The Southern States Millwright Regional Council offers a win-win solution for contractors and facility owners who need a large, temporary workforce of highly skilled millwrights for shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages.
“We have a ready, available labor force that’s 5,700-plus strong,” said Wayne Jennings, executive secretary treasurer of the SSMRC. “If you need additional millwrights for a huge shutdown, call us and we can provide the skilled professionals you need. It’s a very flexible business model where you don’t have to keep a ton of people employed to leverage a workforce that’s ready to go when you need it.”
When the shutdown, turnaround, or outage is complete, the SSMRC will send the workers on to another job.
“The SSMRC allows for a large pool of excellent craft resources to be portable and adaptable to emergent and forced projects,” said Marc Campo, general manager of nuclear services for Atlantic Plant Maintenance. “This drives great responsiveness to our customers and ensures the success of those critical projects.”
The SSMRC delivers the advantages not only of a temporary workforce, but of a workforce with the highest levels of training and experience. SSMRC millwrights have all the necessary OSHA training and have taken courses in optical alignment, machinery-leveling, and more.
We also hand pick millwrights who are best suited for each project. The structure of SSMRC allows collaboration across the council’s 11-state jurisdiction so the SSMRC can staff jobsites with millwrights who possess the requested skills. “We dispatch by skill set, not by where are members live,” Jennings said. The SSMRC can even call on 48,000 millwrights nationwide.
Their training and background give these millwrights the ability to quickly complete work the right way the first time, reducing shutdown/outage duration.
In addition to receiving skills training, SSMRC millwrights are taught about project profitability and how they fit into the puzzle. For instance, on some jobsites, if millwrights are 10% more productive, that can lead to 100% more profit for the customer. “Our value is simply getting product to market fastest and keeping it there the longest, whether the product is automobiles, electricity, or gasoline,” Jennings said. “We consistently get products to market faster and keep them there longer because of the quality of our work performance. That’s our value. That’s why customers call us back.”