Regina – Greg Singer, operations manager with Regina-based NLS Welding & Contracting manned one of the booths at the SIMSA Oil and Gas Supply Chain Forum on Oct. 3. They have a welding shop on the north end of Regina that does structural and mechanical work.
He listed several of the larger pipeline companies in Saskatchewan as clients. “Right now, we’re doing a lot of integrity work with one of our clients. We’re sleeving. The pipe’s allowed to run. We put a protective sleeve on it, from end to end. Our welders are specially qualified for that,” Singer said.
“We work out at K+S. We have a maintenance contract out there. We have some exotic welders, again, doing maintenance work.”
At peak they have about 25 workers, but during the winter slowdown, it drops to nine.
“We have mobile trucks, welding trucks. We have mobile cranes. We have journeyman welders, journeyman pipefitters. We have our own CWB (Canadian Welding Bureau) procedures. We’re CWB-certified, as a company,” Singer said.
NLS was bought out three years ago. The original owner was around from the late 1990s, he said.
“We actually have welders in our shop that are qualified to weld for Enbridge with Enbridge procedures. So, they spend two weeks every second year, getting qualified. So, when Enbridge calls for an emergency or work, and they don’t have welders, they call us, and we send them out.”
The work can be jumping a T in, replacing a piece, welding for a hot tap, as examples.
Business has been a challenge in recent years, Singer said. “We’ve had to diversify. It’s slower. We do a little more structural than we originally intended. We just did a bigger job for a client, about 98,000 pounds of steel this past winter. So, we got new procedures, got the flux core procedures, and just kept the guys busy instead of laying them off.”
That project went up to Fort McMurray, as a subcontract.
