Completing big projects makes for record year
“It’s very difficult to project what this year is going to look like.” Brook Brookshire
As an engineering and construction company that’s been serving Houston’s oil and gas industry for 53 years, S&B Engineers & Constructors tries to take a long-term approach that makes it no more likely to celebrate last year’s record revenue than it is to bemoan this year’s challenging financial environment.
“We completed a number of very large projects, and last year was a record year,” said S&B CEO
Brook Brookshire. “But these projects obviously often take multiple years to complete.”
By completing fractionation projects, which produce propane, butane and ethane, for Enterprise Products Partners and Lone Star NGL, the company, which employs about 7,000 people, boosted revenue last year by more than 70 percent to approximately $2.4 billion, pushing S&B to the No. 7 spot among Houston’s largest private companies by revenue.
Granted, the impact of the pandemic, specifically on pricing within the oil and gas markets, will make 2020 “very different for us,” Brookshire said. On one hand, S&B is slated to finish projects for Phillips 66 and Sunoco this year and will start another for Enterprise, whose business relationship with S&B dates to 1995, this summer.
That said, some of the company’s clients are delaying projects for as long as a year as they gauge the costs and benefits of making large-scale investments.
“Many people are reducing capital spending, so the availability of new projects has been reduced,” Brookshire said. “It’s very difficult to project what this year is going to look like.”
Additionally, the company has had to adjust from an operational standpoint. That means requiring face coverings for all workers on construction sites as well as within S&B’s home offices.
Still, Brookshire, who’s been with the company since 1983, downplayed the impact of the pandemic on the company’s longer-term prospects.
“I grew up in this business, and in our business, you manage for the downcycle,” Brookshire said. “The up-cycle is easy. We manage as if the downcycle begins tomorrow, every day.”