Business in Vancouver's “How I Did It” feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, Devon Siebenga, president of BigSteelBox Structures, talks about how his family business, which was based on selling and renting shipping containers for storage, was spun into a new business – turning shipping containers into portable living quarters and offices for remote work camps.
“It started as a family company. I started in 2005 as a managing partner in Kamloops. There were three brothers and my dad, so we all had different companies and different names.
“The new division is the BigSteelBox Structures. What that is is focusing on portable buildings. Our buildings go where the work goes. The highest users are heavy industrial – the oil and gas industry, the mining industry, some forestry and construction. It's an alternative to modular buildings.
“Traditional construction is built out of wood. Once you start to move something made out of wood over and over again, over time it deteriorates, whereas inherently within the container, it's designed to be moved.
“We started by using the shipping container as portable storage. We would purchase our containers from China and they would come ready-built. Then we would rent and sell them – a very simple business.
“Birthed out of that was this built-in demand where people were requesting all sorts of variances on the box itself. We had a customer come to us from the oilsands. They said, ‘We have this 14-foot-wide building and we'd like you to build us a portable lab so we can do testing on site.'
“In 2010, we had an opportunity to bid for [60] buildings for [the Department of] National Defence for the Olympics. It was a large order. I think that's where we sat down and went, ‘We see a future in this business.' With very little external effort, we have found this business come to us, so we started to dream: ‘What else can be done with these things?'
“We were at a fork where somebody needed to take this bull by the horns. In 2010, I was managing our portable storage operations in the Lower Mainland and our modification department. We saw a great opportunity in the future of our structures used as portable buildings.
“Recognizing that this opportunity required a completely different focus than our portable storage business, we decided to invest my full attention in the modular building and custom structures business in northern B.C. and Alberta.
“From a portable storage business with a very standardized product offering, with tens of thousands of transactions a year, to a much more complex and customized demand, with only hundreds of transactions a year, required a whole new set of processes and expertise.
“We needed a manufacturing facility. Then we needed to hire tradesmen and welders and identify contractors to do some of the work because a lot of what we do is quite custom. We're creating full turnkey buildings – occupiable spaces, homes away from home. Take our well-site trailer as an example. Inside that unit you've got a living room with a couch, built-in millwork, a kitchen area, fridge, stove, microwave, washroom with shower, toilet, sink and full bedroom with a wardrobe and floor-to-ceiling windows.” •
