Founded in 1956 in Calgary by Jim Park and Merle Derochie, Park Derochie began as a commercial painting company rooted in a strong work ethic, dedication to customer satisfaction, and the belief that loyalty fosters loyalty. Over the years, the company expanded its services to include Industrial Fireproofing, Mechanical Insulation, and Scaffolding & Containment. By cultivating a unique company culture that sets it apart from the competition, Park Derochie has grown into one of Canada’s leading industrial contractors.
“We have a reputation for delivering on every element of a project without sacrificing safety and/or quality, starting from the bidding process and examining how to execute the project safely, to ultimately meeting and exceeding those requirements,” says Roger Shantz, Business Development. “Basically, turning over a complete turnover package for the client.”
Boasting a wide range of expertise, the company’s four main services are coatings—which includes abrasive blasting, scaffolding, fireproofing, and insulation—with a number of complementary specialty services such as carbon fiber, fiberglass, and metalizing.
Empowering people
“Our mission statement is to provide best-in-class services,” says Shantz. “We go about doing that by investing in the people who work at Park Derochie. They’re given every opportunity to advance in their scope of choice, whether they’re a painter in the coating department or a scaffolder in the scaffold department, or a fireproofer or an insulator.”
Employees are offered courses and are even encouraged to pursue additional classes outside of Park Derochie, including evening courses at local colleges or universities.
“We’ve found it’s very beneficial,” says Shantz. “For example, a number of fireproofers have taken their AMPP Level 1,2,3, which is a coatings inspector course. That way, they learn a little bit more outside of just their fireproofings, which gives them more opportunity down the road if they decide to change trades, or just become more diverse.”
The best coating for the client
Park Derochie also leads the way as one of Canada’s premier industrial contractors in industrial services, he says. “We try to find or supply innovative solutions to our stakeholders in all those areas of business. We started out as a coatings company in 1956, and have expanded using the same mindset to become best in class for all services we provide. that’s where we have the most experience and that begins when a project first comes up.”
The process starts by first conversing with clients to gather essential details, followed by collaborating with a wide range of specialized coatings contractors rather than just one or two.
“We work with all paint manufacturers who offer specialized coatings for whatever the situation or project might be,” Shantz says. “There are different criteria involved in determining the best coating.”
It’s not just about cost, he adds—factors like ease of application and the company’s prior experience with a coating also play a role. These considerations help determine recoat windows, cure time, and temperature range. “We need to know different things such as the temperature of the substrate we’re going to be covering and coating, and what is the range,” he explains. “There would be a running temperature, but then also a high and a low we need to take into consideration.”
Each of these factors is carefully examined to give the company a broad perspective, which is then narrowed down to present the customer with a selection of coatings, highlighting the benefits of each so they can make informed and confident decisions.
Committed to health, safety and the environment
The same level of commitment extends to Park Derochie’s dedication to the health and safety of its workers, and to the protection of the environment in which we live and work. The company recognizes its employees are the foundation of both its organizational successes and strong safety culture, which is demonstrated by providing staff with the training necessary to keep the workplace safe and secure for everyone.
In an effort to promote continuous improvement in its health, safety, and environmental management systems, the company regularly consults with all levels of employees. Using the Plan-Do-Check-Act model, Park Derochie undertakes annual evaluations of its management systems and procedures to stay current with evolving best practices and regulatory requirements.
Operational health, safety, and environmental excellence are priorities for everyone at Park Derochie, as demonstrated by annual auditing and verification of the company’s management systems against the Certificate of Recognition (COR) standards within the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. ISO 14000: 2015 served as the framework for Park Derochie’s Environmental Management System (EMS). Its EMS is audited annually to support environmental due diligence in all areas of operation.
Other important initiatives include the introduction of an electronic platform, “eCompliance,” providing every worker with continual access to the company’s management systems from any smartphone or tablet. The use of this electronic platform provides workers with the health, safety, and environmental tools necessary for success, while providing the company with “at-a-glance” actionable information, trends, statistics, and real-time monitoring of accomplished health, safety, and environmental activities.
To provide its workers with a robust avenue for employee feedback and contribution to the management systems, Park Derochie implements an anonymous employee reporting program called “I-CARE Reporting,” designed to communicate worksite behaviours, hazard identifications, opportunities for improvement, and positive observations. This valuable information is critical in the company’s continual improvement and enhancement of initiatives made available to the workforce.
Building the workforce
As with all industries across the board, Park Derochie has faced ongoing challenges in finding skilled tradespeople. “We’re reaching out, and everybody’s in the same boat,” says Shantz. “For example, we have the large LNG Canada Project up in Kitimat, B.C. We have between 450 and 500 painters on site for that one project, and we’re being asked to add more. And while that is going on, we still have other large projects across the country in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and others in BC as well. There are large projects, and we can’t have our eyes just on one project.”
The challenge remains doing all jobs well without taking away from providing these best-in-class services, he adds. “We don’t want to take away from the quality or the safety that our clients are used to receiving from Park Derochie. So, trying to be consistent with that is a main focus for us.”
In an effort to keep its workforce robust, the company has been approaching various trade fairs as well as local high schools to share opportunities available for students following graduation.
“We want to show them there’s an alternative there, another option, and it’s basically to train on the job,” Shantz says. “It’s got a great starting wage, you’re into a benefits program and a retirement savings program right off the hop. If you jump into the scaffolding trade right out of high school, first you’ll learn hands-on, and there’s an apprenticeship, so you can climb the ladder pretty quickly.”
For all the trades, he adds, within three to four years, workers can be earning a very good wage with benefits, facts that many younger people simply aren’t aware of. “We’re trying to get that out there as an option not only for the younger folks, but for people who maybe want to change their vocation,” he says.
The company also partners with Women in Trades in an effort to bring in more women as well as Indigenous employees. “There are some good programs to jump on board to grow fast in a lifelong skill or lifelong trade,” says Shantz.
Park Derochie offers a wide variety of positions in locations across the country, he adds. “There are lots of options and incentives we’re providing and we’re finding that the core people we get are staying on long-term. They become the superintendents and project managers and estimating managers,” Shantz says. “It’s wide open—basically the sky’s the limit for somebody interested in the trades right now, across the board.”
Point of difference
One quality that truly sets Park Derochie apart in the market is those four areas of expertise—coatings, fireproofing, scaffolding, and insulation—and excelling at all four.
“We offer an industry-leading perspective into consultation prior to the project, integrating program execution and management of the whole project,” Shantz says. “We offer a complete CUI, which is a Corrosion Under Insulation program. And we can offer the whole program, all the way from removal of the insulation around the piping to blasting off the corrosion on the pipe existing and applying the thermal spray aluminum to the substrate.”
All of this requires scaffolding for the whole job as this pipe is typically up in the air, he adds, meaning Park Derochie needs to provide its own scaffolding as well. “We can take care of the whole project in that sense and put a program together, as well as consultation throughout and after the fact. We keep following up to make sure best practices are in effect that are going to help the end product last longer for the client or customer. We also do periodic spot inspections just to keep them up-to-date,” says Shantz.
“The original epoxy coating would last about seven years,” he shares. Now, with the CUI Program together with thermal spray aluminum or thermal spray metals that are applied, the company is finding them lasting from 30 to 40 years, quite an upgrade from the seven-year program, he adds.
“We’re always looking for innovative things. We have a lot of the coatings companies coming to us with their new products, because we’re one of the largest—if not the largest—coatings contractors in Canada. And they want to be able to share that, ‘Park Derochie uses our product.’ We’re a big name known across Canada, for sure.”
