Cianbro Builds State of the Art Substations for the Maine Power Reliability Program n
By Hannah Bass
In August 2010, Cianbro secured the work for a significant piece of the Maine Power Reliability Program (MPRP) project with the award by Central Maine Power of the agreement to engineer, procure and construct (EPC) five new substations. The MPRP is a $1.4 billion upgrade to Maine’s bulk power system and involves over 400 miles of new or upgraded transmission line, five new substations and upgrades to numerous existing substations. The award of the EPC Agreement for the five new (“Greenfield”) substations in the towns of Benton, Monmouth, Cumberland, Lewiston and Windsor is a noteworthy milestone for Cianbro as it is the largest electrical substation construction project undertaken to date. By all accounts, the effort has thus far been a tremendous success. As of late September 2012, one of the five stations was operational, three were in the process of final commissioning and at the last site, Cianbro was setting steel, buswork and substation equipment on foundations and
14
beginning the dress-out of the control house by the end of 2012. The EPC Substations team is led by Project Manager Phil Dube and Senior Project Engineer John Daley, with oversight from Manager of Projects Troy Martin, and support from numerous indispensable field and administrative team members, including on-site support from Russell Dunn, Jeff Lerch, Hannah Bass, Dan Pellerin and Gail Mayo. This team has also recently kicked off the MPRP Substations Package #2 (“Brownfields”), where Cianbro serves as the substation construction contractor for three major substation expansions in Lewiston, Kennebunk and Livermore Falls, and upgrades to over a dozen existing substations throughout the state. Engineering began immediately by Cianbro’s design subcontractor, Sargent & Lundy, LLC. The intended construction and overall energization schedule drove critical path engineering. Simultaneous with the kickoff of engineering was the group effort between the project management team, Sargent & Lundy and Cianbro’s Purchasing
C I A N B R O S U M M E R / F A L L C H AT T E R
group to execute substantial purchase orders for substation equipment and structural steel, with major vendors located throughout the US and Canada, including numerous Maine-based manufacturers and suppliers. This effort included heavy coordination with all of these vendors for the manufacture and delivery of equipment to support the engineering and construction schedule. Cianbro had already secured the site development work for three of the five substations. Cianbro self-performed the site work at the Benton site, and along with its experienced earthwork subcontractor, Shaw Brothers Construction, Cianbro prepared the sites in Cumberland and Lewiston. Because of Cianbro’s position as prime contractor for both the site development and EPC agreements, the teams were able to integrate the foundation installation work (part of EPC agreement) with the site work, eliminating substantial duplicative operations (excavation and backfill), while also enjoying the benefit of continuity with one site work subcontractor through the two phases of the project. Cianbro, with the