Bar Engineering finalist for Sask Chamber of Commerce award


CARRIE KELLY The Pipeline


A finalist in the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce Achievement in Business Excellence Awards, Bar Engineering has carefully planned its growth in stages that have kept it successful and vibrant.


Established in Lloydminster in 1981, Bar Engineering caters to heavy oil and gas producers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Municipalities and those in the residential home industry have come to rely on the company as well.


Bar Engineering opened a second location in Weyburn this year, starting off with one employee and quickly moving up to three. The Lloydminster office has 65 employees.


Weyburn was considered an attractive location because of its central location in Saskatchewan and its proximity to the Bakken shale gas play, explains Kent Smith, managing director of Bar Engineering. Bakken wells produce high-grade sweet, light crude.


Bar Engineering considered opening its second location in Calgary, but quickly dismissed the idea.


“We have lot of contacts out of Calgary with the oil and gas work that we do. But we feel that our business model is as a small company and based on providing more generalized engineering support,” Smith says.


The Weyburn location became a reality in February 2010. At the time it was being planned in 2009, the oil and gas industry was in the midst of a downturn, which might have been a deterrent.


But Smith and others at Bar Engineering believed an economic slowdown might


4 WESTERN CANADIAN PIPELINE | FALL 2010


allow them the freedom of time to focus on the new operation, as well as become established before others move in to cash in on activity in the area.


The company also had the previous experience of expanding when the economy was booming, and it served it well when the shift did occur.


Diversification was achieved in 2005 with the addition of a municipal engineering group. And in 2007, Bar Engineering purchased PFM Engineering Ltd. which launched the company into the industrial, commercial and residential sectors.


Just recently, Bar Engineering has diversified again by selling Hydrocyclone units, which conduct centrifugal separation of solids and gases from liquids.


Bar Engineering now markets and provides engineering services for Hydrocyclones.


“Our first one is scheduled for delivery in December. This is a prototype unit,” Smith says.


The continual diversification and opening of a second engineering office


is part of the reason the company is a finalist in the growth and expansion category of the Saskatchewan Chamber’s Business Excellence Awards. The winners were scheduled to be announced Oct. 30.


Other finalists in the energy sector include Shaun Gettis, president of Dwight’s Next Energy, for the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Dwight’s Next Energy in Watrous sells, installs and services geothermal ground source heat pumps, solar heating products and electricity generating wind turbines.


A finalist for the Environmental Award is Ground Effects Services, an environmental remediation manufacturing company in Regina. Ground Effects treats contaminated soil and groundwater.


Alliance Pipeline is an Achievement in Business Excellence Award finalist in the category of community involvement. The company makes $1.8 million available annually to fund Community Alliance, which builds parks, swimming pools and funds scholarships and food banks.


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