PIONEER SEED - GROWTH CHAMBER RELOCATION - ELECTRICAL
EICA – Award Winner

This project was a fast track relocation of a scientific community and their experiments from multiple locations into a single facility. This work had to be completed without interruption to the life cycles of their research.

The work on this job was conducted in a true partnership between the owner, engineering firm, construction manager and M.Davis. Weekly team meetings facilitated open and honest communication between all parties creating solutions to the current challenges and in many cases coming up with ideas that reduced schedule or saved costs.

Safety played a major role in our success, as it does on all of our projects. Some of the safety challenges we faced were as follows:

• Working in a building where the main power couldn’t be turned off
• All area work required carefully planned outages for tie-ins
• Dielectric PPE was worn when working on or near energized circuits
• Not the preferred method but the only feasible option
• Underground services
• Prints not to date so all excavations had to be scanned for underground interferences
• Because we excavated in an existing building around operating utilities, most of the digging had to be done by hand in trenches that were braced with hydraulic shoring

Once the work areas were isolated, they were completed gutted to the steel columns and concrete floors. After the D+R was complete, entirely new electrical systems had to be installed to include the following:

• A new electrical control room
• Over a dozen new electrical panels had to be installed
• Ranging from 125 amps to 600 amps
• Electrical systems for
• Researchers office complex
• Tissue culture facility
• Multi use lab space
• Multiple growth chambers

In order to meet schedule and keep quality high, we broke our electrical workforce into four groups with each group having its own team leader. The foreman met with each team leader daily to review and adjust schedule and to make sure that our procedures like point to point, megging of power conductors, termination sheets, shutdown requests as well as job control we’re all in accordance with M.Davis standards.

The end result was a project that was completed ahead of schedule with a cost savings in excess of $400,000 and a customer that continues to utilize us as their preferred electrical/ mechanical contractor.

PIONEER SEED - GROWTH CHAMBER RELOCATION - MECHANICAL
EICA – Award Winner

This project was a fast track relocation of a scientific community and their experiments from multiple locations into a single facility. This work had to be completed without interruption to the life cycles of their research.

The work on this job was conducted in a true partnership between the owner, engineering firm, construction manager and M.Davis. Weekly team meetings facilitated open and honest communication between all parties creating solutions to the current challenges and in many cases coming up with ideas that reduced schedule or saved costs.

Safety played a major role in our success, as it does on all of our projects. Some of the safety challenges we faced were as follows:

• Making sure all of the lab equipment was decontaminated before removal
• Being able to isolate services for removal behind a double block and bleed
• Executing line breaks on eight separate systems in multiple locations
• Scanning for underground interferences
• Excavating by hand around operating systems
• Material handling / rigging of old equipment during the D+R phase

Once the work areas were isolated, they were completed gutted to the steel columns and concrete floors. After the D+R was complete, entirely new mechanical systems had to be installed to include the following:

• Sanitary + domestic water to support restrooms, kitchens + commercial space
• HVAC and mechanical piping to support occupancy
• Mechanical systems to support the growth chamber and tissue culture facility
• Two new heat exchangers on the cooling side in an existing mechanical room

After all of the systems were installed, over a dozen growth chamber were relocated into the renovated space and put on line. The relocation was accomplished in a series of moves that allowed the scientist not to miss a single growth season.

To ensure that we maintained a high level of quality on the piping, which measured in excess of one mile, we provided the following:

• All service piping under went a hydrostatic test prior to commissioning
  100% success with no warranty work
• All underground drainage, waste, vents and process piping were inspected and approved by an independent authorized agency

The end result was a project that was completed ahead of schedule with a cost savings in excess of $400,000 and a customer that continues to utilize us as their preferred electrical/ mechanical contractor.

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