Well, interestingly enough, I grew up in Bakersfield, California, grew up in a family that was predominantly in the oil industry, well and gas industry in Bakersfield, spent my first I guess eighteen years there before going off to
college. Well, I want to talk a little bit about energy, because you know, when it comes to the Shag group, your knee deep in it, and so much has happened even over the last ten twenty years when it comes to clean energy, energy in general, not only United States domestically, but around the world. But as I was taking a look at your fantastic and really cool resume, energy has been a big part of your life.
And you just mentioned about Bakersfield the oil industry. My dad used to work in that area with Ralph em Parson, so I know a little bit about that area and back in the seventies and the eighties when that was a really big deal. But tell me about all the different things before we get to show group, about what you did in this industry and just moving around
and learning about what you did over the years. Fantastic I spent gosh, coming up on forty years now in the energy industry in and around the energy industry, and I started my career in the independent power side of this. I started with the oil and gas companies and we started developing independent power plants to basically serve our needs both electrically as well as thermal energy kind of the
Cojing industry that grew up in the nineteen eighties. Started my career then and ended up developing power plants around the world for probably the next thirty years, and that grew into commodity trading as well as pipelines and basic energy infrastructure that
was necessary to kind of serve the global markets. All right, Well, let's talk about the Shaw Group and maybe just to educate our listeners that will be introduced for the first time with you as president CEO, and I think if I am doing my math correctly, you're coming up in a three year anniversary here pretty soon, if you're not already there yet. But as president CEO, what exactly is the Shaw Group? Well, the Shaw Group is
a pipe and module fabrication business. So our clients are construction companies, large engineering procurement construction companies that use our projects, use our materials that we fabricate for them in the construction of everything from renewable energy, petrochemical, chemical, straight oil and gas, water, wastewater, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, anything that uses pipe, Michael, So we fabricate. We fabricate that pipe
and turn it into a useful product. We buy raw pipe, we cut it, fit it well, did bend it, add the valves, add the other appropriate things, and make it to the specifications that our clients are looking for. Okay, now, speaking of your clients, I'd like to talk about that. We don't have to get in any specificity with a certain client, but what kind of clients are you working with in Before you answer that, I'm not understanding. You were domestically and overalls in the Middle East
too, and you can expound on that. But what kind of clients do you work with? So we work not only with end users. So could be a pmceutical company, a tech company. Couldn't be a food and beverage company, or major oil and gas company or chemical companies. We're building everything from renewable plastics plants right now through traditional oil and gas facilities across the spectrum, and our clientele predominantly are the engineering, procurement and construction firms globally.
But we do work with the end users as well, or we work with construction only contractors. I imagine when it comes to international that must be growing exponentially. It really is. And we see, you know, kind of the global energy transition that's happening across the world right now. There's been a huge underinvestment globally in our energy infrastructure for probably the last twenty years. And now you couple that need to rebuild the energy infrastructure with this energy transition to
bring more renewables and more clean energy available to the globe. That has created a tremendous amount of demand globally. Our offices in the Middle East, in Bahrain, in Abu Dhabi, and we're currently expanding into Saudi Arabia. Now there we're seeing not only traditional oil and gas type of projects, but we're
seeing a lot of green energy projects. We're seeing green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, We're seeing wind solar, We're seeing a lot of clean natural gas, a lot of other types of things that are rather relatively new to that region. You know, I want to go back to my dad again, when he was working with Ralph and Parsons back in the late seventies. He worked on Jetta, Yamboo and all those on the Red Sea there, and they
were building brand new cities. Of course, oil was big back there, but it always amazed me that the Saudi seemed to be upfront when it came to anything new and innovative. And I guess working with you, they continue to do that, don't they. I would absolutely say they are on the cutting edge. They're not afraid to invest in technology, they're not afraid to try new things. We're seeing that not only in Saudi Arabia. We're seting
with ADNOC in Abu Dhabi. The national old Company of Abu Dhabi is ADNOC, and they are investing in new technology, new green technology. So we're really seeing a lot of evolution in that region as well as the US and Europe. Michael, I get a chance to talk to a few people like you from time to time, and my curiosity always speaks about how we're doing in the US compared to the rest of the world, and sometimes they hear, well, you know, we're doing pretty good, and sometimes we're a
little bit behind in our thinking. But the technology is there, but how are we doing overall? When it comes to what you do and working with all your clients domestically and international. Where do we rank on the world stage as far as what you're doing. You know, there's a huge push here. We're seeing a tremendous amount of infrastructure growth. Here. The scale of opportunity is larger. In the Middle East, the investment size is larger.
As a market. However, I would say we are one hundred percent as active in the US. There's just as big a push the capital investment again in Saudi Abu Dhabi and leather Middle Eastern regions. These are large government backed entities as opposed to here, where you have more of privately held or public companies that are making the individual investment themselves. So therefore the scale of each individual investment may be smaller in the US, but in total they're about the
same. Michael, I always like to ask our president, CEOs and leaders about to success stories and also some challenges. We always use that adage that it is WINDI us at the top. And with that said, what kind of challenges is the industry presenting right now to you? You know, the biggest thing we have is there's been a big shift over the last probably ten to fifteen years where fewer and fewer people are going into the craft and domestically,
and as we look at that, that presents a challenge. We are a big employer of craft labor and very highly skilled craft labor. And if you're depending on which database you look at and which agency you know you read and listen to, here in the US alone, we're short somewhere between two
hundred and four hundred thousand welders currently, with that expected to grow. You know, they're just not enough people moving into the craft labor that can provide a tremendous earning potential for their family, provide a lot of stable and secure income, and we're just seeing not enough people moving into that. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned that because I read an article over this past year about how the trade school industry is going down, and this goes to
the numbers that you were presented there. I remember when I went to school back in the eighties for high school, trade schools were a really big deal. So I'm curious about how you're going to get through this issue. Does this mean hiring people internationally or you know, is it education about you know, telling people we do need these trade schools. What are we going to do about this, you know, I think that that is the question that
we face each day. We are taking hands, taking matters into our own hands. We're starting our own training programs. We have taken one up at our Walker, Louisiana facility and it was implemented by the employees themselves where people donated their time in the afternoon. Senior welders donated their time to help train new elders and take them through the process. And very proudly, we just graduated nine folks out of that program and all nine of them past their welding
certification on their first attempt. That's absolutely and it was really done. It really is and so that's a small piece of what we can achieve. But we've got to continue to grow that and we've got to work with the local trade schools. One of the things we're doing is we're going to offer a scholarship program to our current employees and their families and try to get folks into these technical schools and bring their technical competence up learn these trades so we can
perpetrate what we do into the future. And folks, there's a recurrent team. When we talk to presidents and CEOs it's about getting creative and that's what Michael and his team are doing right now. They get those welders trained up and ready to go. I did want to ask you about a success story,
and I'm sure you have many that are you're very fond of. Maybe there's one close to your heart, Michael, But over the last maybe two three years, is there a success story where you said, you know what the Shaw Group and we knocked that one out of the park, that was a real good one. Well, I think you know, the Shaw Group is a long standing ground started in an eighty seven, grew itself and really
morphed in early two thousands into a much larger company. My partners and I had the pleasure of buying the business back in two thousand and twenty and starting kind of over with the rebranding of the Shaw Group and starting over. So the growth that we've achieved in the last two and a half years against approaching three years in June, is that is our number one? You know.
I think pride and enjoy that we've accomplished so far as seeing the growth, we've grown multiples over our two thousand and twenty numbers, our two twenty one numbers, our two twenty two numbers and so on. Our forecast for two twenty three is well above everything we've done to date. What that's done and what we're very proud of is has provided a lot of security for our employees.
We employ now over eighteen hundred people. Within the next three months, we expect that to be closer to twenty two hundred people and with continued growth beyond that, and to provide that security for our families. A lot of the folks have worked here at our business for over thirty years. There's generationals.
There's fathers and sons and daughters and grandfathers and grandmothers and people that have worked in this organization and been here a long part of our group, and to give them a future is a big, big part of what we've accomplished. Very cool. Funnily enough, I have talked to so many president, CEOs and leaders that they started their title their company right before Covid, and
you did too when you bought back the company. So I am curious because I ask everybody this, was there any pivoting that you had to do and how how did it work out? Because we all had to change personally and professionally and where did it take the company to today Over the last three years.
A lot of sleepless nights about you know, we when we bought the company, we really didn't know what COVID was going to mean, how long it was going to affect the construction industry, and just candidly, for twenty twenty in the vast majority of twenty twenty one, there was very little major construction going on domestically and or internationally, to be candid with you, the
international markets came back a little sooner. They remobilized a lot of the projects in the international markets, which allowed us to kind of pick up in our Abu Dhabi, Bahrain shops. They were able to start picking up work a little sooner, and eventually we've seen now the US catch up and catch up, you know with a Feurer is coming hard and fast. In the US. We've had to learn how to do business a little differently as we have
more and more young people joining our business. Those of us that are i'll say a little more senior. I have spent time out here, and you know, we've done business one way for the last forty years. Young people joining the business that they have a different mentality, a different approach to things, and you know, bringing the best of both of those worlds together. And I think COVID I mean literally the little things like working from home and
that type of stuff was a real adaptation for some of us. And so we've found a happy medium in that. I've also talked to our leaders about this that the one that did vibe it, they actually came out better and smarter. Would you agree, I would absolutely say without question, we've adapted to our marketplace and we're getting better every day. All right, well said,
I did want to ask you about the future. And everybody's always warning about what's next, whether it's your phone, whether it's clean energy, whether it's anewables, anything out there. And I know as a leader you're always thinking about that and you're educating yourself with the smart engineers and the people that you work with on your team. With all that said, for the laming audience, including myself, what can we look forward to in the next five,
ten, twenty years when it comes to what you do? You know, it's interesting our business has been what I call a bricks and mortar business for many many years, has not lent itself to a lot of technology innovation. Shaw has always been for the last thirty years, has been a leader in welding technology growth and expansion into new things and finding ways to automate or better ways to do it. We are making a major investment in our company
this year to automate a lot of the processes that we do. And initially people think, oh, automation, you're going to replace jobs. No, just the opposite. We're going to automate more of the mundane processes that we do and provide let our welders do highly skilled work. Let them do and what that we anticipate this doing is creating a tremendous more demand for what is we do, the fabrication of pipe and modules and allowing our craft to get
more specialized and work on the very specific things that we cannot automate. So we're investing heavily in automation, not only within welding technology, but automation of behind the scenes, how do we estimate better, How do we use AI to do better jobs of estimating? How can we automate processes? How can we transform the way we do things? So we're really we're investing heavily both in intellectual capital as well as physical properties and automation within our facilities outstanding.
So the future is bread. I didn't want to ask you a little bit, Michael, about philanthropick and charity stuff. I know that you're very busy. I know your team's very busy. But when you get a chance to do anything charity wise, whether it's personally or with the Shaw Group, well what are you into? So I will tell you that the Shaw Group we have a tremendous presence in each one of the communities we work in, and I'm very proud to say our shops are heavily involved in those communities, and
that the employees themselves get heavily involved. They do fundraisers, and they support the local baseball teams, the fa you name it, and they get heavily involved in that. And we try at Shaw a match or participate in anything that the employee base comes up with. And then corporately, we do participate in a lot of different events. We tried as we are a major sponsor of a United Way golf tournament every year. We participate in a lot of
our customers events. Our customers are big, the big major world companies. A lot of those folks they sponsor large events each year, and we make sure that we have a major presence of those and support them throughout that out, Sandy Michaels, you wrap up our conversation. If there was one takeaway for our listeners that had just been introduced to the Shaw Group today as they hear this conversation, what would that takeaway be that you would want to leave
them with. You know, I heard a great statistic today from our head of estimating eighty three percent of the work we receive today is repeat customers, and that's a big deal to us. We want to serve our customers well. We want to continue to innovate, continue to work with our customers and give them what they want. So I think the major takeaway is we're trying
to change the way our industry has worked for years. We're trying to change the way our industry is perceived, and we're trying to be a great partner with our customers. Outstanding and well said Michael. If anybody wants any more information or maybe even look at a career or anything else and they want to
learn about the Shaw Group, how do they do that? Well, I think the number one way to do is you can make contact through our website, which is simply the SHAWGRP dot com, or please feel free to reach out to any of us that linked In's a great way to reach us. We have a lot of ads on LinkedIn, as well as other social media sites that I'm not familiar with, but I do know LinkedIn as one that we do a lot of advertising on, and I would encourage people if you
have any desire to come and work in a business like ours. We are hiring daily. I think we have something like three hundred and fifty job openings in the US today and growing, and in the Middle East we are growing our presence there by another couple of hundred. Michael, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time in our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on CEOs you should know and continued success. Appreciate it very much. Thank you,