SEQUENCING AND SAFETY TRIUMPH OVER SPACE CONSTRAINTS

It was neither the biggest nor smallest project ever undertaken by Zachry or its joint venture partner Sargent & Lundy, but the odds are good that it might have been the tightest in terms of space. The joint venture team, called SLZ, finished installing the third of three auxiliary boilers earlier this year at Air Liquide’s Bayport Complex in the greater Houston area. Sargent & Lundy was responsible for engineering and specialty procurements, while Zachry carried out all other procurement and construction.

“Construction took place in an operating plant and, with as little elbow room as we had to work with, it never got easier,” Project Executive Byron Ozenberger said. “When we installed equipment, we would cut off access to other areas, so our sequencing had to be very deliberate to ensure that plant workers could continue performing their jobs and that we didn’t box ourselves in.”

The boilers each supply as much as 400,000 lbs. per hour of steam to the complex, which produces gases, such as nitrogen, hydrogen and helium, for industrial customers.

The success of the project, which was awarded in May 2013, is underscored by the team’s safety achievements. No recordable incidents occurred during more than 240,000 direct work hours.

“It took many individuals working together to achieve this,” Project Manager Glenn Atkinson said. “Communication was the key to our success due to the tight space we had to work in. Everyone understood the task at hand, and what their responsibilities were, so we could successfully and safely complete the job.”

Zachry’s performance contributed to Air Liquide’s decision to award Zachry an additional project to install an air separation unit (ASU) at Air Liquide’s Port Neches, Texas, facility. That project is scheduled to conclude by the end of this year.