysis –a highly-specialized and technologically challenging process. “Quality is really our number one focus, and if we can perform and meet expectations, a lot of the other things necessary to survive and grow in an industry like ours just follow suit,” Pleskie says.

Quality employees

CerPro is not a company that’s concerned only with company profits. It supports an impressive array of local charities and organizations, from cancer research foundations to local minor league hockey teams. CerPro’s “top-line” philosophy is also reflected in the way the company empowers its employees through advancement and safety training.

In order to align its growth with a larger middle management stream, CerPro also tailors training to promote opportunities for employee advancement within the company. This makes for more motivated, better trained employees, which make for a more organic, better qualified workforce, says Pleskie. “There’s no such thing as enough training,” he explains. “I’m more than willing to make the investment in my people and my equipment to maintain a higher level of quality. That investment comes back in loyalty.”

Company training is heavily focused on safety, with the company’s program profiled on both the CanadaHSE and ISNetworld Safety Verification websites. CerPro has earned significant safety awards in recent years, including the 2007 Work Safe Alberta Award, the 2006 Alberta Employment, Immigration and Industry Best Safety Performer Award, and the 2006 EnCana Safety Stewardship Award. “We don’t compromise on safety or technical training which accounts for less turnover in our workforce,” says Pleskie.

Quality vision into the future

CerPro’s growth brings several challenges. The need for a stable and consistent top line to service debt and grow working capital that in turn allows for more growth through efficiencies created through operational maturities, diversification and expansion.

The most immediate necessity for CerPro is to complete the new operations and manufacturing center of 30,000 square feet in Medicine Hat on 40 acres of industrial property. “The efficiency of this allows us to focus on our goals and grow into the solid corporation of our dreams.”

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