Industrial Specialty Contractors LLC

Electrical, instrumentation contractor achieves phenomenal growth

By Dana C. Crisson

From its beginning in a second-hand office trailer in 1989, Industrial Specialty Contractors LLC has grown into a leading supplier of instrumentation and electrical services throughout the Gulf South.

Two of the original founders, company president Jerry Rispone and his brother, CEO Eddie Rispone, are still at the helm of ISC, a company that includes about 1,500 associates in offices in Baton Rouge, and Beaumont and Houston in Texas.

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Engineering News-Record places ISC among the top five industrial electrical contractors in the nation.

“Our revenue is $160 million, which is phenomenal for a specialty contractor,” Jerry says.

In the nearly two decades ISC has been in business, the firm has won numerous awards for industry-leading safety performance. It has installed and maintained complex electrical and instrumentation systems in some of the nation’s most hazardous industrial environments, completing the majority of its work while the facilities continued to operate.

Shell Chemicals gave the company its most recent honor in January, honoring ISC’s 11-year safety record with zero recordable safety incidents. This safety record is impressive when you consider that the company clocks about 3 million man hours annually.

“We wrote our own safety program during the first two months we formed the company,” Jerry says. “Safety has always been paramount here. Our associates are among the industry’s best-trained and most safety-conscious craftspeople. Everyone in the company, from management on down, carries the responsibility of safety. “

Training is a continuous process throughout the company.

“From our earliest days as we brought people in, we brought them into our philosophy, and that has paid tremendous dividends for us,” Eddie says.

The company provides a nine-week management/supervisory, in-house training course developed by its construction management team. Workers are also trained at every level and in every location.

“The majority of our associates are highly skilled and have been with the company for a long time,” Eddie says. “The average age of our management team is 44, then we have a layer of associates in their mid-30s and another layer of associates in their 20s. When we need to expand, we have access to a large pool of talent, and we take advantage of the talent we have attracted. We have been blessed with quality employees.”

“Our talent has grown with our company,” Jerry adds. “It has been exciting to get a group of people of this caliber together and ask their input to create our systems and procedures. We treat these guys as partners, and most of them have been with us from the beginning.”

ISC also has a strong reputation for industry involvement, at the state level with the chemical lobby in Louisiana and at the national level through its involvement with ABC.

“We recognize the big picture,” Jerry says. “We want the overall industry to stay healthy, so there is a concerted effort by the entire management team to be involved in issues impacting both the community and the industry as a whole.”

The firm attributes its success to this basic philosophy: “We build relationships with our customers, and we listen to what they have to say,” Jerry says. “That principle applies to everyone, from the plant managers to the vice president in the corporate offices.”

“That is what brought us to Houston and Beaumont three years ago. We had been leasing offices, but our clients wanted us to build more permanent facilities, and we are responsive to their suggestions. They have a vision of how they want their work performed in the future and we try to accommodate them. The expansions have proven to be good for the company, allowing us to function more efficiently.”

“God is our foundation here, and we run the company based on Godly principles. We also perform every task with integrity. It is built into our job description in how we deal with each other and deal with our customers. The way we run our company is to take care of the goose that lays the golden eggs. If we take care of the goose, we will be taking care of the entire company.”