Safety-training firm’s founder sees room for expansion with sale

Despite starting out small and growing into one of the largest providers of safety training and equipment for the oil and gas industry in the South, the Alford Group in Houma still felt the need to expand.

The company – Alford Services and Alford Safety Services – was acquired in October by the multinational safety-training firm Falck, based in Denmark.

“We needed the backing from a bigger company to grow to another level,” said Alford president and founder, Barry Alford. “We can expand our products and services in 16 other countries. We can ride in on their products.”

Alford will keep its training facilities in Houma, Lafayette and New Orleans. Terrebonne Parish native Barry Alford, 42, still owns 20 percent of the business and retains his title as president.

The company, which has around 300 employees, expects to take in $40 million in revenue for 2008.

The Alford Group started out in 1996 as Alford Inspection, managing projects for other companies and providing them specialized personnel, like offshore logistics clerks.

Doing a lot of its work offshore, Alford found a lack of safety-training providers. After a couple of years, the company began concentrating on providing safety-related personnel and equipment for the oil and gas industry. Its name was changed to Alford Services.

“We had started sending our folks to other training providers,” Alford said. “We saw the need for other training providers in the market.”

In 2000, the company started Alford Safety Services as a safety-training provider and to rent items such as two-way radios and fire extinguishers.

The company taught its first safety-training class in 2001. Today the company conducts classes in water survival, confined space training, firefighting and first aid for clients in the oil and gas industry.

Alford Safety later created a patented, computer-based, gas-monitoring system called HAZTEC, which is a safe-welding system enclosure for workers to perform hot-work duties in hazardous areas. The system allows work to continue when a hazardous situation arises by shutting down part of the work area.

Alford has since constructed several hundred hot-work enclosures for customers worldwide.

In 2007, the company began providing drug-screening services and acquired Houston Marine, which trains personnel for jobs in maritime industries.

“We’ve expanded at our own pace,” Alford said. The company has offices in Angola and Trinidad and Tobago.

The acquisition by Falck will boost the Houma economy, Alford said, because they will “bring their services to our area.”

He said, “We can still grow within Falck.”