ARTICLES Home Town Pride Cousins knows all about commitment Safety is Number One Greg Cousins Construction shifting towards more reclamation   Greg Cousins - Owner Home Town Pride Greg Cousins Construction has found big time success from a small town locale. By Carly Peters What’s in a name? Well, when it comes to Greg Cousins Construction Ltd., the name brings with it over 30 years of experience and success in Southeast Saskatchewan and Southwest Manitoba’s oilfield construction industry. Greg Cousins, company founder and owner, grew up in Carnduff and realized he didn’t need the big city to make a living. “When I was a teenager all I wanted to do was to get out of this do nothing town. But I soon real-ized that there was business to be had at home,” he states. So in 1977 he started a business primarily dealing with custom crop spraying. However, because the industry was so seasonal, he decided to look into options that provided work year round. By the 1980s, he began to move the company more towards the oilfield industry that was promi-nent in the area, and in 1985, he officially incorporated under his name. Since then, the company has grown a client base in both Saskatchewan and Manitoba, along with a loyal, long-term staff of about 90. Cousins states some staff have been with the company 10 plus years. ‘We have staff that started with us and they had no kids. Now, their kids are working with us,” he says. “We are very lucky to have a labour pool that has a great work ethic and to have these long term employees.” While the staff has grown, so have the opportunities in the market. In order to stay competitive in the industry, the company now provides everything from excavation and backhoe service, lease preparation and clean up, maintenance and facilities construction, pipeline construction, road bores, road building and grading, snow plowing, supplying and installing culverts, cattle guards, tank truck service, vegetation control and fabrication. “We really just expanded into the areas of opportunity that were lucrative for us,” he explains. Cousins says a current major area of opportunity is addressing the environmental impacts of the oil industry and putting a strong focus on reclamation of sites. “Soil remediation is a big area right now. Over the last 15 years the industry has become a lot more environmentally conscious and friendly” states Cousins. “We have to think about the long term impacts. Over the next 15 to 20 years environmental issues will continue to be up front.” Safety is also another main concern in today’s energy industry. The company ensures they pro-vide ongoing training for employees in the required safety courses such as First Aid, CPR, H2S Alive, TDG and WHMIS, as well as recently introducing the use of computer-based training by providing staff with the Petroleum Safety Training interactive CD-ROM that covers the IRP-16 requirements. Safety also means proper maintenance of equipment, something Greg Cousins Construction prides itself on. Because of his mechanical background, maintenance is a priority and under the care of his Assistant Manager, Albert Paradis, the company adheres to a rigorous maintenance schedule to ensure their employees and customers can count on reliable equipment. All these measures taken by the company have added to the success and accountability Greg Cousins Construction is known for. “We do a lot of repeat business. We even continue to work for some of the people we worked with in the ‘80s,” states Cousins. From long lasting machinery to tried and true relationships, Greg Cousins is proud to have his name on such a company. top   Greg & Paulette Cousins Owners Cousins knows all about commitment If you put your name right up there in the corporate signature, it sends a clear message to your clients. You are prepared to deliver the goods. That’s why Greg Cousins decided to use his name as the company moniker when Greg officially incorporated in 1985. “I slapped my name on there not because of ego, but because I wanted to tell people who would be dealing with us that I was prepared to stand behind my work,” Cousins told Pipeline during a mid-May visit to the head office and equipment compound of Greg Cousins Construction in Carnduff. The office sits on the outskirts of town, on Preston Avenue, tucked away behind a tree line. It was purchased in the spring of 1992 from ESSO. The compound, about 16 acres worth, is located three miles west of the town across the road from the Cousins home. Because the company has grown significantly in the past two decades, Cousins is also aware of another important feature that marks a successful enterprise. “It’s the people you have with you. If you don’t have good employees that represent you well, then you don’t have a good company,” Greg said, referring to the paid staff of about 35, four of whom have been with him for well over 10 years, and counting. Thirteen of the Cousins employees have over five years of service, so the experience is there to provide a solid core staff. At any given time in the Cousins yard, you may catch one of the two company graders or one of the four-track type excavators. The company also boasts of seven loader backhoes, eight tank trucks, one hydro-vac truck, eight bulldozers, six gravel trucks, and various other pieces of supporting equipment plus eighteen half-ton or one ton trucks. So when the call comes Cousins can react quickly and efficiently. He likes to see the equipment housed securely and maintained well. Cousins has a good capital replacement program. Because of the mechanical background and the care the employees give to the equipment, Cousins Construction is able to keep most pieces operating for at least seven years, as opposed to an industry average of four years for frequently used units. “We concentrate on maintenance. We keep mechanics on staff. We’re pretty good at extending the useful life of our equipment,” Greg said. Cousins added that the company can operate efficiently anywhere south of the Number 1 Highway to as far west as Weyburn. -Pieces of an article written by Norm Park for Pipeline top Safety is Number One Greg Cousins says the oilfield business has changed over the years. There is great emphasis on safety and minimizing environmental impacts. “The oil industry has become more environmentally conscious and safety conscious. Safety is the first and foremost. Part of it is that people are taking on that responsibility and part of it is legislated. You have to provide things for your people, you just can’t send them out into dangerous working environments anymore, “ Cousins said. “Safety is such a big thing now. We spent a lot of money on safety, but it is not money spent, it is money invested. Our rule is to have everyone go home at night to the security of their families,” said Cousins. In the southeast area farms are few and far between. There has been rural depopulation, so if someone got stranded in the rural area, it could be a dangerous situation. Cell phones are unreliable and often don’t work. “We have GPS tracking on all our licensed vehicles. All kinds of positive things have happened with this. Now with GPS, I know where all our vehicles are. So, if everyone has gone home, the vehicle is at their home. I can even see where my vehicles have been and how fast they were traveling,” he said. “With our company, the emphasis is on the people. We are so fortunate that there is the potential to make a living here,” said Cousins. -Taken from an interview by Sylvia MacBean top Greg Cousins Construction shifting towards more reclamation By Sylvia MacBean (photo courtesy of Sylvia MacBean) Greg Cousins made the move back to Carnduff in 1977 and opened his business in the area where he grew up. Greg Cousins Construction was started by a Carnduff man in 1977. Greg Cousins grew up in Carnduff and trained to be a mechanic. “I was in the city and it didn’t take me very long to figure out that if I could make a living in that small town where I grew up that I would like to go back there,” said Cousins. “In 1977, I started a business that was primarily to do with agricultural fertilizer and chemical application. It was a good business to be in, but it was so seasonal and I wanted something more year round,” he said. Cousins and his wife Paulette, operate the business together. “We are fortunate enough in this area that we have an industry called the oilfield. By the 1980’s I got more into the oilfield industry and less into agriculture,” Cousins said. Greg Cousins Construction Ltd. provides excavation and backhoe service, generator rentals, gravel hauling, hydrovac service, lease preparation and clean up, maintenance and facilities construction, pipeline construction, road bores, road building and grading, snow plowing, supply and install culverts, cattle guards, Tri-Guard fence systems, tank truck service, vegetation control, and welding and fabrication. “We do quite a few different things because in order to stay gainfully employed in southeastern Saskatchewan you do whatever it takes to make a living. In a small rural area like this, you have to be diversified,” Cousins said. “We have a lot of very good local people working for us. Long term people are a good thing. They become like family,” he said. “It is not called XYZ construction. I don’t mind having my name applied to it because if something goes good then my name is associated with it,” he said. “We do remediation. There are consultants that look at an oilfield site and they give us a program for reclaiming a site”, Cousins said. “The environment is important. We do work right from construction to reclamation. Our business shift is towards more reclamation, because when drilling rigs leave at the end of the day there is going to be a whole lifetime of reclamation out there,” he said. “You want it to look good. There are different places that are set up to do the reclamation work and to handle the material that is contaminated. It is a corporate responsibility, especially with the large oil companies. A public company wants to keep their house clean and that’s part of the picture,” said Cousins. top