Progress on a construction site can sometimes be thwarted when new equipment or materials arrive with problems.Sometimes, no matter how much planning went into a project, one or two obstacles can become a showstopper, and Plan B becomes the only option.
On one recent rigging job, R. Baker & Son was to hoist twenty-four newly-arrived tank agitators into a stainless-steel tank with the motor and gearbox mounted on top. It was discovered, however, that the agitator blade hubs were 0.5” too large to fit through the tank opening due to a machine shop error, leaving the crane and entire rigging team at a standstill.
Rather than waste valuable time and money, R. Baker & Son did some quick thinking and reassigned riggers and millwrights to prefabricating support brackets and ladders and providing and cutting dunnage to set the 30-ft. tanks on their new pads. We made an emergency call to a specialty stainless-steel fabricator that assessed the situation and made recommendations to fix the problem. The recommendations were presented to the manufacturer and they quickly agreed. The Baker Team provided a small work area and prepped the agitators so two crews of stainless-steel technicians could start making the necessary modifications the next morning.
The stainless-steel contractor was able to modify four agitator shafts per day, keeping the project moving along. In addition to rigging the agitators as they became available, Baker crew members kept busy installing agitator supports and getting tanks set in place. As a result, the end date for this phase of the project was exceeded by only one day, rather than weeks or months if the agitators had been sent back to the manufacturer for modification. This was excellent news to the project management team as many piping and pump activities needed to commence as soon as tank installation was completed. In the end, through quick, coordinated effort, Plan B made all the difference.
About R. Baker & Son All Industrial Services
R. Baker & Son All Industrial Services, a Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE), in business since 1935, is a premier specialized contractor operating in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, with over one hundred employees and an exemplary safety record (we have been directly involved in four sites that received VPP OSHA Safety Awards). R. Baker & Son is financially strong, with bonding capabilities over $10 million. Capabilities include industrial and commercial demolition, rigging, machinery- and plant-moving, dismantling, decommissioning, plant and equipment relocation, interior demolition, selective demolition, warehousing, wrecking and razing, millwright, plant reconfigurations, heavy rigging, salvage, environmental services, remediation, decontamination, abatement, and investment and asset recovery.
R. Baker & Son - All Industrial Services
190 Boundary Road
Marlboro, NJ 07746
