Estevan – Having started with one welding truck, Brent Gedak Welding Ltd. of Estevan has grown into a manufacturer which has positioned itself for growth by way of substantial technological investments. Sept. 7 marks 10 years for the company.
Prior to incorporation, Brent had worked as a welder since 1998, and as a subcontractor for other firms, “I worked at Supreme on and off for nine years,” he said on Aug. 22. That work included pipeline and shop pressure welding.
Brent and Janelle got married in 2005, and Janelle looks after much of the administrative side of the business. “I helped him incorporate,” she said.
Incorporation became necessary as they moved from a one-man operation to multiple employees.
“We started on the Frank Dunford farm, north of town, for two and a half years,” Brent said.
“It was fabricating, pressure piping, skid manufacturing, and we did a lot of service and drilling rig maintenance. We did casing bowls. That was my stuff – at two in the morning.”
It’s been four or five years now since Brent Gedak Welding (BGW) has done rig welding, since the nature of their business has changed over the years. Much of the work is making skid packages. They do, however, still maintain four mobile welders.
Their first shop was built on the west side of Estevan beginning in 2009, and they moved in in early 2010. While 2009 was a down year for the oilpatch, southeast Saskatchewan was largely spared. “We didn’t really feel it. We grew,” Brent said.
Janelle said, “It wasn’t long after that we out grew it.”
“With the expansion of the second and third shops, we moved more into a manufacturing direction, to handle large scale projects,” Brent said.
In 2012 they started building a second shop on the same site, adding another 15,000 square feet to the 8,600 square feet in the first shop. A third building, used as a certified paint shop, storage, and prefab buildings, added another 3,200 square feet. More recently, a fourth, smaller building was completed in April 2016 for their most recent advancement in technology, a second robotic system.
Two years ago BGW put in place its first robot, which does pressure pipe welding. The second robot, which required its own building to enclose it, is a CNC beam line plasma cutter which can handle 2D and 3D shapes.
While watching the cutter precisely work its way through an I-beam, Brent noted that the same work it could accomplish in minutes would take a skilled welder hours.
Those two robots were weighty investments, especially during the downturn, but they were seen as necessary for the future of the company.
The first shop is set up for pressure piping. The second one is used for structural steel and assembly. The aforementioned third building is a certified paint shop and storage as well as home to their prefab building operations. The last one is connected by conveyor to the structural steel shop.
The prefab buildings and field insulation were added several years ago. Design and drafting came in 2010.
“We do small pressure vessels.” Brent added.
At peak, BGW was around 30 to 32 people. Now they’re at 21, including the owners.
Over the years the company has built a lot of platforms and stairs when things were slow.
One diversification effort two years ago didn’t go as far as hoped. They bought a few trucks for field construction and brought in someone specializing that, but it didn’t catch and six months later they shut that down, selling all but one truck. “We were trying to develop more welding projects by bringing in field work,” Brent said.
They do smaller installations, but otherwise contract with other construction companies for field work.
Since then they’ve taken a different direction. “We went back to what we know worked. We decided we needed to catch up, to become more automated and more competitive,” Brent said.
Those efforts have allowed BGW to increase its production capability dramatically without adding more people. When things pick up, they have the ability to take on a lot more work because of these investments.
A large part of the impetus to make those investments was the available of skilled labour. Janelle noted how difficult it had been to find pressure welders.
“That’s the problem, no matter what the price of oil. When oil is high, there’s a labour issue. When it’s low, it’s a work issue,” Janelle said, referring to the volume of work available.
“We were faced with a shortage of qualified welders,” Brent said.
One of their diversification efforts was to land work with SaskPower, which happened at the end of 2016. BGW has also picked up work from mines. They’ve also done some municipal work, such as a facility plant. But they note that line of business is very competitive.
Asked how they survived the downturn, Janelle said, “We worked well with our professional support team – accountant, banker. There was nothing easy about it – lots of hard decisions across the board.”
She pointed out that was common across the industry. “Nobody ever thought it would last this long.”
Brent said, “We’re in survival now, but we’re ready to go.”
He pointed out they chose not to cut wages. They did sell trucks and try to manage hours. This past year has been a rebound year.
Janelle said, “We’ve regrouped and come down to a common vision: quality, teamwork, attitude, process and service to our customers.”
Between this all, Brent has made a name for himself as one of the top curlers in the province, winning the provincial club championship this past spring and going to nationals in November. His rink also won this year’s Estevan Oilman’s Bonspiel. Brent said, “The highlight of this year’s curling career is playing at the Provincial Curling Tankard at home, taking place in Estevan at Affinity Place in February, 2018.”
Having reached 10 years in business, Brent said, “Thank you to our customers. Some of our customers have been with us from year one, and others from this year. We couldn’t have done it without any of them.”
Janelle said, “We have some long-standing staff that are still here, that see the vision of the company even through tough times.”
Brent added, to the employees, “Thank you for working with us, even through the ups and downs of the industry.”
