Fast Company Magazine's Top 25 Women Business Builders
#11 Julie Rodriguez
President and CEO
EPIC Divers and Marine, Harvey, Louisiana
Listening to the SeaJulie Rodriguez isn't a diver. She has never even suited up. Despite that, she has built Epic Divers and Marine, her Louisiana oil-field-services company, from the small outfit she took over from her father in I991 into a $24 million operation. What's she doing right? Listening and learning.
At first, Rodriguez knew nothing about repairing offshore pipelines and platforms, Epic's bread and butter. Working in her father's office, she took requests for new jobs and would call Epic's divers just to find out if the company was qualified to do the work. But she learned fast, listening to the company's accountants, picking up enough to take over the books herself.
Once in charge, Rodriguez started listening to her employees, using her divers as consultants to learn about where to expand and which new customers to pursue. Her listening skills proved vital in I994 when an Epic diver was struck and killed by a loose underwater pipeline. The fatality stunned Epic's CEO. "I felt rotten. I kept asking myself if it was worth it," she recalls. She also knew the accident would make it difficult to land new contracts.
Determined to recover, Rodriguez set out to reform Epic's culture around safety. She started by discussing each job with the divers in order to anticipate what tools and procedures they needed to stay safe. The result was an extensive new safety program that's still in place today, emphasizing constant communication so that employees can continually learn from one another. When an incident does happen on a job, Rodriguez uses the error to teach other divers. "It's important to share your mistakes with everybody," she says. "They go in our manual and become training tools." Today, Epic has the top safety rating with all of its clients, including such industry giants as ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil.
Those customers are now pushing Epic to expand into deepwater work. It's more lucrative, but will require hefty investments in equipment, training, and licenses. And it could put Epic in the crosshairs of industry leaders like $1.24 billion Stolt Offshore. But Rodriguez is sure that if she keeps listening to her employees, her customers, and her gut, Epic will meet the challenge. -Lucas Conley
