How has National EWP been growing over time?

National EWP was established in 2010 when I purchased the mineral exploration portion of the drilling company I had sold in 2007. It was a small division with approximately 30 employees, primarily focused on core and RC exploration. The company has grown significantly, now employing over 400 personnel, providing the full spectrum of exploration and well drilling services to the mining industry

We focus on the Western US and have operational facilities in Arizona and Nevada, with a staging yard in Utah. Our clients span both the exploration and production sides of mining. Among producers, we work with Rio Tinto, Nevada Gold Mines, BHP, South32, and Freeport-McMoRan to name a few. Over the past three years, junior activity has slowed, so we have mostly engaged with majors. However, we are seeing renewed activity from juniors given the greater focus on mining within the US, and we expect more demand for exploration drilling from the junior space moving forward.

Can you provide details on National EWP’s fleet and the company’s approach to meeting demand for its services?

We have a fleet of 25 underground and surface core rigs, four large rotary rigs, and eight RC exploration rigs. We continuously invest in maintaining and upgrading our equipment to ensure safety and efficiency. Our greatest bottleneck in meeting demand is finding and developing quality people. For example, this year, we decided to shut down three of our rigs because we could not operate at the high standards we aspire to with the team we had in place. 

There is currently a lack of skilled labor industry-wide, and this shortage is expected to worsen as the US seeks greater independence. The energy, construction, manufacturing and mining industries are all experiencing growth, further exacerbating the issue, and with a labor demand-supply imbalance, we expect labor costs to increase.

So rather than grow, we are focused on improving the quality of our current workforce through increased training while continuing to streamline processes and systems to improve efficiency. Given our significant engineering, machining, and fabricating capabilities, we are constantly improving our equipment and tooling to make it safer and more user friendly.

Is it more important to adopt new safety technologies or to increase the safety culture within a company?

Adopting safety technologies and increasing safety culture are both constant and critical. However, fostering a strong safety culture is most important, as you can have all the right machinery, tools, processes, and systems, but if your people do not have a mindset towards safety that is fully supported by leadership, the risks cannot be mitigated, as there are too many variables that you cannot control. We work diligently on building a safety culture in our company, helping our people to understand that our intent is not to inhibit or control them with safety measures, but to work with them to create a safe work environment for their benefit.  

A challenge to implementing a strong safety culture within a company can be employee turnover. Over the past two years, National EWP has been able to reduce our employee turnover by over 50% through a combination of creating a good working environment and, more importantly, proper compensation. We ensure our employees have industry-best compensation along with comprehensive benefits, which then forms the foundation of a committed workforce. We also invest in additional training beyond what MSHA requires to ensure our new employees are well prepared when they go into the field.

Do you have a final message for GBR’s audience?

My message to the industry would be to focus less on price and more on value. There is a relationship between price, safety, and quality. Mining companies should look at the overall value a contractor brings to their operations. We want to give our clients the best value we can, but value can appear to cost more upfront if you only look at price and not at actual downstream performance.  Clients are demanding higher safety standards, and I encourage them to keep raising the bar. 

Our ability to consistently provide prepared teams, impeccable execution and proven value is built on our core values: People and Results. We strive to lead the industry in performance for the benefit of our clients.