Brown & Root will establish its corporate headquarters in Baton Rouge, LA, with the Brown & Root executive team moving from Houston. From its Louisiana headquarters, Brown & Root will oversee global operations with more than 6,000 employees. Brown & Root operations will include newly acquired Wink Engineering (formerly Willbros Group downstream engineering assets) and its 325 Louisiana employees in Baton Rouge, Mandeville and St. Rose, near New Orleans.
“Louisiana and Baton Rouge are synonymous with hard-working, can-do people,” Brown & Root CEO Andy Dupuy said. “The industrial roots here are strong, and we look forward to making Brown & Root the gold standard of our industry, with Baton Rouge as our base of operations. We would like to thank our local, regional and state partners for helping make today a reality. We look forward to quickly expanding our industrial services offerings throughout the world.”
The Brown & Root corporate headquarters, to be located at Citiplace on Corporate Boulevard, will bring 25 executives to Baton Rouge by the end of 2015, followed by an additional 25 executives by the end of 2016, for a total of 50 new direct jobs averaging $192,000 per year, plus benefits. Louisiana Economic Development (LED) estimates an additional 72 new indirect jobs will result from the corporate operations, for a total of more than 120 new jobs associated with the Baton Rouge headquarters.
Brown & Root will create another 550 industrial jobs in Louisiana over the next decade, for a total of 925 Brown & Root jobs in Louisiana, in addition to the company’s thousands of employees deployed at branch offices and project sites worldwide.
“Louisiana’s talent in the industrial services sector ranks second to none, and this major headquarters announcement demonstrates what we know so well: Louisiana offers the best business climate, workforce talent and infrastructure assets in the world when it comes to building the future,” said Gov. Bobby Jindal. “We welcome Brown & Root to Baton Rouge, and we’re proud that this venture will create hundreds of great new jobs for families in our capital and throughout the state of Louisiana.”
LED began discussing the corporate headquarters project with the company in May 2015. To secure the project, the State of Louisiana offered Brown & Root a competitive incentive package that includes a performance-based $1.8 million performance-based grant to reimburse relocation costs and to provide lease support for the corporate headquarters. The company also will receive the comprehensive solutions of LED’s FastStart® workforce development program. In addition, Brown & Root is expected to utilize the state’s Quality Jobs Program.
The headquarters project follows the acquisition, earlier this month, of Wink Engineering LLC from Willbros Group Inc. by an investment group led by Bernhard Capital Partners, a Baton Rouge private equity firm focused on energy services.
Bernhard Capital Partners, in partnership with Houston-based KBR Inc., is re-establishing Brown & Root as a globally recognized industrial services provider by combining KBR’s Industrial Services Americas Group with Wink Engineering. Brown & Root will continue serving customers in the downstream, refining, petrochemical, chemical and manufacturing industries, with a renewed focus on customer service and project execution in the industrial services segment of the energy marketplace.
