Oilfieldlodging.com schedules workforce housing standards meeting

Paul Wiseman

Published 7:09 am, Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Citing a need to "create a high standard of living for temporary and permanent field workers," Oilfieldlodging.com founder and CEO Rod Williams plans to establish a set of standards for that sector. To that end, he has set a preliminary meeting for May 8 in San Antonio, to include housing manufacturers, food service providers and others in the sector.

As a concierge service for workforce housing -- a company that places workers, often in large groups, in third-party housing facilities -- Oilfieldlodging.com comes into contact with a variety of facilities of widely varying levels of service and quality of facilities. While Williams stressed that his company only uses facilities of the highest levels, he noted that it would be easier to determine a facility's quality, especially ongoing, if there were sector-wide standards and an oversight group to verify them. The May 8 meeting's purpose is to discuss ways to set and oversee such standards.

Because the company places workers in Texas, Mississippi, Montana, Wyoming and other locations around the country, Williams sees the need for a nationwide housing standard. Over that wide area, he sees a wide variety of living conditions.

Williams said he gets phone calls almost daily from people looking to make money by renting out lodging to the oil patch. In some cases, "They're putting out FEMA trailers or boxcars or whatever -- and there are no standards." On the other hand, many oilfield companies, especially the larger ones, have health, safety and environmental requirements for anyone who wants to house their workers.

With no "template to work from," in Williams' words, a representative from the oil company must personally inspect each facility, at least before the first use, to see if it meets those standards. Williams' company does these inspections themselves for units they rent under their concierge service.

The quality of the housing is not the only thing that varies. Each oilfield company also has its own separate standards, meaning Oilfieldlodging.com must match each user and provider individually. A uniform code would establish standards for both provider and client.

To build a template, Oilfieldlodging.com is collecting information from client and supplier. "I'm taking to peers from the manufacturing side, from the catering side, from the oilfield companies, from the drillers -- everybody coming together, and we're going to draw up standards," Williams explained.

The May 8 meeting is the first of several planned, with a goal of having a preliminary set of standards put together by the fall of 2013. He hopes to begin implementing those standards soon afterward under the oversight of a board. The goal is larger than just the U.S., however. "I'm sure it'll start in the United States, but we'd like to implement that for our companies that we deal with worldwide," Williams said.

The incentive for providers would be monetary. "If they want to rent to a Marathon, or a Halliburton or a Schlumberger or whoever, they know that they're going to need to meet the standards or they're not going to rent to these companies," Williams noted.

One vendor who is excited about the idea is Cardinal Camp Services. Chuck Glass is sales manager for the Alvin, Texas-based company's Remote Workforce Housing Division. Cardinal Camp Services provides catering and other food-related services to oil companies and workforce lodging companies.

"If you look at the oil and gas industry, the varying products as far as housing is concerned, go from FEMA trailers to real nice workforce facilities," he said, echoing Williams' evaluation. Food service also varies from top quality providers like Cardinal to, as Glass described it, "two guys serving chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy out of the back of a Suburban," a situation he has actually heard about.

Having worked with Oilfieldlodging.com in the past and considering themselves to be a top-tier company in quality of service, Cardinal was pleased to see Williams pushing for standards in housing, catering and the whole gamut of remote living services. They have already discussed the idea between themselves.

"He (Rod Williams) just came down to Houston and our CEO (Mike Robinson) and myself met with him for many hours and we talked about it. Their philosophy actually aligns itself with our business philosophy," Glass said.

By setting overall standards for food, housing and other amenities, Glass said, "You're able to afford all of the things that the oil and gas companies want. They want the amenities, they want comfortable beds, they want top quality food; thus your morale's higher, thus your turnover is lower."

It is not just the majors who are insisting on better quality of accommodations, and this comes back to competitive issues. Glass said that when employees of company A talk to company B, they discuss the provisions each company makes for housing. When company A is offering better facilities and food than company B, it becomes a recruiting tool for the former. So company B must raise their standards to keep from losing employees.

Williams and Glass both stressed that the bottom line for them is the safety and comfort of the oilfield worker. Both have seen workers forced to live in substandard housing with the aforementioned food served out of the back of an SUV, and want to set standards that would help employers know when they are providing quality accommodations to their workers.

The meeting will occur at the Westin La Canterra in San Antonio. The press release states, "Participation is voluntary and is open to all interested and qualified industry professionals."

Paul Wiseman can be reached at fittoprint@sbcglobal.net.

On the web: Contact info@workforcehousingstandardscouncil.org to learn about conference availability.