Starcon’s New Lenox Facility Renovation a Game-Changer

Starcon

By Steve Buford, General Manager

For years, Starcon’s facility in New Lenox, Illinois, predominantly consisted of office space, with more than 15,800 square feet for offices, meeting rooms, cubicles, computers, monitors, staplers, and more. However, the need for office space has recently waned, and Starcon saw an opportunity to develop the facility’s other purposes, specifically its fabrication operations.

To better serve clients, Starcon chose to renovate the New Lenox office, increasing its fabrication space from 1,200 square feet to 8,010 square feet, reducing the amount of office space to 8,870 square feet, and warehouse space to 10,700 square feet.

“We have several customers that we’re working with regularly, and this gives our team an opportunity to enhance our business with them in an efficient manner,” says Bentley “Bud” Hatteberg, North Region Operations Manager. “It’s safer and more productive having more than 8,000 square feet of fabrication space where we can measure out piping replacement projects, fab them right here in our shop, and then have a crew install it on the site.”

While the team was doing some fabrication work before the renovation, they couldn’t handle several projects at a time because of the limitations of the workspace. Additionally, it was challenging to sell customers on the team’s original fabrication services simply because they couldn’t envision the work being done within only 1,200 square feet. Now, the team is lining up the fabrication work for Starcon’s customers and exceeded their financial goals for 2022 before they even hit November.

“More than anything, the renovated space is something we can all be proud of,” says Hatteberg. “Long-term team members are now walking through that door, and the atmosphere is livelier and more energetic than it’s ever been. They’re excited. Having the offices right next to the warehouse and fabrication space has also helped everyone feel more connected to the work that we do every day.”

Rebuilding Recovery Boiler in Downeast Maine

n By Matt Foster, Senior Project Engineer

Last spring, the Cianbro team mobilized for a monthlong shutdown at Woodland Pulp in Baileyville, Maine. The team of more than 200, including Cianbro team members and subcontractors, spent May rebuilding the Woodland #3 Recovery Boiler. The initial scope of work included:

• Demobilizing and replacing the entire floor of the boiler.

• Modifying the primary, secondary, and tertiary air systems.

• Installing a new quaternary air system.

Cianbro also installed new black liquor guns and smelt spouts, modified the startup burner system, and moved the load burner.

Proper planning and coordination were essential to completing the work within the 30-day outage while continuing to work safely within a tight site. The team’s biggest challenge was flying the floor panels into the boiler and completing the welds to facilitate the rest of the interior boiler work. Cianbro’s temporary design team was able to design a shoring tower system to fly the floor panels over and between existing piping and ductwork.

When working on boiler tubes, quality is essential. Our team completed over 700 tube welds with a greater than 96 percent pass rate.

The teams working on the air, black liquor, and smelt spout systems also did a great job modifying ductwork, cutting new openings into the boiler, and installing new equipment efficiently. The team was able to coordinate effectively, completing all the work without interrupting each other.

Additionally, to help fine tune the skill sets of our team members and subcontractors on this project, the Cianbro Institute worked with QA/QC and the operations team, to establish a hands-on simulation of the window welds and buddy weld portion of this work. This simulation included a bend test to verify the quality of the participant’s welds. The Institute team was thrilled to hear about the quality welding performance that took place on this project.

“Our team worked safely and efficiently within a short span of time, delivering quality work for our client,” said Charles Tapley, Project Manager. “I’m proud to say that with the many potential hazards that come with working in a boiler house, our team was able to plan and complete the outage with 55,000 safe hours.”

The team worked over and under other team members, with hundreds of welds, many floors of scaffolding, rigging equipment, and working on existing systems that needed to be locked out properly. Cianbro spent weeks planning and reviewing the protocols to ensure these issues were addressed. Overall, this project was another successful project of many Cianbro has performed on the Woodland Pulp/St. Croix tissue site.