Mission: To be the dominant player in the utility infrastructure market, particularly in providing sustainable solutions

Assets: A veteran of the energy and water utilities industries that’s focused on teamwork

Yield: Increased revenue for Corix’s predecessor to more than $300 million from $70 million in five years

By Krisendra Bisetty

Brett Hodson is the first to admit he’s no do-it-yourself doyen when it comes to repairing plumbing, sewer or electrical glitches at his home near Horseshoe Bay.

But when it comes to major infrastructure projects, more and more people are turning to Hodson, although his staff will say it’s best to keep him away from the technical side of things.

Hodson is using his business prowess to rapidly transform what was until recently the smallest of three operating units of Terasen Inc. into a formidable force on its own.

The 40-year-old president and CEO of the Corix Group of Companies is positioning the Vancouver-based concern – itself a three-business enterprise – to be a dominant player in North America.

Corix’s business segments, spread over 40 locations, are:

• Corix Water Products, which has the largest single-source inventory of water and wastewater products in Western Canada;

• Corix Water Systems, which designs and builds water and wastewater treatment systems for municipal and industrial applications; and

• Corix Utilities, which builds water, wastewater and energy infrastructure systems.

The group was formed in July 2006 after a local consortium, CAI Capital Management Co. and BC Investment Management Corp., bought Terasen Water and Utility Services for approximately $125 million from energy giant Kinder Morgan Inc. The year before, Texas-based Kinder bought Terasen Inc. for US$6.9 billion.

Now that it’s no longer competing for investment interest with Terasen’s gas and oil businesses and freed from some of the demands of being part of a publicly traded company, Corix’s major focus is on growth, said Hodson, a 17-year veteran of the energy and water utility industries.

Beginning his career in energy as a research assistant with BC Hydro in 1989, Hodson joined BC Gas (later Terasen) two years later. He moved up the ranks to become president of Terasen Water and Utility Services in 2001 and helped increase its revenue from $70 million that year to more than $300 million last year, but the company itself had grown through as many as 30 acquisitions during that period – a strategy it continues.

In July, it announced its first U.S. acquisition, securing a foothold in the western U.S. after buying California’s Edward S. Walsh Company for an undisclosed amount.

As well, its staff, now numbering approximately 1,100, has nearly doubled over the past three years.

“At Terasen, we had very strong leadership that had a very disciplined approach to investing and growing business,” said Hodson, an MBA graduate who also holds a BA in psychology and a certificate in liberal arts from Simon Fraser University.

“Growing up corporately in that organization allowed me to learn a lot from the leadership there.”

That mentorship has not been lost: former senior Terasen executives John Reid and Gordon Barefoot both sit on Corix’s board.

But being under new ownership has also been good for Corix in other ways.

New doors in new markets opened for the newly branded company through the contacts and connections of its principal owners, both of whom are investment fund managers.

Not that it needs to go out and actively seek jobs. Hodson reckoned a lot of Corix’s new work is not through tenders or bids, but instead comes from customers approaching the company to solve their problems.

“We offered a value proposition to our customers that very few [competitors] did in the marketplace,” he said. “Not only provide the infrastructure, but be able to design and build it, operate it and, where it made sense, even own it. That value proposition doesn’t exist out there.”

As a group, the business is growing at 30% a year. The water systems and products segments generate more revenue for relatively little investment – vice versa for the utility side – but it’s a rate Hodson regards as a “nice, natural” growth.

“We have some big projects on the books that we’re in the running for that could cause that growth instead of being 30%, 40%, 50%, being more like 60%, 70% or 100%,” he said. “And at any point, we’re looking at a few hundred projects in our portfolio that we’re pursuing or chasing.

“If all of them came through, we would be a very large company tomorrow. But, as you know, we’ve got to go with the pace of the market.”

That, in turn, depends on the pace of economic growth and how municipalities and provincial governments embrace companies like Corix to be able to bring both capital and solutions to infrastructure investments.

When those barriers are lifted and even removed, as is the case in B.C., where Hodson says there’s a more pronounced trend to public-private partnerships, the growth opportunities are greater.

But Corix has already made its mark with local municipalities in sustainable utility solutions in North Vancouver, where its predecessor developed an award-winning hydronic district heating system. While today it’s powered by high efficiency natural gas boilers, it could be switched over to hydrogen fuel cells or a geo-exchange system. Corix is looking to replicate the system elsewhere in North America as municipalities start to embrace sustainability in communities.

The company’s other accomplishments include the Sun Rivers community near Kamloops, where every home is built with a geo-exchange heating system that uses ground source heat pumps with heating and cooling capabilities.

A multimillion-dollar geo-exchange system will also be featured in a several-hundred-unit “community within a community” planned for the Greater Vancouver area.

“We’ve been really the kind of rubber that hits the road when it comes to helping communities put practical solutions in that can move them toward sustainability,” said Hodson, who is also a board member of 50%-owned Alaska-based Fairbanks Sewer and Water Inc. “[But] we’re not the panacea, and we don’t think there is a panacea out there for sustainability. …

“And a lot times, the best technology doesn’t get sold well,” Hodson said. “So you have to bring not just the acumen and the technology and the risk mitigation, we also have to bring sales skills, marketing skills and communications skills, regulatory skills, financial skills, all together to put the best offering out onto the market place.”

It’s a synthesis Corix – and Hodson – have used successfully, said Jim Southcott, chief strategic officer of advertising firm TBWA Vancouver.

“He has set the bar very high in terms of objectives,” said Southcott. “He’s brought a real ability, a real marketing sense, to an industry that normally is not marketing-oriented at all.”•

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Photo: Richard Lam 

From Business in Vancouver #927, July 31-August 6, 2007 

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