
With a focus on the creation of innovative technology and forward-thinking practical solutions, REV offers flexible, durable, reliable and responsible electrical designs, products and services for oil and gas, mining, commercial and utility industries.
CEO Shawn Oldenburger is one of REV’s founding Principals. With over 25 years of experience in the electrical sector, Mr Oldenburger gained a vast amount of knowledge through multiple roles. Starting his career off as a Field Service Technician, he worked his way towards a Project Manager role and later became a Vice President of Field Services. Now as Principal and CEO, he leads the growth strategy and corporate focus of REV with clients in North America as trusted partners. With the approach of understanding clients’ requirements with their extensive expertise and developing solutions that meet those needs in a cost effective, safe, and reliable manner that is consistent with REV’s reputation for quality. Mr Oldenburger spoke with us recently about the four divisions of the company, REV’s recent expansion into the United States, and the move into emerging markets that looks to define its future.
Turnkey projects
“REV was started in 2008,” Mr Oldenburger says, “primarily as a field service testing company. There were four owners in the company, and we had about 20 staff. We primarily maintained high voltage electrical systems, anywhere you’d find high voltage we did the maintenance, commissioning, servicing of the products.”
In 2010, the company transitioned to a manufacturing company for low and medium voltage switchgear, skid mounted substations, switch houses, and equipment modernization for existing and emerging clients.
“Today now we’re at about 160 staff in Canada and our Texas office. We’ve really grown over the last year or so. We’ve added on two facilities in Calgary for our fabrication and assembly, and we have new operations in our Arlington, Texas area too.”
REV integrates engineering services, in-house fabrication, and complete field support under the roof of its facility, providing turnkey projects to clients within the four divisions of the company – design, engineering, manufacturing, and field services.
“We have a full design department that supports the electrical and mechanical design of our products. We have a full engineering team that provides power and coordination studies to support our products. In our manufacturing division we fabricate, assemble and deliver the product direct to our clients. Also, with our field services division that’s been with us since the beginning, it allows us to go out and commission the equipment and provide maintenance programs for our client on the product that we supply to them.”
When REV started, the primary industries we worked in were mining, utilities, industrial and commercial. Over the years we provided them with electrical maintenance testing, switch gears retrofit, upgrades, and of course new switchgear.
“Now, with where we’ve transitioned down into the United States, we’re merging with new projects, new clients, such as high-throughput computing facilities, renewables, and we have all the products and services to support those clients in traditional and emerging markets that we’re playing in now.”
With a long history of manufacturing high and medium voltage equipment – serving the Canadian oil sands and the mining industries – REV has built a solid reputation for delivering products to withstand harsh conditions.
“We’re known as the leader in most of the industries we support,” Mr Oldenburger explains, “because our customers know they get a quality product out of us. We’ve taken these years of experience and applied it to our switchgear and retrofit products. We listen to our clients and help to resolve complex problems that they face. It’s part of our reputation – they know they can count on us.”
One of the projects the company has recently been working on is in the Energy & Resources sector, a big mobile building in the oil sands area with leading edge products and tech which includes switchgear and climate controlled buildings.
“We have a long history of supplying to these clients in these harsh areas all across Canada. We draw on our experience to help with the designs, and our clients ideas and changes as needed. We’re one of the preferred businesses in portable electric substations for the Energy & Resource markets.”
The company has had an exciting period with its recent expansion into the United States. This big undertaking has now been successfully completed, with the company working out of its new facility for just under a year.
“We’re assembling all of our switchgear down there for our clients in Texas, and the growth potential that we’re seeing there is measurably higher than we had hoped. Our clients seem to be very happy with our products we’re getting out to them. It’s been a learning curve, but it’s been good.”
In addition, the company is focusing on emerging markets – such as renewables and high-throughput computing systems – which, as the future of the electrical industry, promise substantial growth that REV wants to take part in.
“Industry is still shaking off some of the supply chain cobwebs over the past couple of years, this has been one of the big challenges – trying to get out of the Covid problem with supply chain. With significant growth happening, we’re having to work with suppliers a lot closer and be more proactive.”
With the huge requirements for electrical demand promising to grow in the next 20-30 years, the future looks bright and exciting for REV. Find out more about REV by visiting www.reveng.ca.