QCP specializes in offshore hookups, facilities maintenance, facilities upgrades, compressor installations, field welding, fabrication services and contract labor.

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Troy Collins and Nathan Granger worked for competing oil and gas production manufacturers for years until they met early this decade and discovered a common passion: raising thoroughbreds.

A business endeavor developed out of that mutual interest, and in 2001, the pair left their promising and successful careers and incorporated offshore contractor Quality Construction & Production (QCP) LLC.

The company has grown from 70 employees in 2002 to more than 800 today, working on production platforms along the Gulf Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.

QCP’s services include offshore hookups, facilities maintenance, facilities upgrades, compressor installations, field welding, fabrication services and contract labor.

The company handles primarily offshore maintenance, with projects averaging $4 million to $5 million. QCP has a fabrication yard in Lafayette and New Iberia, La., office in Houma, La., and dock facilities in Venice and Intracoastal City, La.

Although QCP has grown to 800 employees, Collins says, he and Granger maintain an open-door policy for customers and employees. “If our employees have issues, they don’t have to go through the bureaucratic realm,” Collins explains. “A lot of our employees enjoy that. On the customer side, if they have a problem, they are not talking to a manager. It is an owner, and being an owner, you have a different take on things. Rather than just losing our job, we could be losing our life.”

Production Capabilities
Last year, QCP acquired Production Management Industries (PMI) and added Quality Production Management (QPM) LLC to the Quality Cos. family.

The production side includes production operators and roustabouts, who operate production platforms on a day-to-day basis.

“PMI was the cream of the crop for production operations and [was] bought out in 1997 by Superior Energy Services,” Collins says. “Over the years, Superior has made numerous acquisitions, but its niche wasn’t the platform operation side of it. We found out they possibly wanted to move it, so we went to them and gave them a sales pitch.”

Collins adds QCP is one of few firms that offers construction and facilities management services under one roof.  

Labor Issues Loom
Like most sectors of the construction industry, QCP struggles to find qualified labor on a regular basis. Collins says the company strives to promote from within and offers a competitive benefits package to employees for recruiting and retention purposes. “The only way to retain is through benefits,” Collins adds.

To mitigate the labor shortage, QCP brings in foreign workers through its H2B Visa program. He says these employees go through the same rigorous screening process as local applicants, and now H2B Visa workers make up 25 percent of QCP’s work force in just the second year QCP has used the system. Collins says, “As hard as we try to recruit qualified American workers, we simply cannot find enough qualified American workers to meet the needs of our clients.

“We’ve done a pretty good initial screening of our Visa workers prior to having them come across,” he says. “A lot of the guys are family oriented and have family in the states, which works out great for us. I’ve been working with Hispanics for 12 years, and over the 12 years I’ve probably worked with 1,200 to 1,500 Hispanics. I’ve had five that have failed a drug screening. When you put that on paper and get that percentage, it is unbelievable.”

Hurricane Repairs
In the last two years, QCP has handled numerous repair projects as it performs maintenance work on offshore production platforms damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One of the most prominent projects of this nature was its work for Apache in 2006.

This $1.2 million job included fabrication and installation of a new offshore production equipment with a difficult schedule of online production in just nine months. QCP pulled off the work on time and within budget. “We just put our project managers and construction superintendents on top of it, and we had the right people at the right time doing their jobs,” Collins says.

The company also did work for W&T Offshore, who had one of its top producing production platforms take a dead-on hit from Hurricane Katrina. The owner estimated the platform was passed over by 50- to 60-foot waves. “We went out there and from the start it was an unsafe environment,” Collins says. “There were handrails missing, piping destroyed, and it looked like a bomb exploded.”

QCP had nine months to remove everything from the platform and install new equipment. The project cost about $5 million and QCP finished the work in June 2007. “We’ve done storm damage before, but in the history of the Gulf we’ve never had a storm come through like Katrina did,” Collins adds. “The devastation was unbelievable.”

He says scheduling was critical to the work because of all the coordination required. “We were out there 100 miles offshore with 30 people, and it was critical to keep 30 people working in an efficient manner,” he adds. “Keeping 30 people busy is tough; that is a lot of people on the platform.”