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In late 1978, Rick Abel and his brother Rosaire bought a single piece of equipment and put it out for rent. Soon after, they got a request for more equipment, so they bought more and got it into the field – and then the phone rang again.
And so it began. By June of 1979 the brothers had incorporated Ketek (pronounced “key-tech”) setting the company apart from competitors by providing scheduled service and repair of equipment in the rental rate. This allows customers to calculate the real cost of the equipment and dispensed with additional, unwelcome fees for service, cleaning or repair.
In 1983, Ketek bought land and a single workbay in the Winterburn Industrial Area, just west of Edmonton. The company grew organically and through acquisition. Ketek opened its first branch office, in Fort St. John, B.C., in 1990. It followed that up with branches in Fort Nelson (1996), Fort McMurray (1999), Grande Prairie (2011), Saskatoon (2017) and Whitehorse (2019). Those offices allow Ketek to provide fully supported services and rental equipment to our clients across Western and Northern Canada.
Wellpoint dewatering is done to temporarily lower the water table so trenching and other subsurface work can be done.
Ketek now offers services in eight primary areas: water management, environmental services, safety, custom fabrication, training, maintenance, transportation and, still at the heart of it all, rentals.
Water Management We have the equipment and knowledge to perform large-volume water transfers, dewatering (wellpoints or deep wells), groundwater control, river and sewage bypass, emergency pumping and flood control. We also provide well testing and monitoring, wastewater and groundwater treatment and HDPE fusing services.
Fusing HDPE pipe. HDPE is used for things like water mains, gas mains, sewer mains, slurry transfer lines, rural irrigation and fire system supply lines.
Environmental Services: Ketek is a leader in third-party waste audits in Western Canada. A waste audit gathers data about waste production, whether by a business or a community. As such, you can learn where your waste is coming from and how it’s being handled. It lets you develop a plan to reduce, reuse, recycle and more. Ketek also designs and manufactures thermal oxidation (incineration) units to be used as a part of the waste management process.
Safety: Ketek provides safety-related expertise to a variety of clients, including Prime Contractor Safety Services for complex worksites. By working with clients and their employees, we can help integrate a strong safety culture into their business and ensure they exceed Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) laws and regulations.
Custom Fabrication: Ketek’s fabrication division has a long history of building products for our in-house needs, from hose reels and truck boxes to sophisticated incinerators and water management units. But we also work for external clients and are ready to partner with you on your project, large or small. As part of our ISO:9001 certification, all accompanying quality and technical documentation can be supplied for the manufacturing process.
Training: Training is fundamental to any successful business or activity. Workers are continually exposed to new tasks, and even the most experienced sometimes need a refresher. Ketek provides training in First Aid, H2S Alive, Fall Protection, Mobile Elevated Work Platform and much more.
Maintenance Services: Ketek’s ISO:9001-certified maintenance division offers repair, maintenance, diagnostics and testing of generators, pumps, light towers, VFDs, starter boxes, control panels and more.
Transportation: Ketek’s fleet includes lowboys, flatbeds, winch, picker and bed trucks, hotshots, pilot trucks and more. We use our fleet to transport our own equipment and personnel to and from the field and to provide our many services, so we know which unit will fit the job best.
Rentals: Ketek has more than 9,000 pieces of primary, numbered rental equipment and tens of thousands of pieces of auxiliary equipment. Much of our fleet has been custom manufactured or individually modified to endure the rigours of industrial use and the challenging environments in which we operate. Other modifications are made to reduce the environmental impact of our operations, whether that be through reduced fuel consumption, sound attenuation, spill protection or camouflage.
Ketek, now with more than 300 employees, has worked with companies throughout the upstream and midstream oil and gas sectors. We have worked in the oilsands and in the mining, forestry and agricultural sectors. We have worked for municipal, institutional and international clients and for the armed forces. We provide facility site services and have acquired distribution rights with suppliers of specialized equipment.
Ketek’s Operations Centre in Edmonton includes offices, shops, bays and a 28-acre yard.
We pride ourselves on the relationships we build with our clients and on the length of our timelines. That first land purchased in 1983 remains the heart of the company’s Edmonton Operations Centre and the client who rented that first piece of equipment, in 1978, remains one of Ketek’s most important and valued clients to this day.
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