In this holiday season, we reflect on the year to date and count our blessings. It’s a natural thing to do as the end of the year approaches. It is a rare time when most people will actually stop and look back. This is a good thing, as it offers perspective not often seen at the time.
There have certainly been challenges in 2017. Locally in the southeast Texas region Hurricane Harvey was an event we’ve never seen the likes of. From Corpus Christi through Houston to Beaumont/Port Arthur and into Louisiana, record rainfall of over 51″ caused flooding on a scale that was beyond imagination or understanding. The devastation to life and property was unparalleled in our area, and many people are still working to get their lives back to normal. Members of our team had flooding in their homes and have had to rebuild.
Harvey significantly affected the oil & gas industry as well. Many refineries were shut down for weeks and several of our projects in the region were put on hold until the flood waters receded. It was a hardship for all in southeast Texas, and throughout the Gulf Coast. Other factors impacted the industry globally as well, but through it all our industry leading team pushed through.
Despite all these challenges, the B&W team successfully executed engineering, pre-commissioning and commissioning services on projects large and small in the U.S. and across the world. In all, it was the busiest year in our company’s history in terms of volume of projects. We entered new areas of the world to execute our industrial cleaning services including Ghana, South Korea and Kuwait. In the United States projects took us to Alaska, Kentucky and even downtown Boston, Massachusetts. In all our team traveled the globe for over 100 different projects of varying size. In every one we brought our relentless dedication to safety, quality, efficiency and service to successfully execute for our clients.
In 2017 we also formed a new strategic partnership to enhance our industry leading services. B&W and klean corp international (kci) now work together to offer the services of both companies to its projects. kci focuses on utilizing proprietary chemical blends that are environmentally friendly, thus providing an effective and economic alternative to traditional chemical cleaning. These green formulations, designed to meet the cleaning needs of steam generating equipment, can often be used without the need for an external heat source. The results are substantially lower costs associated with chemical cleaning, in addition to substantially lower costs associated with client construction support. The strategic alliance also means B&W’s world class services can be brought to bear on projects where kci is already on site.
We count each member of our staff, every partnership and every client project a blessing. And, we hope you are thankful for your relationship with B&W this year. Despite all challenges, we all should be thankful.