Houston Branch Leadership Highlight: Miro Berjan, VP of Texas Operations at Fortis Fire & Safety
When Miro Berjan joined the Fortis Fire & Safety team, he brought decades of experience with him.
Born in former Yugoslavia, he worked throughout Europe in a variety of positions in fire protection companies starting in the mid-80s, and the work proved rewarding for him. “Doing something that saves lives is a noble task. Doing it for a living rewards one daily,” he said.
When he moved to the U.S. in 2001, he spent a decade working for Tyco SimplexGrinnell and subsequently Johnson Controls, and then another four years with Siemens Industry. In 2021, he moved to Houston with his wife of 16 years, Ivana, and two children, to work with Fortis as the Texas VP of Operations.
“Joining Fortis was an opportunity to be a building block in creating a world-class fire protection services company,” Berjan said.
Berjan leads the Houston branch, tasked with further improving the services and safety Fortis provides, along with adding resources closer to the areas of customer demand. “Our goal is to be within a couple of hours of any customers in Texas and given the size of the state that is a tall order.”
San Antonio and Austin customers are largely commercial, whereas Houston and Corpus Christi are primarily industrial markets. As more businesses move to Texas, the demand for Fortis’ services is increasing, so Fortis is looking to expand first to DFW, then San Antonio and Austin, and possibly El Paso. “I see this market flourishing for the next few decades with new construction and retrofits alike,” he said.
Berjan has recently worked on the Fortis Brand Initiative of creating a unified Fortis Fire & Safety organization for the Houston branch. He learned a lot through the rebrand, and he says that this unique experience revealed a lot of invaluable information that will help the larger Fortis family of brands successfully rebrand, too. “I certainly believe that rebranding our Texas business is the first step in a larger rebranding effort that will put all Fortis business units under one name and allow us to scale our business better,” he said.
The Houston branch recently won the Flame Award, recognizing that there were no injuries in Texas for more than a year. “The result is not an accident,” he said. “We take safety very seriously and will continue to make every effort to keep our team unharmed. After all, this is the first onSPEC Service Principle.”
Berjan is confident in the Texas team, which he says is versatile and capable of taking on any challenge. “We will work hard, have fun doing it, and continue looking forward to a bright future,” he said.
