Brian Chastain is the President of Dynamix Engineering and Services Group, which supports businesses in the gas storage, utility services, and energy industries with project management solutions. Dynamix has been helping clients for over 45 years with site maintenance, replacement, and repurposing assets like wellheads and casing production tubing to remain compliant with industry standards. The company’s mission is to help others operate at their peak efficiency while minimizing their environmental impact.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How can a turnkey contractor help you avoid fines and grow your business?
- Gas storage companies’ most important needs for successful business operation
- Discovering possible emergencies on-site — and their impact on a business
- Taking a holistic approach to managing business assets
- The importance of routine preventive maintenance and site evaluations
- Tips for identifying your client’s pain points and delivering appropriate solutions to their problems
In this episode…
What can a turnkey contractor do to help your business grow? Starting and running your own business can be difficult, and dealing with government regulations can be daunting. Partnering with a contractor can help you avoid fines, lawsuits, and other legal issues and help you scale your business even further.
Brian Chastain speaks about protecting your business with expert turnkey consulting. He gives insight on how to identify on-site emergencies and how to prevent them from happening. His holistic view of managing your business will give you a deeper perspective of possible problems you might encounter and enable you to address them before they become bigger issues. Brian also discusses the need for audits and comprehensive paperwork to help keep your business up to date. We highly recommend that you take advantage of this rare opportunity to learn from an industry leader like Brian. Tune in and learn how to make sure your business is protected.
In this episode of the Project Dynamix Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz talks to Brian Chastain, President of Dynamix Engineering and Services Group, about growing businesses in the gas storage, utility services, and energy industry. He offers expert advice on protecting your company from fines and lawsuits. Brian also shares ways to discover your client’s problems and provide appropriate solutions, which apply to various industries. Listen to learn how you can tackle business problems holistically.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Brian Chastain on LinkedIn
- Dynamix Engineering and Services Group
- Dynamix ESG on LinkedIn
- Dynamix ESG email: info@dynamixesg.com
- Dynamix ESG contact form
- Dynamix ESG phone number: 724-716-4111
- Dr. Jeremy Weisz on LinkedIn
- Rise25
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Dynamix.
Dynamix is an engineering and services group on a mission to help companies achieve peak operational efficiencies with the smallest environmental footprint.
At Dynamix, we make sure the companies we work with do NOT make the news. Nobody wants their name in articles due to mishaps, but sadly, it happens all too often.
We have a team of experts that have been in the field for over 45 years. We take care of our clients and get them back up and running as quickly as possible by providing expert turnkey consulting services for their security needs.
Basically, if you are in the gas storage, utility services, or energy industry, we are your turnkey project management operation.
We fix, update, and repurpose assets like wellheads, casing, production tubing, site repair, and replacement. We bring clients above the industry standards and help them avoid regulatory penalties.
To learn more, email info@dynamixesg.com or give us a call at 724-716-4111.
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:04
This is the Project Dynamix Podcast hosted by Brian Chastain, where he features top leaders in the energy markets to talk about innovation and impact.
Brian Chastain 0:17
Hey Brian Chastain here, host of Dynamix Podcast where I feature top leaders in the energy markets to talk about innovation and impact. Today, I have Dr. Jeremy Weisz here of Rise25, who has done 1000s of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs. And we have flipped the script, he will be interviewing me today,
Jeremy Weisz 0:37
Brian, I’m excited. And you know, energy is always a hot topic, no matter where we are in the world. And we’re going to talk about some of the needs that energy companies have gas storage companies have. And before we dig into it, this episode is brought to you by Dynamix. At Dynamix they make sure companies they work with do not make the news, you know, because I remember Brian was telling me, You’re telling me this article of a company that got a $53 million, fine, no one wants to be in the news, they just want to operate, okay. And so basically, if you are in the gas storage, utility services or energy industry, they are a turnkey project management operation, they fix and update, repurpose assets like wellheads, casing production tubing, site Repair and Replace, and they bring clients to and above the industry standard. So Dynamix is an engineering and services group on a mission to help companies achieve peak operational efficiencies with the smallest environmental footprint. And they have a team of experts. They’ve been in the field, Brian, you and your team over 45 years. And so you can learn more, you can email them at info@dynamixesg.com. You can go to dynamixesg.com. To learn more, or give them a call 724-716-4111. Brian, thanks for having me.
Brian Chastain 2:04
Absolutely. Thank you for being here. today.
Jeremy Weisz 2:07
We’re gonna dig into what are some of the needs that gas storage companies have but but first just start off with? What does Dynamix do? I know I mentioned briefly, but But talk a little bit further about that.
Brian Chastain 2:18
So Dynamix is willing you did you mentioned and you kind of summed it up? Great. So we’re turnkey operation, we found that clients had plenty of companies that did pieces or parts of the project. And we try to facilitate the entire project. We are not just an engineering firm, we’re the construction side, the engineering side, the back office, and we offer single source building all the way to site on it. Right.
Jeremy Weisz 2:47
So let’s talk about what are some of the needs the gas storage companies have they come to you? What do
Brian Chastain 2:52
they need? Typically, you know, one of the biggest things that we’re finding is on site supervision. Everybody knows the conditions of the employment pool that we’ve had for the last couple of years, with everyone trying to recover from the pandemic, with people looking for jobs and trying to work remote, we’re having clients more and more often they’re coming to us, and they’re trying to find people that are willing to come to work and do the own side piece. As you can imagine, you can’t run a job site from your house, as nice as that might be. So that’s really one of the key things that we’re doing is part of the project management for our clients is really trying to we want to be the eyes, the ears and the boots on the ground all the way around.
Jeremy Weisz 3:40
Are there certain things, Brian, that when I say there’s some needs of these guests or companies that when you go out there, they don’t even realize that they need.
Brian Chastain 3:49
100% I can’t even I would have a hard time trying to remember all the different instances where we have shown shown up on location. And the presumed project was simple as ABC 123. And then we get there and we discovered that it’s actually going to take four or five days and preparatory work before we can even begin the job that we were originally called for. And that’s the it goes back to the adage you don’t know what you don’t know. And so we go out there and we start the very first step is to take pictures and to document what is there and then go back to our clients and try to explain to them the current standing of their project before we even begin
Jeremy Weisz 4:36
I think that’ll be good. Other episode Brian of what are the biggest issues you see when you get on site? Cuz I’m sure like you said it could be a laundry list but I want to start with there’s this one case where you get there. The client wanted a couple of plugs. So can you tell me a little about what they came to you for what what was their needs.
Brian Chastain 5:00
So originally we were called to potentially go plug some wells that they were considering abandoning. Turns out that we didn’t even end up plugging those wells. We ended up remediating one and then we skipped another one. That job itself turned into another job, we discovered two emergency wells that were after running the preliminary logs on him, we found out that not only did they need to be repaired, they had reached emergency standards. So they had deteriorated beyond 80%. And us sending one plug on a potential orphan well turned into an eight well project into emergency wells, right through the holiday season, when your How did
Jeremy Weisz 5:46
you discover it felt like, hey, we just want these couple things done. How did you end up discovering these other emergency wells?
Brian Chastain 5:54
Really, again, going back to our experience, the on site supervision that we hired, the engineers that we hired, the consultants, everybody that works for Dynamix, we we not only in, we not only turn them loose on a project, we encourage them to go out and look and make sure that when we leave, our clients are not going to have another problem. So we don’t just go out there and say, Alright, today, our job is to turn three valves and open this or shut that we treat every every job as if it will be the first and potentially the last, meaning, I don’t want them to have to call me back because we missed something. And we knew that it could have been fixed. So when we showed up on that one, and we started noticing little things, improper signage, improper access to a site all the time, it was all said and done, we had to trim back trees, we had to expand some sites, the actual working location, and then we brought in a subcontractor that ran logs for us, by the time the logs came back. And we discovered that the casing had deteriorated beyond 80%, then we were able to notify the client work with the local environmental agencies and the regulators that needed to be notified. And we got it repaired, and the client back up and running before peak draw season
Jeremy Weisz 7:17
thing. They called you for that couple set of bugs.
Brian Chastain 7:20
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Jeremy Weisz 7:22
That’d be similar, Brian, if like I took my car in, because I need more windshield wiper fluid. And they’re like, by the way, your brakes are shot, you know, the look at everything, because then it’s kind of like, oh, by the way, your brakes are shot, you need brakes, we can fix them or that I mean, you obviously suggest you fix those type of things. And, and just as a holistic approach,
Brian Chastain 7:44
it really is. I mean, it’s similar to the brake thing, it’s probably more similar to hey, there’s a hole in your engine that you don’t know about. I mean, because this is out of sight out of mind, a lot of times it I mean, it’s underground, people don’t think about it, they don’t see it, it’s not, you can’t touch it. And since you can’t touch it, since when their employees would do their jobs, and they would come out there and they would check pressures, everything looks great, everything looks fine. But until you put equipment down hole, and you start measuring these things, and actually doing the work and investigating each well or asset, you’re never going to know, in that case that there was even a problem, it would be more like, for instance, you had a slight hole in your brake line. Well, your brakes are working great until you run out of brake fluid. So for all we know, that client may have operated for another five years and never had a problem, or this could have been the last year before they ended up on, gentlemen.
Jeremy Weisz 8:44
I mean, do people call you for maintenance checks, because what you’re saying it’s like every company should call you just to look at it to see if there’s gonna be a problem is that really
Brian Chastain 8:53
the way they call us? We encourage them to call us. We encourage them we offer we will come out and do site evaluations for our clients. Even if we never do a single project. We have no problems coming out. We will check your documentation, we will check your records, when’s the last time that preventative maintenance was even done? And how thorough was it done? Is it properly documented? Sometimes the assets work great, everything is flawless. But in an audit standing there paperwork is a mess. So that’s another instance where we’re able to show up and say, Well, this is this is fantastic that your well is in good operational working order, except all of your notes were taken on the back of a napkin in 1973. So that’s another instance of us being able to come in, update everything, scan it in, and it’s actually another instance of what we’ve already had to go through
Jeremy Weisz 9:48
before. So for this company where you set a couple of plugins, what was the issue they were experiencing what what was making them deciding
Brian Chastain 9:57
inherited the problems so they they had to acquired assets from another company. They are older wells. And as with most of these storage wells, they’re old. And that was the problem. They didn’t know what they didn’t know, the field had been in operation, out of sight, out of mind, small area, nobody really paid attention to them. And so with the different regulations, VIMS, the regulations, everything that’s kicking in, and they’re like, hey, we need to start getting our equipment up to up to snuff, before we run out of time, and call us in like, let’s do a check, we’ll do a walk around. And that’s where it started. We have since gone on to do millions of dollars work for this company, and we’ve touched hundreds of their assets. So we going from, Hey, would you come out here and look at setting a plug or two for us, we may abandon these two wells, were the prime contractor for that client at this point. And they call us first. So when you say prime contractor, what other things do you do for them? Pretty much everything we write there’s SOPs, or standard operating procedures, scope of works, we do wellhead replacements, we’ve done top joint replacements, we’ve even painted the welds once they’re done, we put straw and seat down and reclaim and remediate. Once we are finished, we try to put everything back to the same condition or better than when we arrived. We replaced production tubing, we have audited files, we’ve ordered new materials. Literally everything that has fallen within that sector of that company has ran through us for a couple of years. Now,
Jeremy Weisz 11:39
I know you’ve mentioned the past when we’ve talked is that you people want you to sometimes facilitate their entire plant. I don’t know if that’s something that people initially think that you even do or not.
Brian Chastain 11:53
Yeah, you know that that ended up? That is an instance of us asking our clients, what are your pain points, other companies that I’ve worked for in the past, and a lot of the people that work for us now, companies tend to get hung up on trying to sell a widget and not asking the clients enough, what is their pain points? What’s keeping them up at night? What’s the solution that you’re missing right now? Well, a solution for this customer was it didn’t have any backup, they had no backup at all. And so they reached out to say, hey, if a life altering if there if there were a big event, right that hour, one or two people could not be available? Would you be able to help? Can you step in, we have a facility that they run straight. But we’re considering actually third parting all of our facilities. So where would that put you guys? So again, right time, right place, some might say I say that I We work very hard to develop a relationship with each client. We constantly communicate, we constantly ask them, How are we doing? What can we do more, not in a chance to upsell the client. But in a in a case where we want to make sure that they know that we’re available. And this became an a perfect instance, of us being at the right place and asking the right questions. And the client called us we didn’t even have no part of me thought that morning that I would pick up the phone, say, Hey, I think we would like to run your facility. They sought us out for it. How do companies typically find you? Funny? So we have been told they have literally just googled guest storage project management. Typically, it’s word of mouth. And of course, we have our website and we’re on social media, find us on LinkedIn, Google, dynamixesg.com. But really go viral work to date has come from word of mouth. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 13:51
Brian, thanks for sharing some of these stories. Through your journey. I appreciate you having me. And also I just want to point people to dynamixesg.com To learn more Dynamixesg.com, which is engineering and services group. Brian, other any other places online, we should point people or is that the best place? That is definitely the best place, there’s
Brian Chastain 14:17
a contact form on there. They can feel free to email us there. directly, they can go to our website. Again, we’re on LinkedIn, you can just search Dynamix ESG on LinkedIn, and you should be able to find them or you can search me and I link directly back to our website as well.
Jeremy Weisz 14:35
I can’t wait to listen to other episodes because you’ve seen some crazy things with your company and career so I’m gonna make sure to listen in.
Brian Chastain 14:43
Absolutely, thank you.
Outro 14:44
Thanks for listening to the Project Dynamix Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
