A company with strong water jetting regulations and requirements for automation was looking for a willing partner to support its site because the company was disappointed with its existing provider. Enter MPW. “This chemical company pushes the technology on everybody who goes in there, and we were able to do it. They’re pretty stringent,” said MPW Regional Manager, Rich May.
“They have a nearly five-page hydro blast permit and they’ve tried to eliminate any kind of manual hydro blasting. They already had those standards when we went in there. It’s not something that we took in there and sold them,” May said. “We were able to displace the competition entirely within three weeks of being brought on site.”
May said MPW won this account for several reasons. For one thing, May said the competition was experiencing safety issues. “There were definitely billing issues on their part as well, in that they couldn’t bill on time and they were billing the wrong PO numbers,” he said. The competition had limited local management and was having trouble regularly staffing outages. “We haven’t had any issues doing that. It’s been from our standpoint a very smooth transition,” May said. “We ended up hiring all the guys who worked at that site for our competitor who were recommended or approved by the chemical company.”
MPW invested significantly in new equipment, including a new vac truck and a new hydro blast pump. Other new equipment includes StoneAge Pro-Drive equipment for cleaning hard pipe drop lines and process lines, a StoneAge Striker, an NLB mini-arm, an NLB 3-d head, an NLB 300 HP pump and high-pressure hoses with individual identification numbers as well as hose testing certifications.
“It’s kind of a small site, but they’ve got about 80 tanks and we’re in the middle of working with (Engineering Manager) Robb Spangler on something that the competition was not able to automate,” May said. “It’s a good relationship with that customer where they’re just as interested in and probably even pushing harder than we are on the automation.”
May said MPW’s engineering group and local management worked with the chemical company to eliminate a historic variance for pipe cleaning using automation. MPW is also currently working on automated solutions for several other jobs that historically have required variances. “This chemical companiy’s local management has been very happy since the transition to MPW,” he said.