Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Richard Shatilla · Skygauge · August 2026
Here is the map. In this market, remote inspection meets two buyers who want different things: the asset owner who carries the risk and the outage schedule, and the inspection company that already holds the contract to do the work. This covers where both sit across the US and Canada, who signs, and roughly how many there are. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Refining and petrochemical
The densest concentration of inspection spend on the continent and the segment where access equipment is the largest line in a turnaround budget. Small by count, very large by value, and every site is known by name. This is a list you can hold in your head, which is unusual and worth using.
Who signs: inspection and integrity manager, turnaround manager, reliability engineer, fixed equipment engineer, HSE director.
130 to 150
operable refineries across the US and Canada, plus several hundred petrochemical complexes
Thermal power generation
Stacks, boilers, ducts and precipitators, all of them tall, hot and awkward to reach, and all inspected on a regulated interval. Outage windows are fixed years ahead, so the buying question is never whether, only who and when.
Who signs: plant manager, maintenance and reliability superintendent, outage planner, corporate asset integrity lead.
1,700 to 2,300
fossil-fired generating stations across the US and Canada
Tank storage and terminals
Above-ground storage tanks come due for shell and floor inspection on a clock written into the standard, which makes this the most predictable demand on the page. Worth being straight about a limit: no single public register counts every terminal, because third-party terminals are listed while refinery and utility tank farms are not.
Who signs: terminal manager, mechanical integrity lead, regional engineering manager, corporate HSE.
Several hundred operators
third-party terminal operators are listed publicly; proprietary tank farms are not, so the real site count is materially higher
Pulp, paper and heavy process
Recovery boilers, digesters and stacks in plants that run continuously and hate unplanned downtime more than almost anyone. Older asset base, thinning walls, and a maintenance culture that already buys ultrasonic testing as a routine line rather than a project.
Who signs: mill maintenance manager, reliability engineer, capital projects lead, corporate engineering.
300 to 400
pulp and paper mills across the US and Canada
Marine, naval and offshore
Hulls, ballast tanks and topsides, inspected against class rules and, on the naval side, against a schedule nobody negotiates with. Long qualification cycles and heavy documentation, and once a method is approved it stays approved, which makes the first win unusually durable.
Who signs: shipyard production manager, class surveyor, port engineer, naval program office lead.
120 to 180
shipyards and repair facilities across North America, plus the offshore platform base
Inspection and testing service companies
A channel and a competitor at the same time. They already hold the recurring contract with the asset owner, they carry the certified technicians, and a new method either extends their margin or threatens their day rate depending entirely on how it is put to them. No clean public register covers this market, so it is worked by name.
Who signs: operations director, technical services or level three lead, business development director, regional manager.
No clean public register
a fragmented market of national providers and hundreds of regional firms; described here rather than counted

Where the openings are

1
The service company and the asset owner want opposite things from the same call. The owner wants the inspection done faster and without scaffold. The service company wants to protect a contract it already holds. One message sent to both tends to stall both, and the fix is two named audiences with two arguments, not one list with one pitch.
2
Demand here is scheduled, not discovered. Turnarounds and outages are planned years out and the scope is written months before the window. Reaching a planner in the month the scope is being written is worth more than reaching the same person at any other point in the cycle, and the timing is knowable from outside.
3
The regulated interval is the trigger nobody has to be sold. Tanks, vessels and stacks come due on a clock set by standards, not by budget mood. That is a recurring, dateable reason to be in front of an integrity manager, and it works on a company that has never heard of you as well as on one that has.
4
The named universe is small enough to work properly and too large to work by hand. A few thousand sites across refining, power, storage, mills and marine, each with three or four named roles. That is a few thousand people, which is a channel problem rather than a market-size problem, and it is exactly what a built outbound unit is for.
Built from public market data, counts banded deliberately. Site counts across process industries are reported on different bases in each country, so these figures indicate scale rather than an exact roll. Tank storage and the inspection service market have no clean public register covering every operator, so those lines are described rather than counted.
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