Meet Team Member Brian Akason

Brian recently celebrated his 24th anniversary at Energenecs in technical sales. We caught up with Brian and asked him about his extensive experience in the controls industry.

How did you get into the water and wastewater industry?

I went to a tech school in St. Cloud to be a service technician at a nuclear power plant or coal fired power plant. I was trained to be an instrumentation technician and began my career working for a guy named Butch Berg, who was a very professional instrumentation rep in Minneapolis. I watched him and learned from him, then transitioned to sales.

How did you start working with Energenecs?

At Autocon Industries I used to fly around the country selling SCADA systems. Primarily in the east and northeast, from Portland Maine, to Boston, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, down to Charlotte and Florida. At the time, my kids were really young and I was flying around the country. It was quite exciting and interesting, I saw a lot of places, but it was always for work, not much relaxation. I flew 30 to 40 weeks of the year, always on the road. Eventually, I wanted to get out of traveling so often and be more local.

I knew a lot of people in Wisconsin at that time because we had sold Autocon SCADA systems throughout the state, Autocon was represented by Energenecs and I got to know Don Voigt, the owner at the time. Don offered me a job in the summer of 1998 and I took it. It was a risk at the time, because I lived in Minnesota. Don was very progressive. He basically hired me and said, here’s a car, laptop, and a phone. Go do it kid!

How has the controls industry changed?

I’ve been around SCADA systems since the early 1990s, when programmable logic controllers were just starting to be used for water and wastewater control systems. Also, using radios wired to PLCs for long distance communications was almost unheard of back in the early 1990s.

I also remember years ago at the national wastewater conference in Chicago we were invited to go on the Wonderware dinner cruise on Lake Michigan off downtown Chicago. Wonderware was an upstart company of maybe 20 people at the time. When Microsoft Windows came out, Wonderware was uniquely positioned because they programmed all of their software code to work with Windows. And they catapulted from there into what they are today, a large graphical interface software company.

How has Energenecs evolved since you started?

When I started with Energenecs, we were not a control system integration company. We were more of a rep firm for process equipment with some electrical services, but nothing like we’ve turned into. Energenecs has grown from a process rep firm with service to a bonafide high quality system integrator that also represents water and wastewater process equipment, which is very unique around the country. The rep firms that I traveled to out east that represented Autocon or US Filter were not capable of doing any controls. Whereas at Energenecs we don’t turn it over to a controls contractor. For example, Huber Technology out of Germany, hires reps throughout the country, but Huber does all the controls for those reps, except for Energenecs. That’s kind of cool.

Energenecs also found Huber Technologies by going to the IFAT conference in Germany that Jared Feider, president of Energenecs, attended years ago (and still attends). Nobody had heard of them in the United States at the time, and Energenecs was instrumental in bringing Huber to the United States. Huber is now internationally renowned and currently has a manufacturing plant in North Carolina

What do you enjoy about your job?

I still enjoy working and meeting people. If I was standing at a booth at a conference, you would hear me say I personally love doing business in small towns, cities, towns, villages. I think we have done a tremendous job in Wisconsin, Illinois and the UP of Michigan focusing on small communities where they respect us, trust us and enjoy our services. If you looked at our reference list, the bigger jobs would stick out like Eau Claire, and Green Bay, but you would also see all kinds of towns and go, where’s that? We love working in small towns.

Did you play sports?

I actually played high school golf with Tom Lehman quite a few times, who became a very good professional golfer and his tournament wins include one major title at the 1996 British Open. I recently played last year with some old high school friends. I can still hit the ball and play! …sort of.