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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Forging ahead with state-of-the-art inspection services Kakivik ensures that its customers’ assets remain safe, productive and environmentally sound Alan Bailey Petroleum Directory Contributing Writer
Spotting business opportunities and expanding your company in Alaska’s maturing oilfields takes some creative thinking, enthusiasm and a highly motivated work force. And that’s how Kakivik Asset Management LLC sees its successful approach to establishing and growing its inspection, testing and quality control services.
Founded just five years ago, Kakivik now employs more than 120 full-time staff.
“Our offices are located in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Valdez and on the North Slope,” Mark Hylen, president and CEO of Kakivik, told Petroleum News. “We’re currently looking at the establishment of a full-time office down on the Kenai.”
During the period of low oil prices in 1998 and 1999 some of us started looking for new ventures, Hylen said. With Alaska’s aging oil infrastructure, Hylen and his colleagues saw the business potential of corrosion inspection and established Kakivik as a partnership between Bristol Bay Native Corp. and engineering company CH2M Hill. The new partnership would focus on the corrosion inspection of pipe work and other oil facility components. Corrosion inspection Corrosion inspection continues to be a core Kakivik service. Using an arsenal of technologies, including x-ray cameras and automated radiation equipment, field inspectors gather data on laptop computers.
“The equipment we use can read internally as well as externally,” Hylen said. “They’re calibrating their instruments and then measuring and reporting data received from the examination of the pipe.”
Analysis of the data from the inspections provides insights into how to manage a corrosion control program — the purpose of the inspections is to help customers identify problems well before the corrosion threatens the integrity of a facility. Asset management In addition to its corrosion inspection operations, Kakivik now offers a complete range of services to manage the integrity and compliance of a customer’s assets.
“We’re providing not only inspection services ... but also providing the complementary services that help with those programs — CAD operators, chemical inhibition technicians, repair recommendations, layout, oversight and coordination,” Hylen said.
As well as providing these complementary technical services, the company now does many different types of inspection as part of its asset management activities. For example, inspectors check tanks for corrosion and make sure that cranes and other lifting devices are up to standard.
“In other areas we have electrical inspectors and civil inspectors,” Hylen said.
A major component of this inspection work involves the quality control of construction projects — Kakivik provides the customer with an independent and expert assessment of whether construction work is compliant with customer and regulatory requirements.
“We work with (contractors and engineers) to make sure that the specifications of the engineers are being met by the implementation contractors,” Hylen said. For example, we have certified welding inspectors to make sure that the welds are done to specification, he said. New technology With the aging oilfield infrastructure and the constant pressure on costs, Hylen sees new inspection and testing technologies as important factors in the economics of Alaska oil and gas production. Kakivik spends substantial amounts of money on research and development.
“You need to have a step change in technology that gathers more data points with less work,” Hylen said.
Kakivik employees attend and often present their research findings at industry conferences across the United States. The company relays what it has learned from these conferences back to its customers.
“We have technology review committees where we bring our clients and ourselves together and talk about new ideas and what we see occurring in the industry,” Hylen said. Kakivik also brings experts up to Alaska to test new types of equipment in the field.
In fact Hylen says that Kakivik performs an important role in trying out new equipment in Arctic conditions — vendors will sometimes come up to Alaska to demonstrate a new technology that’s never been used in the Arctic.
“They’ve never done it when it’s 30 below zero and the winds are blowing and it’s dark — and it doesn’t work,” Hylen said. Expansion outside Alaska Alongside its service expansion and technical innovations, Kakivik continues to grow its business and has started to find work outside Alaska. The company has already done some assignments in San Diego and Seattle.
“We’re looking for opportunities not only within the state but outside the state and have done quite a bit of work over in Japan this past year as well,” Hylen said.
The company is applying for 8(a) status to help in acquiring government work.
However, Kakivik has gone to considerable trouble to ensure that rapid expansion doesn’t compromise the quality of its services.
“We will not sacrifice quality — customer satisfaction is one of our primary objectives,” Hylen said.
In particular, the company makes sure that all of its internal systems — for example, its financial, project management, quality management and safety systems — can accommodate the increased scale of company activity and an increased geographical spread.
“We’ve spent extensive amounts of time and money in the past couple of years making sure that those systems are capable of that growth,” Hylen said. Safety and morale Kakivik also views safety as of paramount importance and the company feels proud of its exemplary safety record.
“Safety is a huge part in our industry as well as our company here,” Hylen said. “We have a large emphasis on safety.”
On the basis that a happy work force is a safe and motivated work force, Kakivik sees employee morale as the foundation of its safety program.
“We actually put 25 cents of every billable man hour into a morale account,” Hylen said.
The company uses this account to pay for social events, for example. The company also gives out company attire and recognition awards.
The company’s safety training program emphasizes basic safety awareness, encouraging a mindset that thinks about safety.
“A lot of our programs are behavior-based safety programs ... we want (our employees) to change their thinking about how they do certain things,” Hylen said. Training Employee training underpins both the safety and the quality of Kakivik’s services. The company runs its own internal training program and maintains a training account to fund the work-related training that its employees require.
“We have an in-house trainer that coordinates it on a year-round basis — that goes a long way with our work force, because they’re eager to learn more,” Hylen said.
The company also believes in encouraging individuals to obtain multiple certifications.
“Multi-certified inspectors are of more value to a client ... they’re more valuable as an inspector if they can go out and do more than one inspection when they’re out at a job site,” Hylen said.
Kakivik also offers scholarship programs and training opportunities to attract Alaska Native people into the inspection and testing industry. Hylen sees real potential for people to learn skills that lead to full-time jobs — skills that can be applied anywhere in the world. It’s a long-term opportunity for people, he said. Corporate values Three core values underlie all of Kakivik’s programs and services: integrity of internal systems and customer assets; innovation in technology and procedures; and quality of results.
These values all depend on an enthusiastic and motivated work force.
“Kakivik is a very optimistic company,” Hylen said. “For a company to grow and move forward and succeed, you’ve got to have that.”
Editor’s note: Alan Bailey owns Badger Productions in Anchorage, Alaska.
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