State of the Art Containment Solutions
TitanBy Robert Hoshowsky
View in E-Magazine
View in Brochure
With decades of first-hand experience in the sector, Titan Environmental Containment Ltd. takes pride in providing state of the art environmental protection, containment, installation and products to a variety of industries.
~
Titan’s highly trained and experienced staff, specializing in the supply and installation of high-quality environmental products such as geosynthetics and bolted steel tanks, enables Titan to provide exceptional service at the best possible price. The company operates across Canada and in the United States, and is driven by its core values: Trust. Quality. Value – which make client relationships and value for money the cornerstone of all its business practices. This is supported by continual investment in education and training to offer clients solutions which are economical, sustainable and better for the environment.
Based in Ile des Chênes, Manitoba – just southeast of the capital of Winnipeg – Titan was created in 2006 by four partners who learned about the industry firsthand. Privately owned, it began as a modest garage-based business that today has about sixty year-round full-time employees complemented by more than forty seasonal and hourly staff. The company has grown significantly in less than a decade, as it continues to work with customers in a range of sectors, including mining, oil and gas, municipal and agricultural.
Titan’s executive team – which includes Co-Founders, Brett Burkard, Chief Executive Officer; Kelly Sitarz, President and Ron Skrobutan, Vice- President– continues to lead Titan on its successful path.
CEO, Brett Burkard, obtained his diploma in Business Administration from Winnipeg-based Red River Community College (today Red River College). When he graduated in 1990, the economy was in a tailspin. Working in construction, and later a pipe company, Mr. Burkard eventually found work in a company which introduced him to geosynthetics – using synthetic materials, many of which are plastics, in heavy construction to solve civil engineering problems. He soon went from being a shipper and receiver to regional manager, then onto another company before co-founding his own.
“We’re in an industry that was dominated by companies in Western and Eastern Canada who serviced the Prairies,” says Mr. Burkard. “There is big business in Manitoba and Saskatchewan for the work that we do, and we’ve basically come full circle: we’re a Prairie based company that now services the West.
Initially serving the agricultural sector, today the company undertakes projects in a number of environmental industries including mining, water containment, wastewater and waste management, road construction, as well as liquid and dry bulk storage while specializing in the supply and installation of geomembrane liners and bolted steel tanks and secondary containment.
Titan Environmental Containment works with a range of partners, suppliers and industries across Canada and the United States to provide a diverse range of environmental products which are not only extremely high-quality, but help create cost-effective solutions for all customers, from prominent oil and gas companies seeking containment to municipal clients requiring landfills.
COR™ Certified Company
Titan is, first and foremost, committed to caring for the safety of all its employees. As a COR™ certified company, the business meets national standards for occupational health and safety accreditation and helps ensure employees work within an effective, safe, health management system – one geared towards reducing incidence of accidents and injuries. Frequently used today as a pre-qualification and/or condition of contract by public and private project owners across Canada, the COR™ Program helps to ensure safety standards are upheld.
“The COR™ Program is all about safety,” comments Mr. Burkard. “When we started, things were a lot different. Some companies adopt COR™ because it is a requirement; we adopted COR™ because we wanted our employees to be safe at work. As you practice and embrace the safety programs, the amount of your safety incidences go way down, because it is constant repetition. The first thing our guys do in the morning is think about working safe; the last thing they do at the end of the day is see how they worked that day, and if it was safe.”
Even though the company has a large staff, and works with heavy equipment in challenging conditions, Titan doesn’t have injuries in the field, something the company credits to the COR™ Program, its two full-time construction safety officers (CSOs) and ongoing safety training.
“Safety is preached; it is monitored and it is disciplined. You adopt safety, or you don’t work here. In the beginning, we had some resistance, but it is now part of life. As the owner of the company, the last thing you want is anybody getting hurt, because ultimately it comes down to your responsibility.”
Operating with safety as a constant backdrop to everything they do has allowed the staff to develop Titan into one of the most successful, independent geosynthetic contractors in North America. At the company, its vision is simple: “Titan listens very carefully to our customers’ needs and, utilizing our experience and creativity, helps to provide for the needs and services in containment within our communities.” The company maintains highly-trained crews and some of the highest installation standards in the industry; all of its welding technicians are certified with the International Association of Geosynthetic Installers (IAGI).
Educating Customers About Products and Services
Often working as a sub trade for larger earth moving and general contracting companies, who in turn work for others in the mining, oil and gas sectors, Titan frequently deals with engineers and educates them about its products and services. In turn, these engineers work with larger customers and impart knowledge of the latest innovations in the field.
Primarily a supply and installation company, Titan does some fabrication and manufactures its own line of geogrids overseen by its Chief Technical Officer. In the area of bolted steel tanks, Titan proudly serves as the Canadian supplier and preferred installer for the Tank Connection Affiliate Group which is widely known as one of the finest designers and manufacturers of high-quality dry bulk and liquid storage systems worldwide. The US based Tank Connection Affiliate Group is acclaimed for the performance of its powder-coat Fusion FBE™ Coating System, applied through a state of the art system and the only powder coat line certified by Akzo Nobel – the world’s largest powder coat supplier – for bolted storage tanks.
Titan continues to earn repeat business from customers impressed by its experience and in-depth knowledge of environmentally friendly, reliable and cost-effective geomembrane and bolted steel tanks solutions. “We have a proven track record of a lot of quality construction with many engineering companies,” says Mr. Burkard, “and we get a lot of phone calls asking for our advice. We’re not engineers; we are not an engineering company, but we are practical with a lot of experience.”
Providing products across all of Canada, the United States and worldwide, Titan supplies and installs a range of geosynthetics and storage tanks to meet all customer needs. From geomembranes to geogrids, geosynthetic clay liners to erosion and sediment control, nonwoven and woven geotextiles, geotextile tubes, Canal³® Geocomposite Linings, Teranap Bituminous Geomembranes, Trisoplast Mineral Liners, drainage solutions, liquid and dry bulk storage tanks, potable water tanks, tank coating systems and more, Titan has you covered.
Excelling in product evaluations from international and US laboratories for all performance parameters, Titan is proud to be CE certified for its complete range of high tenacity Polyester (PET) geogrids, Coated Fiberglass geogrids (FG), integrally formed Polypropylene (PP), and High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) geogrids. This accreditation assures Titan’s ongoing compliance with globally recognized standards for quality management.
The company is equally proud of its highly loyal staff, resulting in very little turnaround. Titan has three different divisions: workers in the field; project managers, sales and marketing staff; and administration personnel and others. “Even though we’re not a family business, we operate that way,” comments Mr. Burkard. “We are always looking for people who are in it for the long haul, and we’ve been hiring since we started the business.”
Hiring trained liner installers is different from other professions. Unlike becoming an electrician, carpenter or plumber, there is no school for teaching liner installers, and it remains a skill that needs to be learned in the field. As a result, the company regularly hires highly-experienced professional geosynthetic installers.
With literally hundreds of years of installation experience, Titan’s trained crews usually install in excess of 4,000,000 square metres of geotextile, geomembranes, geocomposites and geogrids per year, helping the company to become one of the world’s most experienced geosynthetic installation businesses.
Its field personnel are certified through the Association of Geosynthetic Installers (IAGI) and use state of the art welding technologies to install a diverse range of geosynthetics. Titan adheres to strict quality control systems to offer customers peace of mind that not only are the products they are receiving of the best quality possible but the installation will be properly done and long lasting.
Titan has locations in Guelph, Ontario; St. Albert, Alberta; Pasadena, Newfoundland; Madran, New Brunswick; and Buffalo, New York. A facility in Regina, and other facilities in Edmonton and Mission, B.C. complement the company’s main operation at its six acre yard in Manitoba. “We did a lot of work here,” says Mr. Burkard of the site, which saw the company dig the pond, install the base material, use its own products to build the parking lot and oversee the construction of a massive, 8,000 square foot building.
The company maintains its commitment to the supply and installation of state of the art containment products and technologies, while maintaining respect for the environment and clients through sustainable and cost-effective solutions.
From working as a sub trade, building potable water storage tanks for the American military in Iraq; building a Frac Sand dry bulk tank transload facility in Estevan, Saskatchewan; capping mines to create a safer environment, and lining municipal landfills and lagoons across Canada, Titan Environmental Containment Ltd. does it all.