A few short months ago, it would have taken a new hire at Baton Rouge’s EXCEL Group nearly three days to be processed and prepped for work, sometimes resulting in costly delays and impacting the critical path. This was of particular concern on larger projects where manpower had to ramp up quickly.
As 10/12 Industry Report details in a feature from its new quarterly issue, administrators in EXCEL’s corporate office knew something had to give.
“We had some huge projects in the 800- to 1,200-worker range, and when you’re ramping up to meet your manpower schedule, having a 2.5- to 3-day process for drug screening, medical evaluations and safety training is problematic,” says Richard Beemer, EXCEL’s director of craft services. “Last year, in Q1 and Q2, and going into Q3, we were hiring about 160 people per week. That adds up quickly.”
Beemer is all smiles these days, as the worker processing time has been slashed to a single day, sometimes less, in part due to the “nesting” of a full-time lab manager from Baton Rouge’s Alliance Safety Council at EXCEL’s new Staffing and Training Center (STC) in Prairieville.
About 90% of the industrial contractor’s safety training is now performed at the STC. While instructor-led training is still executed at the Alliance Safety Council offices on Siegen Lane, all computer-based training is done at the STC.
The Alliance Safety Council has been offering Mobile Services for years, but it began nesting its proctors at select contractors’ offices to help expedite employee processing on a larger scale. Kathy Trahan, Safety Council president and CEO, says nesting—a more permanent, full-time variation of Mobile Services—is being utilized only by those contractors with sufficient volume to justify the use of a full-time proctor.
The nesting process enables a contractor to centralize its new employee processing, while serving the dual purpose of lightening the load at the Safety Council offices.
“It takes a little bit of the pressure off of our main sites, and allows contractors to more quickly get people job ready,” Trahan says.
And it’s not only contractors requesting the service. In 2008, Marathon Petroleum contacted the Alliance Safety Council while ramping up for its massive $3.9 billion plant expansion in Garyville, asking the Safety Council to help staff its safety trailers with proctors while the company supplied all of the hard cost items such as computers and projectors. Additionally, the Safety Council opened its Gonzales facility “around the clock” to assist with training the large number of contractors needed for the project.
Roger Gautreau, Marathon Petroleum’s safety supervisor in Garyville at the time, says the Mobile Services significantly improved the efficiency of contractor processing at the peak of construction. “We went from a few hundred people to almost 10,000, coming from all parts of the country,” Gautreau says. “The service made a lot of sense to us.”
Read the full 10/12 Industry Report feature, and check out the full lineup of stories from the new quarterly issue. Send feedback, story ideas and company news to editor@1012industryreport.com.
