You’ve come a long way, Danos

Danos’ new corporate offices are a marvel.

Nestled in Gray at 3878 West Main St., the sleek newly finished building is a place the company’s workers say they love – a moral booster to the business’ employees.

“It’s a place that makes you want to wake up every day and go to work,” Danos Business Analyst Melanie Toups said. “From the second I walked from my car and into the building (for the first time), I just had this huge smile on my face. … It’s like being at home. I love it.”

Open since April 13, the place doesn’t much resemble an office building. All of the new facility’s nooks and crannies were well thought out during planning. Company executives said they wanted to showcase the principles the business has built its foundation on for 67 years and counting – the people-first vision that has allowed the company to survive, thrive and grow.

For starters, the facility is comfortable and roomy with spacious halls and modernized art and furniture.

That’s by design.

When Allen Danos and his brother-in-law Syriaque Curole got out of farming and jumped into offshore business in 1947, they established a company that sought to treat folks fairly.

They envisioned a working world where talented folks could thrive and accomplish big things through hard work, dedication and perseverance.

This space seems to do just that for Danos employees – the proverbial icing on the cake that marks just how far things have come for the local business, which has humble and modest beginnings.

FARMERS BUILD CO. ON HONEST PRINCIPLES

The original Danos and his partner Curole were south Lafourche Parish Cajuns. They lived off the land of the area’s fertile plains through farming, but were gifted with other skills and crafts – much like most of the Cajun men of that time.

Tired of the grind and uncertainties that came with farming, the partners looked toward the Gulf of Mexico. They borrowed cash and bought a 65-foot single-engine wooden tugboat.

Operating their original business out of the family’s garage, Danos and Curole picked up a contract with Gulf Oil to put their boat afloat and push forward.

That one-boat, one-garage and one-contract setup marked the beginning of the lineage for Danos’ business – a modest start for a company that now employs 2,000-plus people and operates in several states.

“They bought a boat and started out in their garage,” Danos Executive Vice President Eric Danos said of his grandfather Allen’s endeavors. “Everything that we do today is rooted back to that start and the things that those two gentlemen did at that time to get us started.”

Danos is obviously no longer a one-garage operation, but the principles of business set forth by Allen Danos and Syriaque Curole remain.

Those around the business in the early days say that the two founders were honest businessmen who valued a hard day’s work, but who also loved people. They stressed safety, integrity and making sure that all people are treated fairly and with respect.

Inside of the new facility’s halls, Eric Danos said that all of those principles remain present – something that officials tout will never change.

“We’re really a values-driven organization,” Eric Danos said. “We talk a lot about what our values are. Today, the values that we talk about are integrity, safety, service, improvement and respect. Those values are really not a whole lot different than the values that we had when my grandfather started the company in 1947. Those are all definitely things that he believed in. … Those are things that he wanted to make sure were always in place.”

EVOLUTION CREATES LARGE-SCALE SUCCESS

Modern-day Danos is very diverse in what it now does.

That lone garage and ship that Allen Danos and Syriaque Curole commanded have given way to a fruitful business model and operation that has evolved over the past 67 years to provide jobs to thousands within a web that reaches all across the globe.

Today, the business is broken into two primary functions – each with a specific purpose.

The first thing Danos specializes in is projects. This includes project management, construction and execution. The project management encompasses just about anything that goes on within the oil and gas industry – both offshore and on land.

“We get involved with engineers and look at the constructability of projects and start planning the actual construction,” Eric Danos said. “We can fabricate modules and decking extensions and piping and different things like that. We have crews who can go offshore and do the installation, as well as the electrical and instrumentation and scaffolding. We deal with all of the associated construction services that go along with putting something together and putting it out in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The second specialization focuses on production, and more specifically allowing Danos’ customers to produce their assets.

That one-two punch allowed Danos to drop boating from its focus in 2005 so that the company could best meet its demand for project management and production.

‘We have people who work offshore. They are technical specialists who will go out there and help our customers run their day-to-day production so they can get the oil out of the ground and into the pipelines and floating back inshore,” Eric Danos explained. “Those guys are spread out across the Gulf of Mexico and also in some land-based operations all over the country.

“The project management and the production – that’s primarily our focuses and what we do.”

As Danos grew in its earliest days, it operated out of an office campus that was adjacent the Intracoastal Canal in Larose.

But as more and more growth came to the business, Allen Danos’ son and current company President and CEO Hank Danos knew that something had to be done to keep up with the growth.

That’s where the new facility in Gray was born.

HOUSTON OR GRAY? DANOS STAYED LOCAL

When Danos officials made the decision that it had outgrown its Larose-based facility, it explored a variety of options in its quest to find a new home.

Danos had offers to move shop to Texas – offers that were tempting because of the large employee base within that state and strong economy present in the Lone Star State.

But in the end, company officials couldn’t ever pull the trigger and make the move. They decided that the business was born in Louisiana and is meant for this region and its people.

Instead of heading West, Danos just jogged about 25 miles down the road to Gray where it dug ground and used a little more than a year to create its new office campus.

“We have a great deal of admiration for Texas, but we feel like we are a Louisiana company,” Hank Danos said when the decision was made to build in Gray. “There’s a lot of big decisions that are made in Houston and we need to be in Houston like everybody needs to be in Houston, because there’s a lot going on there. But we chose to have our headquarters in south Louisiana. We think that better fits our corporate culture.”

So once that was settled, shovels broke ground and the work began.

At present, the heavy labor is complete, and minor kinks and tweaks are being finalized and polished.

As it stands, the new office building is a model for businesses of its kind, featuring a slew of amenities designed to keep workers happy and refreshed.

One of the biggest hits among employees is a huge cafeteria and lunch area that allows Danos workers to enjoy nutritious meals at an affordable price, while also eating surrounded by peers – a camaraderie builder designed to keep the family-like feel.

“I love mingling with my co-workers there,” Toups said. “We spend so much time emailing people for different projects, but it’s just not the same as sitting down, relaxing and getting to know someone.”

Hearing that from an employee makes Eric Danos smile.

“We want people to get to know one another, to socialize and to be comfortable in their work environment,” he said. “The whole building is really set up in a way that blends what we do from an industrial standpoint with the family atmosphere, which is what we think makes the Danos organization special.”

One boat, one garage, one contract.

That’s how it all got started for Danos.

Today it’s much more.

Today it’s something that surely Allen Danos and Syriaque Curole couldn’t have foreseen, but would be proud of nonetheless.

Things are moving briskly at Danos. A new business headquarters has been opened in Gray. With it, Danos employees have been given modernized furniture and roomy work quarters.

COURTESY