Josh Son - A look Inside GIS

After seven years of service at GIS, Josh Son, Vice President of Business Development and Project Services, is certainly the man to ask regarding this company’s future goals and targets. Josh joined the GIS team directly after his college degree in Sports Science. With his days of college football firmly behind him, he has dedicated his career to promoting the comprehensive services GIS has to offer amongst the Energy Sector community and beyond.

“Working at GIS was an easy transition to make especially having a strong team sports background. We are all one big family here. We look out for each other and together we continue to set high standards regarding our work, especially around safety and quality. It’s no cliché we are a team, a very big one, with more than eighteen hundred employees, but together we have one goal and that’s to offer services that far exceed our customers’ expectations.

Understanding The Industry

GIS has been working with major Oil and Gas corporations such as Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP for multiple decades. Understanding the level of standards that those customers require, means that we never get complacent and only by a combined effort can we ensure we keep our business healthy. We are proud to say that our customers continue to use us and hold our work in high regard. Our collaboration on projects over the years has ensured we have a strong partnership where we understand the needs of their business.”

New Markets

As the Vice President of Business Development, Josh is acutely aware of the importance of expanding into new markets to showcase the innovative and creative solutions the GIS family of companies can provide.

“Since the pandemic, organizations have experienced shifts in focus, including such topics as net-zero, ways to reduce carbons and lower emission rates, it’s yet another challenge for our industry. The Energy sector is changing and evolving, and our leadership team ensures we grow in alignment with future demands. Working at GIS, at this point in its seventy-year history, is a truly incredible experience and it’s very exciting to watch how the company’s future plan and vision unfolds.

Future-Proof

In my short time here, it is clear that to future-proof your business you have to be constantly growing and developing; our customers are doing the same. GIS makes sure they’re ahead of the game by introducing new service lines and embracing digital technology and software solutions to make processes slick, efficient and cost effective.

Flexible & Diverse

Right now, we are seeing the Energy industry transitioning from sole dependence on Oil and Gas into the Renewable sector with Wind farms and Solar power for example. Traditionally GIS provides services to Oil, Gas and Petrochemical facilities but already we are positioning ourselves as a first line of support to Renewable Energy projects too. We have already proven that our skills and mindset are flexible and diverse; construction, maintenance and modifications have the same principles no matter what you are working on and our customers, past, present and future, are aware of that.”

With more than twenty service lines, matured over several decades, GIS has afforded the reputation of being a ‘one-stop shop’ offering, for full or partial services to their clients. Understanding their clients’ needs and providing a range of solutions has meant that a ‘Cradle to Grave’ solution can offer customers added efficiencies and recognized cost savings.

Can-Do Attitude

“What does the GIS brand look like and what do we stand for? Right now, it's flexibility, it's adaptability, it's being able to work onshore inside a plant inside a facility, work one hundred miles offshore on a deep-water asset or even going up to the Northeast and working on a Wind project.

Showing our flexibility, I believe, is a huge selling point. When you have a customer who understands that GIS can operate in multiple regions, not just here in the Gulf of Mexico but across the world; the opportunities are endless.

Honesty & Collaboration

By the same token, you have to make sure that they understand the things you can't do. In my experience, customers will respect you a whole lot more if you can sit down with them and you can say, "Hey, we're very good at this; but maybe not as good at that. However, we can bring you a different solution here or we have industry partners we can collaborate with, to help there.” Clients will respect you more, at the end of the day, and they will lean on you as a general contractor to help build a team for that project."

GIS have never had a problem selling their services in the past but as markets change and develop, marketing and business development become an increasingly important focus for Josh and his team:

Organic Growth

“Growing organically with our current clients is one thing, but how do you grow outside that? How do you develop that new business? How do you get into those new arenas? That's where you need the business development, you need the marketing team, you need a team who seeks out new, potential clients, and offer them the same value that we consistently bring to our existing client base.

The Secret Sales Team

We at GIS have a very large number of secret sales weapons! We have more than 150 project managers that sit in-house with our customers on a daily basis. What better salespeople do you need than those guys and gals, right? They know everything that's going on, they know the projects, they know the problems they're experiencing, and first-hand, appreciate the importance of the solutions we need to come up with for our clients.

Our lengthy list of clients still ask for people by name, it’s true! When you have that kind of buy-in, it’s not just because of a strong leadership team and what their goals for the company are, it's our dedicated staff who are planning, scheduling, welding, fitting, and grinding, executing life-saving environmental work, climbing in and out of tanks, and physically interacting with the customer every day. That's where the rubber meets the road. That's where GIS sells. The Business Development team may create opportunities on one level, but it’s our staff, our incredibly special and highly-skilled team, who sells GIS at a whole different level and that is priceless.”