David Osage needed a simple way to explain the services that The Equity Engineering Group Inc. offers the refining and petrochemical industries. He had been talking to his wife and she asked, “Good God! How do you explain this to anybody?”
It prompted Osage, co-founder of the organization, to think there might be a way to easily explain what the company offers.
“It’s a very complicated business; it’s very challenging to figure it out,” he says. “The nature of our business is that when a company finds defects or flaws in the vessels or piping, we go in and look at their inspection data, do a very advanced analysis and tell them how long they can run safely before they have to shut down.”
So Osage, who is also president and CEO, got the idea for a brief explanation, much like an elevator speech, that draws an analogy to health care for a patient.
Heart of the matter
“When oil prices are low, it sends the industry into a reactive mode, sort of like you get a cut, you go to the hospital and you get stitches. We are sort of the surgeon. We diagnose what goes on, we put stitches in and we keep you running,” Osage says.
But when oil prices are high, it’s a different situation and you have to adjust accordingly.
“You are sort of always in the reaction mode, but you would like to go more into a prevention mode. In that scenario, we will come in and do a lot of pre-inspection and planning with you to try to avoid accidents or issues that could occur,” he says. “That would be when you get your physical checkup.”
Osage says he found that using this simple analogy made it easier for potential clients to equate safety with health.
“If you are a refinery manager or a chemical plant manager, one of the things you want to do is to operate the plant safely,” he says. “One reason why is because there is a public duty to run it safely. But the other reason is that it is good business.
“If you have safety incidents, and you are not shutting down, you are making money. That’s why the smart companies really don’t have a lot of accidents.”
Extending the metaphor
As with holistic medicine, you have to treat the entire patient to keep him or her in the pink. Osage likens his company’s services to wellness, or preventive, measures.
“Say you’re coming into gas season, some six months off and you really want to keep your plant running because you’re making a high profit,” Osage says. “We can come in and basically do a checkup. It’s really like taking a physical; we tell you what to do, and how to get ready for anything that could happen.”
In the meantime, the doctor prescribes maintaining contact on a regular basis to keep the patient well.
“That is one of the reasons we license our software, and we train our clients to do this work,” Osage says. “It is a little counterintuitive, because a lot of our competitors do not do that. We do it because we want to educate the consumer. Our best clients are the people that understand and know our technologies and can actually apply them.
“Sometimes, for example, it’s just smart to do a repair.”
Osage says educating and training the patient helps a company maintain the relationship with the customer.
“By educating our clients on when to use our software, it keeps us in touch with them,” he says.
The talent pool
Getting the most qualified workforce, especially for the complex industries such as refining and petrochemicals, is critical to delivering industry “health care.”
Osage draws talent directly from “medical schools” — not actual medical colleges but through work co-op programs through institutions such as The University of Akron, University of Toledo, Case Western Reserve University and Rice University.
“These young people are really smart; and the thing about it is the co-op programs are such a secret here,” he says. “We have brought very talented people here … Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in the class, for example.”
Osage says the company doesn’t hire anyone who hasn’t gone through the co-op program. The company has an unstructured environment with little hierarchy.
“We want to make sure that if somebody comes here, they are going to be successful,” he says. “To try to bring somebody in without knowing their background, that’s a risk for us and a disservice for them also. We don’t want to waste anybody’s time.
“We are very big on co-op programs, and we are reaching out to other schools because you want to get as many schools as you can to draw from different cultures.”
The retention rate is high for those who have gone through the co-op program, who have earned their “nursing caps,” so to speak.
“They are there to stay. We give them a lot of flexibility,” Osage says.
