Building on 40 years of listening to and collaborating with clients, AltairStrickland is taking on new challenges in its long and illustrious portfolio of projects.
Among the country's premier authorities in process unit upgrades, revamps and turnarounds, La Porte, Texas-based AltairStrickland, an EMCOR Industrial Services company, is proud to serve some of the biggest names in refineries, petrochemical plants, chemical facilities, gas plants, power plants and ammonia plants. AltairStrickland specializes in both scheduled and unscheduled (emergency) work on fluid catalytic cracking units (FCCUs), delayed coking units and ammonia units. However, the company's experience doesn't stop there.
Over the past 18 months, a refinery revamp project has presented AltairStrickland with new and unprecedented challenges, testing its planning acumen and proving its ability to deliver a successful project even under the most difficult circumstances.
"We were brought in mainly to do alterations to coke drums and install new delta valves," explained Project Manager Arnold Salazar. "That was the main scope initially, but then they asked us to do the whole coker block, which is a complete revamp."
According to Salazar, this project is a great example of what AltairStrickland can provide clients beyond its usual FCCU and delayed coker revamps. Involving over 30 units expected to be brought on line later this year, it is also the biggest project ever performed by AltairStrickland.
"A reinstatement of the whole coker block means opening up every piece of fixed equipment -- drums, towers, exchangers, any vessel out there -- and doing a full inspection for any discovery work, repairs or modifications that need to be done," Salazar said. "And then there's every piece of pipe. We had a total of about 48 different piping systems: 19 utilities and 29 process piping systems.
"This refinery has been down since mid-2012, and when you do a complete revamp, you have to go inside each unit and change out everything -- every gasket, every bolt, every valve two inches or below, with bigger valves tested and replaced as needed. We hydrotested every system to check the integrity of the piping and then replaced anything that leaked or ruptured."
Salazar said the job's extensiveness is unique because not many refineries are left idle long enough to require a complete revamp. The comprehensive nature of the project called for a wide variety of craftspeople, from boilermakers to pipefitters, peaking at 185 workers total.
"When we came onto this project, the coker unit [revamp] was only 5-percent planned, so we essentially started from nothing," Salazar recounted. "Normally, a project of this scope requires one to two years of planning, and we had to get it done within six months.
"Typically, when we show up, the scope is already defined, but none of that was done here. We had to learn their systems on the fly and create the packages for the work ourselves, which was a huge challenge for us, but we've excelled at it.
"No one has ever done a complete revamp [of this facility] like this, so we had to go back into their archives to get all the information we needed to create the scope. We were one of very few contractors that could put all that together. Our ability to dig up the information, go to the source and build [the scope] ourselves put us ahead of the game."
Safety with pride
So far, AltairStrickland's refinery revamp project has racked up 700,000 man-hours with zero recordables. Director of Sales and Marketing Rick Ramirez said he couldn't be prouder of Salazar and his team's performance, especially when it comes to mitigating hazards and making sure everyone was individually motivated to stay safe throughout the duration of the job.
"I can't emphasize enough how proud I am of Arnold, his team and the capabilities they have displayed on this job," Ramirez said. "By using the depth and range of experience we have gained over the past 40-plus years, they were able to provide safe solutions to our customer's most complex challenges."
Altair Strickland's biggest project yet is a great example of what the company can provide clients beyond its usual FCCU and delayed coker revamps.
The added complications of the COVID-19 pandemic also required AltairStrickland to create special housing accommodations for workers, implementing lockdowns and mandated quarantines before anyone was allowed back on-site. Although a travel ban prevented the arrival of 40-50 additional craftspeople to the project, which caused a slight delay in schedule, AltairStrickland soldiered on, completing any additional discovery work safely and successfully, even while understaffed.
Clearing hurdles to success
AltairStrickland was commended by the refinery for its weld-rejection rate on the project. Well below the industry average, the weld-rejection rate was hailed as "phenomenal," especially given the substantial number of welds involved in the complete revamp.
The logistical challenges of long lead times and supply chain disruptions during the pandemic presented additional problems AltairStrickland was proud to be able to resolve.
"It's not like picking up the phone and calling a vendor or rental yard and saying, 'Hey, I need this tomorrow,'" said Engineering Manager Diego Rojas. "The planning was premature when we got here, and a lot of the engineering had really just taken off, so one of the challenges was finding a fabrication shop that wouldn't give us such a long lead time to fabricate the equipment and bring it back here. That was another unknown, another discovery we had to make."
To complicate matters more, due to the remote location of the project, equipment couldn't be transported by plane and had to be shipped by barge instead. "Getting everything out here was a huge accomplishment," Ramirez remarked.
With so much discovery work and the logistics of sourcing items after finding out what needed to be replaced, certain delays were inevitable -- but essential to the refinery's future safe operation. "One of the major challenges came when we opened up the coke drums and found some bulging and cracks on several of the drums. That prevented us from installing the new modification on the bottoms of the drums and the delta valves until we had the repairs done. That was unforeseen and took up quite a bit of time," Rojas explained. "The drums were originally brought on line about 20 years ago, when the unit was built. Upon initial inspection of the drums, major fracturing was discovered, so those had to be repaired.
AltairStrickland was commended for its weld-rejection rate on the project.
"There were also major modifications done to the frac tower, which is the biggest tower in the unit, and some design changes required reengineering of components before they could be installed."
An additional challenge came when the team members discovered the cutting deck where they had planned to stage big lifts was in bad shape, so they needed to modify it to handle the work to come -- another situation they had not anticipated. But AltairStrickland handled these setbacks as it always does: with the leadership and dedication of industry experts who adapt without cutting safety corners to get the job done.
"We do complex jobs, and the way we differentiate ourselves from the competition is the knowledge we have and how we can plan to complete these projects in the safest and most efficient manner," said Rojas. "Our supervision has the experience and skillset to ensure success."
Impressive results
Rising to these types of challenges has helped AltairStrickland become a recognized industry name in revamps and turnarounds. Busy and productive, the company is often called upon by clients to return and engage in additional work. According to Jeff Webber, president of AltairStrickland, more than 75 percent of the company's work comes from repeat customers.
"That percentage speaks volumes," Webber said. "It shows our goal isn't to perform one project for a customer, but to build a relationship that lasts in perpetuity. We strive to work in a manner that consistently shows customers just how seriously AltairStrickland approaches quality, pre-planning, safety and value. When it comes time for additional project opportunities, we want to be our customers' preferred contractor. We want to earn the chance to work for them over and over again."
With its largest project yet nearing successful completion with zero injuries, AltairStrickland plans to continue its long tradition of customer satisfaction and innovative problem-solving, looking forward to the future with confidence.
"By applying the same specialized, dedicated focus on planning, safety and quality to everything the company does, AltairStrickland is well-positioned to help our customers improve asset reliability and optimization while serving the communities in which we both reside in the safest, most efficient way possible," Webber stated.
For more information, visit www.altairstrickland.com or call (281) 478-6200.
Delayed coker unit revamp scope:
- Coke drum alterations and dump chute replacement
- New delta valves, feed line revamp piping
- Coke drum structural steel replacement
- Delayed coker entire unit revamp
- Coker block piping reinstatement
