Pro-Vac is an infrastructure service company specialising in high-pressure excavation using water and vacuum technology, alongside an exhaustive list of ancillary service offerings for municipalities, contractors in infrastructure, and energy providers.
“We want to become a one-stop-shop for infrastructure construction projects and businesses,” explains Graham Gill, Pro-Vac’s CEO.
What really sets Pro-Vac apart is its diversity and service offerings.
“Our competition each specialises in an individual business line, where we have specialised in all of them, offering a multitool company that can perform various service offerings to the same customer without them having to source three or four different vendors,” Gill says. “Our team and what we have built here is far greater than what our competition has. In each of the business lines we offer, we are going to be a superior service compared to our competitor.”
An Invaluable Partner
Creating an offering as broad as Pro-Vac can provide while also offering the specialised knowledge it does is no mean feat, but it has made the company a valuable partner, particularly during the pandemic.
“During Covid, we had to redirect our focus and really enhance our partnerships with our customers,” Gill says. “Working in infrastructure meant that our work was vital, so we didn’t completely shut down, but there were two months of uncertainty on how we would generate revenue to keep our business going and employees fed. But as a group, we rallied around and partnered with the contractors and government entities to get people back into the workforce safely.”
This was important because Pro-Vac’s work does not just include roads and bridges, but sewers and stormwater systems, the kinds of infrastructure the people do not think about on a day-to-day basis – until they stop working.
“It was critical for us to get back out there,” Gill tells us. “Not only were we able to do that, but we exceeded our revenue targets for 2020 and 2021, during the height of lockdown. That is something we are all proud of.”
A Time for Growth
The work that Pro-Vac carried out during the pandemic has proven to be a strong foundation for an exciting period of growth for the company.
“Recently we have been growing and acquiring businesses, and we have built a process and procedures that allow us to do that with minimal impact to either our business or the businesses we acquire and integrate,” says Gill.
It is a change in direction for Pro-Vac, a company that has traditionally achieved its growth organically. In the last few years, that has shifted to a 60/40 split in favour of growth by acquisition. It is a different approach, that requires careful management of the culture of both businesses.
“We get better at this each time we do it,” Gill says. “One of the keys is to be as transparent as possible from the get-go. We lay out our overall vision for ourselves and the company we are acquiring with a clear plan moving forward. We integrate them into our system and processes.”
For this process to be successful, it is not only Pro-Van sharing its vision. The process is an exchange of knowledge between both parties.
“We go in and listen to these companies about the ways they operate day to day,” Gill tells us. “There are things we pick up that make us better as an organisation, but there are also areas we have extensive knowledge in that we can use to help these teams improve. There is always going to be some hesitancy to take on new ways of doing things, but communication and transparency from the outset means that when the deal closes there are no surprises.”
According to Gill, that consistency between what is presented to a company being acquired at the deal table and what happens when the ink dries makes all the difference.
“If you are acting in a way that is different to what you sold to the businesses you’re acquiring, that is where you can get into trouble,” Gill points out. “We pick teams that we feel will fit into our culture and growth strategy. We are smart in our strategy, acquiring businesses while being transparent and clear about what our goals are so that everyone is on the same page.”
It is an attitude that Pro-Vac brings to its people internally as well, with a longstanding policy of promoting talent from within the organisation. Gill himself is a great example of that policy.
“I started out as a labourer on equipment out in the field and worked my way up through various roles to become CEO,” he tells us. “I have been CEO for six years, but it took a solid eight or nine years to get here.”
As an organisation, Pro-Vac continues to invest back into its employees with further education, not just for universities, but also colleges and trade schools, to provide them with that path to growth.
“That is part of the culture we have here. When you start off as the lowest level field employee, you can go on to become a supervisor and have more opportunities beyond that,” Gill explains. “That is our growth strategy, and that is why I am so aggressive in pushing it. It is a huge recruiting tool when people come in and see the growth trajectory people have had.”
Looking at where that trajectory might take Pro-Vac, Gill believes the sky is the limit.
“We have had a clear path for the last couple of years to really expand, and the plan will be to further continue that growth through strategic acquisitions with organic growth on top of that,” he says. “Our growth plan will be aggressive and focused on continuing to expand into new areas of the US, while also expanding our business offerings to maintain our position as a complete package for our customer base. We will continue to focus on our team, building and improving every day.”
