Taking Industry to New Heights

Industrial Scaffold Services
Written by Jessica Ferlaino

Since 2003, Industrial Scaffold Services has been providing safe, reliable and high-quality customer-oriented scaffold services. Serving industrial clients across industries in Western Canada, Industrial Scaffold Services is a name to be trusted with a reputation for quality and safety that precedes it.
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Industrial Scaffold is a twenty-four-hour, full-service scaffolding company that provides material rentals and equipment purchasing as well as qualified erectors and field supervisory personnel who will keep sites safe, efficient and productive. Industrial Scaffold is committed to cost-effective, value-driven productivity that promotes safety, quality and excellence in customer service.

“It started out as a company called Island Scaffold,” explained Brian Parton, vice president of Industrial Scaffold Services. “At the time, we were mainly doing work on Vancouver Island, a couple of pulp mills and one of the shipyards down in Victoria. In 2006, the pulp mill market started drying up a bit, so we started to chase work off the island.” The company expanded into the oil and gas industry and grew steadily in the process.

“In 2009, we made a name change to Industrial Scaffold, opened up an office in Fort St. John, and it just kind of grew from there. There was no magic to it, just a matter of getting off the island and chasing some work. We have always been an aggressive company that offered a good service with a good price. We’re all about rolling up our sleeves, working hard and safe.”

Operating out of nine locations in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, Industrial Scaffold serves customers with highly responsive round-the-clock support. No matter how remote or challenging the site is, in the case of emergency, Industrial Scaffold will get the job done, safely and to specification. The bulk of its projects are in B.C., but the company has been expanding outside of the province.

“Any emergencies, we tell our clients that we can have men and materials on site within a two-hour notice,” noted Parton. He acknowledged the logistical nightmare this can cause, but he and his team always find a way to make it happen.

Industrial Scaffold is an owner-managed company with a strong emphasis on customer service and delivering results. The company has the skills of the industry’s best professionals who use the safest procedures and equipment of the highest standard.

Industrial Scaffold Solutions serves the pulp and paper, oil and gas, shipyards, hydroelectric and mining industries. It offers various worker access and load support systems, rentals, environmental containment services and much more.

“Since we broke into oil and gas, we’ve been asked what kind of bolt-on services can go hand in hand with scaffolding,” said Parton. By adding complementary services, Industrial Scaffold is finding new ways to bring more its customers while reducing associated costs.

New in 2016, are high-angle and confined space rescue and confined space entry watch. These services further bolster Industrial Scaffold’s commitment to safety, efficiency and cost-effective project completion. The company brings extensive field, technical and administrative experience, which provides customers with peace of mind as well as quality work.

“A lot of times, scaffold companies will build scaffold, and they will contract out the environmental containment. We trained a bunch of guys up, so we offer that in-house. Same with the high-angle watch. A lot of the shutdowns that we do, we do in a confined space. Now we’ve just trained scaffolders, so they’re actually watching the space while managing and handling the scaffolding,” stated Parton.

The work culture at Industrial Scaffold serves it well. As Parton said, “We’re just a bunch of good ol’ boys who like to work hard, have a bit of fun and work safe at the same time. It’s just the culture and that guys that we’ve got working for us that’s made us really successfully, just because of their work ethic.”

Industrial Scaffold is in constant pursuit of the newest, safest and most innovative ways to complete projects. This never-ending quest for improvement enables Industrial Scaffold to draw on the best available industry knowledge, expertise and experience while understanding issues that are specific to a particular site, industry or customer.

“Most of the components that scaffold companies use are all generic. We’ve got a manufacturing company that custom makes a lot of components for us. We’ll come up with specialty designs if it’s a cost savings to the customer and it’s a faster way of doing something,” described Parton. The company will go to great lengths for its customers, and all components are engineered and CSA approved.

Industrial Scaffold Services provides its customers with expert, reliable and cost-effective solutions, engineering, erection/dismantling services. It ensures that training, quality and safety standards are of the highest calibre and that employees’ performance and integrity remain something of which to be proud.

Training and safety go hand in hand to satisfy project goals. It is important that field personnel are qualified and understand the industrial facilities, the equipment and the industry requirements.

The company’s in-house scaffold training is internationally recognized and is conducted by an internationally certified scaffold instructor. Industrial Scaffold Services is has a Certificate of Recognition (COR) from the Canadian Federation of Construction Safety Associations and exceeds industry standards and best practices for safety.

It was recognized for its commitment to safety in 2015. Industrial Scaffold was awarded a Safety Leadership Award from Suncor as a testament to its work on the CIMS Fort Hills Alberta project and its exceptional safety record on the project.

“That’s a compliment to our union hall,” said Parton. The training is administered by the union, and the company is deeply appreciative of the talent pool from which it draws. “You don’t succeed in the scaffold industry if you don’t take safety seriously.”

In addition to serving its clients, Industrial Scaffold Solutions also serves its community. Through programs such as Adopt a Family, a Christmas outreach tradition that is ten years in the running, and charitable efforts in aid of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Cowichan SPCA and other organizations, Industrial Scaffold’s success is reaching far outside the company.

The company recently made a commitment to training eligible First Nations participants from areas covered by Treaty 8. Much of the employable labour force in Fort St. John lacked the necessary training, and Industrial Scaffold took a leading role in securing the future of the company through workforce development efforts.

Industrial Scaffold, in partnership with North East Native Advancing Society (NENAS) and the British Columbia Regional Council of Carpenters (BCRCC), created a mobile training program that went into the community to provide introductory training for scaffolding. The course is typically only available in the Lower Mainland and not readily accessible by people from remote northern communities. The Peace Region is a growth area for Industrial Scaffold and its union, and by providing these training opportunities, the company is building a trained local workforce from which it can draw.

Through hard work, a commitment to quality, safety and cost-effective solutions Industrial Scaffold has established itself firmly as an industry and a community leader. “We were a company in 2003 that was lucky to have twenty employees, and since we’ve grown, we’ve got some good people, and we care about the service that we are offering,” Parton proudly shared.

As a result of its increasingly diverse services, its commitment to safety, quality and reliability, Industrial Scaffold Services is firmly rooted as an established and reputable name in multiple industries and is ready for additional growth as demand increases. “Our short-term goal is just to keep on growing, getting bigger and better,” Parton concluded.

Industrial Scaffold Services has been identifying ways in which it can diversify and grow, with one potential new service being insulating. The goal is to sustain its increasing market share, and if its past success is any indication of its future potential, Industrial Scaffold Services is on a straight path to continue growth and success throughout the multiple industries it serves.

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