Apache Industrial is bringing new innovations to market while building a culture of excellence
As an industry-leading soft craft specialist, Apache Industrial (Apache) provides innovative and reliable solutions for today’s construction and maintenance challenges. With its history dating back to 1967, Apache has earned a strong reputation as a multi-service solution provider for industrial, commercial construction, and maintenance clients across North America.
When CEO Stephen Hillier last spoke with Construction Today, he talked about the company’s involvement with a chip plant project in Texas, as well as Apache’s plans to invest in its own facilities across the US. One year later, Stephen joins us again to share an update on the company’s progress in these areas.
“We’ve weathered 2024’s economic storm relatively well,” Stephen opens. “Throughout the year, we’ve adopted some interesting new strategies and diversified our offerings into new markets. We’ve moved more into completing mission-critical work such as microchips and data center applications, while still maintaining our core business within the oil and gas and petrochemical markets. Our work on the chip plant in Taylor, Texas, is progressing extremely well, and we’re now supporting this client with a series of smaller projects.
“When we spoke last year, we also discussed an expansion to our Corpus Christi facility to cope with increased demand and activity in the region. We’ve got several rolling gas lines there and one of our biggest clients in the offshore modernization sector is also in that area. We’ve upscaled the entire site, including the installation of new fabrication capabilities and an expansion of our blast yard. Since these upgrades, we’ve increased productivity and can complete more work for our clients, which has already led to lots of positive feedback.
“This year, we’re continuing to build what we call our base load business, which consists of maintenance, turnaround, and small cap projects,” he continues. “This is a very sustainable area for the company, and we want to concentrate on driving efficiency and delivering predictable, reliable outcomes for our clients.”
Enhancing efficiencies
Elaborating on Apache’s strategic structural changes, Stephen explains: “We’ve had another year of driving our strategy forward to build a new ecosystem across the entire company. This is driving a different approach to our client relationships, and we’ve recently secured a significant maintenance project where we replaced an 18-year and 26-year incumbent from the project. Our ability to transition to this project’s requirements, provide transparent communication, and understand the drivers for this client have been crucial to executing the project successfully. We always strive to build strong, long-lasting partnerships with our clients, and this relationship is off to a great start. We’re continuously identifying ways in which we can become a better partner and align with our clients’ overall objectives.
“When you look to build a new ecosystem within a business, there are two options: an operational approach or an IT approach. Our strategy focuses on the operational side, as we look for ways to execute our methodology on a digital platform. Our IT employees have also been excellent at developing hardware and software, and ensuring they are compatible with our existing platforms.
“We’ve also embedded scanning capabilities into our scaffolding inventory process,” he adds. “This enables us to work out the exact number of pieces of scaffolding required for each project. It works by scanning the building or area that requires scaffolding, and the system then calculates the scaffolding and erection components for the operator, leaving our professional craftspeople to efficiently execute the construction. They then know exactly where each piece should be, which drives savings of up to 30 percent in terms of both time and costs. The system also features a dashboard of real-time data for every project, allowing both the clients and our teams to access the status, schedule, and cost of a project at any time.”
One of Apache’s key priorities is creating high safety standards and a culture of excellence where people are encouraged and empowered to be innovative and strive for continuous improvement. “We use a program called ‘ALL-IN’ which aims to ensure each of our employees returns home safely at the end of the day, both physically and mentally,” Stephen states. “We’ve extended this concept across the business by creating an ‘ALL-IN Crafting Excellence’ program, which combines our vision, mission, and core values. Our values of accountability, integrity, growth mindset and persistence, guide everything we do and ensure our people are aligned with our expectations. We’ve recently achieved recognition for these efforts from our external peers and associations, which exemplifies our commitment to leading the way in safety and culture.” 
Positive company culture
Considering Apache’s expertise and approach to continuous improvement, the company will inevitably experience ongoing success in 2025 and beyond. “Thinking about the future is always challenging due to the dynamic nature of our industry,” Stephen shares. “However, we’re looking to focus on three areas over the next three-to-five years: growing our core business, establishing new technologies, and fostering a positive company culture. Firstly, we want to consistently deliver predictable outcomes and operational excellence for our clients. With the ability to deliver a high caliber execution methodology, we’re also continuing to diversify our offering by entering new markets outside of the commercial space, such as data centers.
“We’re always exploring new and innovative solutions, and within the last few years, we introduced a lightweight formwork product for which we hold patents. We’re getting great feedback on this solution, and I’d like to see this segment of the business triple its revenue over the next five years.”
Stephen concludes: “Lastly, I’m passionate about creating and maintaining a business where people genuinely want to work. This is essential to our long-term success, and we invest in our people through education and training, as well as ensuring our values remain at the core of our culture.”