July 2018

98 99 T BAILEY, INC. five miles from the deep-water port of Anacortes, Washington. “We didn’t have a shop,” Rawls re- counts. “But, as time progressed, we realized we needed our own fabrication facility. So, we started our first shop in ’96; in ’97 we realized we had to be in painting also, so we had our own paint shop facility.We’ve always been driven by the need for innovation and the need to have a grasp on schedule and control our destiny.We’ve grown from there to where we are now with a variety of different fabrication capabilities.” Over the years, T Bailey has successfully com- pleted numerous, widespread projects through- out the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Hawaii on oil refineries, welded steel storage tanks for bulk fuel and water facilities, wind energy towers, large plate exhaust ducts, large diameter casings, pressure vessels and Co-Generation plants. The company’s primary clients are federal govern- ment contracting agencies, public works agencies, Departments of Transportation, private devel- opers, wind turbine manufacturers, refineries, fuel terminals, chemical plants, pulp and paper manufacturers, and drilling/boring contractors. The company’s Paint Division provides machine and hand blasting, prime and finish painting, and metalizing services. Russ Gibbs, Director of Business Development, believes that T Bailey’s diverse offerings give it a distinct advantage over its competitors. “A lot of the competition that we deal with are specific to certain areas – they may do construction, but they don’t do fabrication; we’re turnkey general contractors; we do fabrication and construction. We send site personnel to install our products, so that separates us out.” Rawls agrees: “I don’t think there’s anybody that covers the same depth of scope that T Bailey does,” he says. “We’ve got competitors that will do certain parts of it and then hire other contractors to support their op- erations. But one of the things that helps us is to be able to control the schedule and the quality of the work by doing a lot of it ourselves.” Rawls adds that the company is always looking for opportunities to grow and take on new chal- lenges, and one of those challenges, he admits, is finding enough trained people to perform the work the company contracts for. “Typically, we