Lee Bordelon Sr - A Look Inside GIS

Vice President of Fabrication is Lee Bordelon Sr, one of GIS’ long-serving employees with more than twenty-eight years of service. His knowledge of Fabrication may well be hard to beat as Lee gained his first-hand knowledge from decades working in the industry. His skills were developed by the multitude of unique challenges presented by energy construction and repair projects that have crossed his path, backing up his ‘can do’ attitude with outstanding professional abilities.

While Lee is based in Abbeville, Louisiana, he oversees all of GIS’ four fabrication locations. Our waterfront facilities in Abbeville and Lafitte are the perfect locations for large, heavy and more complicated projects requiring water access. Logistics are key to construction, repair and maintenance tasks, energy facilities are vast in size and, in turn, so are many of the components that require attention. When loads are too wide or heavy to be transported by road, water-ways are the natural alternative. In addition to our fabrication yards, Lee also oversees our Recycling centers:

Recycle And Reuse

“GIS have facilities across Louisiana and beyond but the locations I manage are just a few hours’ drive apart so I can regularly visit them. Here in Abbeville, we have one of our largest Fabrication yards, with its water-side access we cater for huge projects as we have the space, heavy-lift equipment and of course our experienced team of fabricators.

We also have a Fabrication facility in Galliano next to our corporate office, where we assign smaller-sized projects that are transported via highways. And I support two more yards in Laffite, near New Orleans, and Franklinton.

What I do think is unique to GIS, is that we have two Scrap yards, or Recycling centers, one here in Abbeville and one in Port Fourchon. At the Fourchon location we have the ability to lift heavier platforms allowing more flexibility and capacity for us, and more importantly, our clients.

The Fabrication and Scrap yards really do work hand in hand. Our leftover material and waste metal is all recycled. Whenever we can, we will recycle or reuse to benefit the environment.”

Building On Success

Fabrication has been the foundation of GIS’ success, a business started with one small yard in Grand Isle, Louisiana originally to build and repair boats. With their expansion into supporting Oil and Gas facilities, GIS later had locations across Louisiana and in Theodore, Alabama. Today, Lee and all of our fabrication crews support numerous industries in addition to the energy sector:

“We do get asked to help a wide range of clients. Our GIS yards have the real-estate, equipment and most importantly the skill to create or repair more or less anything! And if the client needs engineering assistance, GIS can take care of that too. This really is helpful as retaining projects in-house ensures there are no delays in communication or construction; it’s more economical in time and money.

We often receive requests to take care of projects ranging from plant machinery used for civic road construction or asked to blast and paint agricultural pumps used for irrigation. Our main source of work is, of course, energy industry related tasks such as offshore platforms, onshore refineries, and more recently renewable facilities.”

No Task Too Big Or Too Small

If you ask Lee and his team, what do they work with the most, ‘spool piping’ would be their first answer. Whether it be alloy, carbon steel, high- or low-pressure piping, spools with light or heavy walls, you name it, it can be handled with ease by any of the GIS yards as Lee explains:

“All of our fab’ yards fabricate spool piping. We fabricate it and we weld it. We actually have the welds x-rayed to make sure the welds are up to task. We also hydro-test and pressure-test them and once all of that's done, we blast and paint. We are literally a one-stop-shop for clients’ requiring spool work, again saving time, money and overall project effectiveness is increased.”

Efficiency Ensures Market Viability

And it is this efficiency that underpins everything that GIS are striving for across all of their services:

“It’s the key to success. The way we conducted business twenty-five years ago, you can’t operate that way anymore. Today, safety measures are priority and companies everywhere have to work efficiently to be competitive in today’s market.

GIS is achieving this by embracing technology to help us do our job better and faster, and it’s working. I really do believe that we are one of the most progressive organizations here in the industry.”

Organized To The Last Detail

With multiple projects in progress at any one time in each of the GIS locations, keeping account of the thousands of components, large or small, is a formidable task. GIS has harnessed the power of MODS Software solutions for their management of materials, a system allowing all involved, from supplier to customer, to track products and production:

“If we are given a job today that, let’s say, has more than one thousand components. You can imagine the ‘headache’ that becomes if we have parts missing, or if supplies are delayed.

Our MODS Material Manager software removes this anxiety as all necessary pieces to the task are barcoded and tracked pre- and during production. We can then confidently predict completion phases and report on productivity. Any issues are instantly flagged up and we can make alternative plans.

The item-tracking starts at the supplier’s location, and we can see exactly where everything is during the shipping, receiving, and production phases. All this at a click of a button – it’s taking project organization and proficiency to a whole new level.”

No Short Cuts To Experience

GIS may well be embracing digital transformation across their services however their ‘time-served’ in the business, built on lessons learned across their seventy-year history, is what Lee believes give GIS its credibility that clients’ trust:

“We still have many customers that a handshake still means something. Trust in our ability to do an excellent job, delivered on time, has stood GIS in good stead across the decades and it makes an enormous difference when doing business.”