Serving Canada’s Western Provinces
Redcore Ltd.Robert Hoshowsky
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The company has rapidly earned a reputation for outstanding performance, unparalleled safety in meeting the needs of all clients in Canada’s ever-expanding oil and gas sectors.
With its head office and main fabrication shop in Sylvan Lake Alberta, Redcore has expanded significantly over the past seven years, becoming one of the province’s premier custom fabricators and installers of pipelines and facility construction services. Taking on an array of projects for well-known clients such as Bonavista Energy, Lightstream, Connacher Oil and Gas, Direct Energy, Redcore has earned a reputation for on-time and on-budget project completion and complete customer satisfaction.
“I grew up in an oil and gas community in eastern Alberta, a little town called Provost. It has been an oil boom town my whole life,” says Redcore President Jonathan Paulgaard. Mr. Paulgaard had a good number of his family and friends in the oil and gas industries over the years, which helped to inspire him to form the company back in 2007 together with brother Marty Paulgaard and Jeff Redekop.
With a team of 160 full-time staff – growing to over 200 in the busy seasons – the company has evolved into a dynamic oil construction specialty company, with a primary focus on pipeline and facility construction projects within Western Canada’s burgeoning oil and gas sector.
As oilfield construction specialists, the company has a wide range of expertise, fabrication abilities, and knowledge, all backed by a unique business model. Unlike some other companies, Redcore is able to deliver quality results time and time again by having key members of its management team playing active roles in field operations.
As it grew, the company was awarded a number of large projects all over Alberta, northern BC, and southern Saskatchewan. Making a number of solid contacts in the process, it added a quality program to fabricate pressure piping and began to offer pipeline procedures. “It was through lot of hard work that we made some great contacts, and we got in with a few good producers, essentially Bonavista being one. They are our main customer, and this was the initiation of our super growth,” explains Mr. Paulgaard.
For Bonavista, Redcore takes on a range of small bore pipelines up to sixteen inches in diameter, along with related fabrication, the building of compressor stations, steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), modulators and more. Although growth for the first years of the privately-held company was modest, the ensuing four years witnessed significant and steep financial progress. “Our revenue went from $4.5 million to $19 million to $30 million in three years,” comments Mr. Paulgaard of the company, which is also active in facility construction, facility shutdown and turnarounds, civil construction and custom construction projects in addition to shop fabrication.
Evolving over the years and diversifying its services, Redcore has grown organically as a business, adapting to better serve the needs of its growing client base. Taking on a diverse range of projects ranging from $100,000 to $10 million, Redcore may have grown considerably in recent years, but still maintains a positive element that come with being a privately-held enterprise, which benefits clients and the company alike.
“Private ownership means we are very personable with our customers and our staff,” says Mr. Paulgaard. “We have a very strong invested interest in our community, and we give a lot back. We donated and sponsor a number of charitable events in the community. It is something we like to do, and we are proud that we do that.”
As a great believer in local involvement, Redcore is active in sponsoring a number of organizations involved with health, education and sports, including Red Deer College, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the United Way, the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter, Carstairs Minor Hockey Association, the Town of Sylvan Lake and others.
Redcore is able to meet the fabrication needs of all clients through its massive 10,000 square-foot shop and 5,000 square foot office space, situated on four acres of land in Sylvan Lake Alberta in central Alberta. With an eye on the future – and the need to increase its fabrication and modular services – the company is looking to expand its modular yard by another ten acres in the next six to ten months. This will happen either in Calgary or the east side of Red Deer.
Taking on a range of projects in locations including Fort Nelson, Fort St. John, Fort McMurray, Grand Prairie, Grande Cache, Lloydminister, Bonnyville, Weyburn and Estevan, the company has the ability to bid on projects across all western provinces.
All items fabricated by Redcore are precisely manufactured according to exacting engineered customer specifications and the company is looking at hiring in-house design people in the near future. Realizing that every project is unique, the company focuses on working directly with each client to consider every detail. From initial project planning to scope and environmental concerns, all the way to completion within schedule and budget, Redcore specializes in the installation of pipelines anywhere from two inches to sixteen inches. The company is able to handle pipeline projects, river crossings, major highway and road crossings, gathering systems and above ground pipelines. Not limited to steel, the its vast experience enables it to create a variety of piping solutions, including composite, polyethylene, fibreglass and internally coated pipelines.
On pipeline projects, the company usually comes on board at the bid process stage. “Some of our main clients may ask for advice in the planning stages, but that’s a rare occurrence – usually have their own planning stuff,” states Mr. Paulgaard. “Other times they are tendered out to us, and, if we are successful and have the best price, we are awarded the project. We do all the installation or a request for quotation.”
Redcore’s central Alberta location is an ideal base for serving clients across the four western provinces and their often harsh weather conditions and terrain.
When it comes to facility construction, Redcore has abilities, experience and equipment to take on everything from small well site facilities to large scale SAGD operations and compressor stations. It offers a variety of solutions, services and products – including compressor stations, oil batteries, SAGD plants, well site installations, separators, line heaters and pumping stations.
Redcore has worked on everything from small lease clearing projects to large civil roadway construction. It has the vital skills necessary to work with all clients to complete full plant turn around and shut downs successfully and safely, on time and on budget. Maintaining strict quality control and safety procedures from start to finish, the company has successfully taken on electrical substations, lease construction, roadways and more. With its wide range of quality construction services, the company’s unsurpassed record in civil construction speaks for itself.
“We build SAGD modulators, and we are just starting to get into vessel fabrication,” says Mr. Paulgaard. “We also do field fabrication, like build compressor stations or oil batteries, from ground roots in the field.”
Taking on the mechanical portion of jobs along with welding and pressure piping, clients usually bring in their own people to handle electrical aspects of projects. “We have the potential to do an all-in. When a module is built in our yard, we’re the prime contractor, and we hire the insulators, the electricians and all of that. So it is project-based and depends how the client wants it.”
Along with employees skilled in a number of disciplines including welding, CNC (computer numerical control machines) and pipefitting, Redcore has a quality control department to oversee all fabrication. Using qualified Red Seal pipefitters and welders, the company holds quality programs in all four western Canadian provinces. Its shop is Canadian Welding Bureau (CWB) certified (a legal requirement throughout Canada for all steel structures such as tank supports, welded-on tank access ladders and small portable structures like skid packages) and certified by ABSA (the Alberta Boilers Safety Association, the pressure equipment safety authority) in the province.
Committed to quality, consistency, safety and customer satisfaction, Redcore’s comprehensive shop fabrication abilities for the oil and gas sector include industrial sandblasting, painting, process piping, structural piperack, coating services, CWB Certified custom steel fabrication and more. It is the company’s dedication to detail and its close work with its clients which sets Redcore apart from the competition.
For company which is just seven years old, Redcore has quickly proven itself to be not only reliable to its many clients, but a force to be reckoned with among western Canada’s custom fabricators and installers of pipelines and facility construction providers. Although the company has grown dramatically – Mr. Paulgaard predicts revenue doubling in the next five years, greater fabrication capabilities and staff growing to over 300 – Redcore Ltd. remains committed to professional, personalized service for all customers.
With a highly engaged, professional management team combined with a diverse range of modern equipment, COR certified Redcore takes on a wide variety of projects, and is committed to complete customer satisfaction while adhering to budgets and safety initiatives in the most cost-effective construction solutions. As Mr. Paulgaard says, “We are locally owned in central Alberta, community-minded, reliable, and dedicated to high-quality services and safety standards.”