After a series of corporate buyouts and recapitalizations at their previous employer, Johnny Holifield and Jimmy Quick began to feel a profound sense of job dissatisfaction.
“They went from being the best and hiring the best people, to how much can we do and how much work can we get,” Holifield tells 10/12 Industry Report in a feature from the new quarterly issue. “They started taking on too much work and grew too fast, and they ceased to be successful.”
So following another buyout, the two men decided it was time to leave. Armed with the goal of assembling an elite group of welders specializing in enhanced welding services, they founded Specialty Welding and Turnarounds, or SWAT, in Gonzales in April 2014, with Holifield as president and Quick as vice president.
While starting a new business can be daunting, the two found that their reputation for fast, expeditious work preceded them, and work came easily. Finding a good quality staff of supervisors wasn’t difficult either.
“When we left, we took our core group of supervisors with us—all of the guys that we trained through the years,” Holifield says. “From 1999 to 2014, most all of the project managers and superintendents were trained by Jimmy or me.”
The supervisors’ willingness to leave the safety and security of an established company for the risk of joining a fledgling business was testament to their loyalty. “These guys were fitters and welders, and became foremen and superintendents under our guidance,” Quick says. “We trained them in planning, scheduling and cost control. They knew that the positions they were in were based upon what we did to make them better.”
Tapping into that level of experience from “Day One” was crucial, enabling SWAT to begin working in the field as if it had been in operation for years. Since beginning operations, SWAT has not missed a project window or budget—and it has been expanding. To accommodate its rapid growth, SWAT recently purchased 5.5 acres of land off La. 44 in Gonzales for a new 12,000-square-foot facility. Already designed, the facility will more than double the size of its existing office once it opens in May 2017.
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