Our History
HRST Inc. was founded in 1998 by our current CEO, Robert Krowech. He started business as a one-man operation in Minnesota, USA with the goal of providing superior boiler engineering and on-site power plant technical service. His 22 years of previous boiler engineering and management experience for a boiler manufacturing company were attractive to existing power plants trying to avoid and solve problems.
As the business grew, so did the need to hire more employees. Attracting the right type of people is challenging because they need to have both strong technical skills and strong customer service skills. Rather than offer lucrative salaries to attract people, our company relies on profit sharing, and to have profits, we need to work hard and smart, and have loyal clients.
The Minnesota Technology magazine in 2006 summarized the HRST approach this way:
Krowech knew that only capable, confident, and conscientious people would accept a below-market base salary in order to link the quality of their work directly to their financial future. "People like that aren't motivated by financial success alone,' he says. 'They take great pride in their work and in their team. They're not going to let the customer or their fellow employees down."
Our employees have diverse experience. Most acquired years of new boiler engineering and design experience before joining HRST. Some have a shop welding and fabrication background. Some have power plant operation backgrounds. Others joined HRST directly from engineering college.
As our business, reputation and experience has grown, we have increased our service and product capabilities. Our clients not only rely on us to help them find problems and determine the root cause, but also to supply the solution in the form of engineering and fabricated components. If our engineers and technicians inspect a boiler and find problems, they can immediately communicate with our design team, and utilize the field data, pictures and history to provide a solution. This allows our clients to focus on other tasks within the power plant. More importantly, they have confidence the fix will solve the problem the first time.
Our understanding of boiler problems, combined with investment in research and development, have resulted in several innovative products to help our clients. These products include pipe penetration seals, economizers that resist thermal shock, finned tube gas side cleaning techniques and innovative components to improve boiler lay-up.
In addition to our Minnesota headquarters, we have offices located in three other USA states, plus representation in Australia and Switzerland.