Bigger and Better
Selix Equipment Inc. is focused on safety and after-sales service
By Kim Biggar
In less than four years, Ottawa-based Selix Equipment,
which supplies drill rigs and consumables to the deep foundation
construction market, outgrew the facility where it
was launched in 2011, moving in early 2015. Now sharing
an 18,000-square-foot space in an industrial park in the city’s
east end with Shore Machine Works – a provider of welding
repairs, fabrication and precision machining services that is
also owned by the partners in Selix – the company has more
than doubled the area of its old location.
In addition to servicing equipment in its shop, Selix’s
mobile mechanics – its “drill doctors” – repair clients’ rock
drills, drill rigs and hydraulic rock breakers anywhere in
Canada.
“As fast as a plane will take us, a technician will be on site
if required to fix equipment that’s not operating as it should,”
said Selix’s president, Mario Roussel.
Maintaining an inventory of essential parts also enables
the company’s quick responses. The parts department is now
large enough to require two full-time employees.
For relatively uncomplicated fixes, technicians provide
remote service, talking equipment operators through repairs,
COMPANY PROFILE
thereby reducing downtime and costs, including servicerelated
costs.
Seven Selix employees – five on the road and two in the
shop – provide after-sales service. These workers have
received extensive factory training from the manufacturers
of the equipment Selix sells to ensure that they’re able to
safely and competently make necessary repairs. Roussel says
that this training is expensive, but believes that both employees
and customers benefit from it.
Company background
Not yet five years old, Selix is still fairly new to the industry. Its
management team, however, is not. Roussel and his partners,
Mike Deschamps and Alain Mainville, have 25 to 30 years’
experience each in the drilling supply and service industry.
With their common niche long in place, the three partners
chose to run complementary businesses serving the
construction industry. Deschamps looks after the day-today
operations of Shore Machine Works, while Mainville and
Roussel are in charge of Selix. Between them, the two companies
employ 28 people – 13 at Shore, 15 at Selix.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SELIX EQUIPMENT
Delivery of a new Sandvik Ranger DX800, sold
to Rock Breakers (2007) Inc. of Hunstville, Ont.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 63
Ten Years of Piling Canada 61