Celebrating Harvey’s 25 Years of Building Energy Legacies

25 years ago, Morrison set out to expand its fabrication offerings to better serve its current
clients and to gain a more diverse portfolio. Its first step was tapping into a company out of the
Westbank, La to help with ongoing operations. But in just a matter of months, this new team’s
value provided the opportunity to open up a permanent Morrison facility in Harvey, La on the
Harvey Canal and Intercoastal Waterway.

Today, Morrison’s Harvey facility provides fabrication, coating and off-site repair and
maintenance services to the oil and gas, energy and agriculture sectors and beyond. While the
team at Harvey has continued to grow and adapt, there is a core group of four who have been
there since the very beginning. We sat down with these four – Derick Bourg, Christine Gispert,
Norris Cheramie and Troy Sevin – to get their insights into the driving factors behind the Morrison
Harvey facility’s success and to see what has drawn them to stay with the company all of these
years.

There seemed to be an overwhelmingly universal theme throughout each one of these
individuals’ answers as to what makes the Harvey team so special – family. “We were family-
oriented before joining Morrison, so when we moved, we brought it with us,” said Derick Bourg,
who started as a Yard Superintendent and is now the Operations Manager. “We’ve vacationed
together, spent many hours outside of work together and even raised our children together,” he
added.

When asked how the camaraderie is formed and extended to new members of the team, Norris
Cheramie, Crane Operator turned Purchasing Agent said, “We treat everybody with respect no
matter who they are or where they’re from.”

The team highly values hands-on skills training in order to foster local talent and build internal
relationships. “It establishes a workplace that people want to come to,” said Bourg. “The door is
always open,” added Christine Gispert, current HR Manager who got her start as the receptionist.
“It’s a different environment than a lot of other workplaces.”

While the team at Harvey says their people are the foundation of their success, they also attribute
much of it to the solid client relationships they have nurtured and the high-quality products they
continue to produce.

Over the past 25 years in business, the team has had the pleasure of working with a variety of
clients on diverse projects, one of the biggest being a large-scale project for BP in Trinidad. This
led to the opportunity of sending a team from the U.S. to train skills like welding and crane
operating hand-in-hand with local Trinidad talent. “It was a very interesting and rewarding
experience,” reminisced Cheramie.

Over their time in business, the team has learned to adapt to industry trends and to natural
events like Hurricane Katrina, which opened the door for new opportunities.

They’ve completed projects all over the world since 1997 – to Pennsylvania for bridge
construction; over to the West Coast and up North for pipeline facilities; to North Dakota for a
natural gas tank farm; to Mexico for subsea infrastructure fabrication; to Trinidad & Tobago to
support full field installations.

Looking ahead, the team at Harvey is excited to grow its services in the wind and renewables
industry. “We have the experience and knowledge from working in oil and gas to bring it into
wind,” said Bourg. “There is some adapting and adjusting, but we have the knowledge and the
will to go do that.” Cheramie added, “We’re not scared to build anything. Just give us the
drawings! We’re very open-minded.”

When asked about their approach to transition into the wind and renewables sector, it all goes
back to the collaborative aspect upon which they were founded – not just at Harvey but with the
corporate headquarters team and with its subsidiaries in Mexico and Trinidad & Tobago. “We
have great support from our home base in Houma,” said Bourg. “We always pursue projects as a
team.”