Manning LNG Storage and Trucking Facility
Meshoppen, Pa.             
Best Project

Owner: UGI Energy Services
Lead Design Firm: Borton-Lawson Engineering Inc.
General Contractor: Cianbro Corp.
Subcontractors: S2W Contracting LLC (Grout and Compressor Alignment); Robo Construction (Pipe Welding and Grinding); Mansfield Crane

Scheduling constraints and working with sensitive equipment made construction of this liquefied natural gas facility in northeastern Pennsylvania challenging. The project, completed in 11 months, required installing two underground pipeline connections linking the new station, the existing compressor station and the existing pipeline.

The project also included installing major pieces of equipment, such as a Solar Taurus 60 turbine compressor driver, Ingersoll Rand nitrogen compressor, liquefaction equipment, a cold box, two boil-off gas compressors, an emergency generator and a regeneration compressor. A fire-suppression system, including five firewater monitor vaults with automated nozzles, was also installed as well as three WEG fan cooling units, three absorber vessels and valve skids.

The team used 12,890 ft of mechanical pipe, 36,440 ft of conduit, 178,334 ft of power and control cable, pipe racks, duct banks, cable trays and lighting fixtures. Cianbro fabricated structural steel supports for all pipe supports, equipment, grated platforms and ductwork.

System upgrades made during the project meant the team had to work with incomplete design documents for some areas, such as mechanical piping, instrumentation, electrical controls, enhanced structural steel components and integration of mechanical/electrical systems between various system components. To address this issue, the team worked collaboratively to prioritize complete design deliverables for early schedule activities. Cianbro also updated the schedule weekly in Primavera P6 Schedules, software that the team says isn’t typically used in projects of this kind.

“It was imperative that all project stakeholders met weekly to discuss material procurement, the electrical and mechanical progress and the sequencing of construction,” the submission says. “This ensured that everyone understood the critical interface points and were aligned to perform an efficient installation. Despite the multitude of piping systems, electrical power and control systems, and the evolving design, the entire team worked collaboratively to overcome every challenge.”

Just-in-time equipment delivery schedule changes also required a coordinated delivery and unloading plan for each piece of equipment. For example, a 108,400-lb cold-box module was too big to pass through the site’s roadway entrance and had to be offloaded onto an adjacent property. The module was placed on a replacement trailer and brought into the site for setting via a two-crane pick.

The team also completed more than 3,000 pipe welds with a 99.2% acceptance rate. Despite a 6.03 Occupational Safety and Health Administration recordable-incident rate, the team had a perfect lost-time accident rate during 66,313 worker-hours logged.

“Although the safety record wasn’t perfect,” one judge says, “they learned from several small incidents, and they utilized an innovative method of analyzing hazards with the owner’s 3D model.”

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