“PROTO-FLO is used by about 80 percent of the nuclear industry and is particularly useful in helping engineers understand not only how systems currently perform, but how they will perform during more challenging conditions,” said Manager, Engineering Analysis, Scott Ingalls. “The ability to predict performance is a necessity in the industry.”

Version 5.0 calculates incompressible steady-state flows, pressures and temperatures in piping systems and models pumps, valves, heat exchangers and other components.

“The most visible improvement to PROTO-FLO is a more modern and user-friendly interface,” Senior Design Engineer David Gaiewski said. “Significant updates include the addition of a new algorithm that, in certain cases, allows the program to solve faster. There’s also a new drawing interface that makes the development of model schematics easier.”

The new version also incorporates several features of ZNE’s PROTO-HX software for modeling heat exchangers and allows users to link these two programs directly.

PROTO-FLO 5.0 builds on the software’s rich history of more than 25 years. This period includes the efforts that led to creating the original version of PROTO-FLO, which was one of the first Windows-based software systems in the industry.

“It started in 1989 when we began developing custom thermal hydraulic models to assist utilities with analyzing system conditions,” Software Program Manager Jane Connelly said. “Five years later, we went back to the drawing board and released the first commercial version of PROTO-FLO in 1994.”

One of the defining assignments in the company’s history was the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Construction lasted from 1975 until 1977. Under the supervision of Arctic Constructors and the project owner, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, Zachry — along with Brown & Root, Ingram Corporation, Peter Kiewit Sons, and Williams Brothers Alaska — built sections 5 and 6. This segment extended southwards from Prudhoe Bay (about 250 miles above the Arctic Circle) to Dietrich Alaska, a distance of 223 miles.

Much of the job was above the Arctic Circle, and the permafrost did not allow for excavation. So the pipeline had to be carried on Vertical Support Members (VSMs), which required alignment tolerances not always easy to administer in such harsh conditions.

The VSMs were laid in parallel, two at a time, and each had a semicircular rest
designed to hold the pipeline. This was in 40 or 80-foot segments which were carried by crane or sideboom to the required location, then lowered into place and welded together. All of this had to be done in temperatures that could reach minus 50 to minus 75 degrees, along with heavy snow and high winds.

This was not exactly a walk in the park but, as always, the job was done efficiently and on time, and the company is justifiably proud of being part of what at the time was the largest privately owned construction project in history.

In 2013 Zachry gave Florida Power & Light (FPL) the keys to the new 1,250-MW Next Generation Clean Energy Center at Cape Canaveral. It is one half of the two largest EPC turnkey projects in Zachry’s history — the other half being the sister plant at Riviera Beach, due online in 2014.

These two facilities will generate a combined 2,500 megawatts, enough to power up to half-a-million homes. They also use some of the newest, most efficient technology available in the power generation business.

Six new SGT6-8000H combustion gas turbines from Siemens (three per plant) are the first to be put into service anywhere in the world, and they are considerably more efficient that the old plant they are replacing, using 33 percent less fuel per megawatt produced. They also reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 50 percent.

This ability to deliver large-scale turnkey projects is a result of Zachry deciding several years ago to develop in-house engineering capabilities. In this context, “turnkey” means handling all EPC work internally, instead of outsourcing any of the elements.

The success of these two assignments has also led to a third major project; providing EPC services for the new Port Everglades Next Generation Clean Energy Center near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It will run on clean, low-cost American natural gas and produce up to 1,277 megawatts of electricity.

And this triple-play of assignments, representing ten consecutive years of work, exemplifies a key company objective — to win multiple contracts, over the long haul, because of our high-trust relationships with major customers.

East Texas is known for its more than 12 million acres of forests. Among the towering pine trees sit many lumber mills, closed because of lack of demand. However, instead of leaving the wood residue unused Zachry’s Engineering Group is turning wood waste into fuel. The project is the 100-MW biomass power plant in Nacogdoches County, Texas.

The Nacogdoches Biomass Power Generating Facility will use logging residue and clean municipal wood waste as its main fuel source, making it one of the largest renewable energy projects in the country and one of Zachry’s biggest such projects.

“This is something that needs to be done right now,” said Senior Project Manager Peter Quist. “For a long time the nation has relied on natural gas-powered plants to meet rising electricity demand, and growth in renewable energy has been limited to inconsistent wind power. Wood-fueled plants use local resources to consistently generate a much-needed renewable source of electricity.”

Note:

Biomass energy is considered to emit zero incremental greenhouse gas by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast United States and the EU Emission Trading Scheme. This is because the carbon emitted by using biomass as fuel would eventually be emitted through some other mechanism, such as decay.

Throughout its history, the company has taken the long view, doing its best to anticipate the future and position itself for opportunities. The years after World War II are an example. At that time, the company’s work for San Antonio’s City Public Service Board (CPSB) consisted of upgrading power distribution systems, but this was the tip of the iceberg compared to the demand for full-fledged power plant construction that was to come. Sensing the opportunity, the company created an Electrical Construction Department, and became the preferred contractor for the CPSB.

This meant that in 1953, with qualified electrical and mechanical engineers on board, Zachry was ready for its first fully-fledged turnkey power plant, the Lon C. Hill Unit 1 Station, a gas/oil-fired facility for Central Power & Light outside Corpus Christi, Texas.

Since then, the company has built more than 100 plants across the U.S. with a total generating capacity of more than 60,000 megawatts of electricity. This would be enough to meet the average one hour demand of the six largest cities in the U.S. combined.

Not bad for a company that 30 years earlier had used mule teams to help build a single highway bridge.

Today, we’ll tell the story of how H.B Pat Zachry – the founder of the firm – went into business for himself at the age of 23.

After graduating as a Civil Engineer, Pat started work as a county surveyor in Texas, and as part of this job he had to design a plan for paving the dirt road connecting Laredo to Corpus Christi. The Texas Highway Department was running the project, and was paying him $200 a month (around $2,700 today). To many this would have represented a safe and secure job. But Pat saw things very differently. In 1924, encouraged by his father, he resigned as a surveyor and put in a bid for a section of the project — a $40,000 bridge at Laredo. He won the contract, worth about $540,000 in today’s money, and the H. B. Zachry Company of Laredo was on its way.

This milestone event also became part of company folklore. “One morning when I was short-handed,” Pat remembered, “I was driving a two-mule Fresno scraper when a local contractor drove by. He asked me what I was doing driving those mules, and doing such a poor job of it. I told him that one of my good men had failed to show, and I was trying to add some additional yardage to the day’s work. “Well,” he said, “I guess that’s all right, but remember one thing. You will never get very far in life looking at it through the rear end of a mule.”

It was blunt advice, but it lined up perfectly with Pat’s philosophy, shaping a leadership style that would help define the company for 90 years.

Our purpose is to give readers a broader view of the Zachry family of companies. Some of the topics will be timely and some will be timeless. All of them will shed light on what makes us different.

You‘ll see that the blog is already populated with a number of posts, classified into five categories. These are:
 1. We Believe – Shares the things that really matter to us as a principle-based enterprise.
 2. I Am Zachry – Reproduces profiles from this popular feature of the Zachry Force Report, our employee newsletter.
 3. Best in People –Spells out how we create an environment that encourages and supports our people to reach their full potential.
 4. Milestones – Celebrates events that have helped define us.
 5. Did You Know? – Facts and figures, sometimes unexpected, about our work and our people.

I hope that you’ll find this blog an enjoyable way to stay connected to us.

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