Business Barbados - 2023 Edition

ECOHESION JOINS INTEGRATED SUSTAINABILITY A BARBADOS-CANADA ALLIANCE TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE IN WATER island travel that is necessary to run the business. But, perhaps most important of all for our family, we were moving to a country with an exceptional quality of life, good schools, low crime levels and an abundance of fun activities. When Integrated Sustainability started pursuing work in the Caribbean in 2016, I had already been working throughout the region since 2006 where I met two of the three owners of the Barbadian company Ecohesion – Sam Neilands and Andre Quesnel – and established a strong relationship with them. Not long after I moved to Barbados in 2018, we began very high-level discussions about a merger because it seemed to be an obvious fit. Integrated Sustainability was offering full turn-key solutions in the water and wastewater sector, including Design-Finance-Construction-Operation & Maintenance (O&M) services, but was Nick St-Georges Vice President of International, Integrated Sustainability After successfully growing our business throughout the Caribbean since 2016, Integrated Sustainability made the conscious decision to commit to the region by moving me and my family, including two young children, down to the region in 2018. We could have picked any Caribbean country to establish our new regional head office, but ultimately chose Barbados. The main factors behind that decision were that Barbados is the only Caribbean country that has established a double-taxation agreement with Canada; the island is outside the main hurricane belt; and it has an international airport that serves as a central hub for the West Indies, which is very important for us considering the amount of inter- not operating any treatment facilities in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, although Ecohesion was able to provide Design- Construction-O&M services, their design team was small, and they often needed to partner with other consulting teams to pursue large projects. Therefore, the two companies complimented each other in areas that needed bolstering. The overall entrepreneurial spirit of the Directors at Ecohesion – with Corey Jackman included – also fits very well with Integrated Sustainability’s culture and senior management. Stuart Torr, the President and CEO of Integrated Sustainability, has always been an entrepreneur, like his father before him, and owned several other companies before starting this consulting firm. The bulk of the leadership team at Integrated Sustainability includes individuals in their late 40’s, so we are a relatively I N T E G R A T E D S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y 37 BUSINESS BARBADOS 2022