While working in the Gulf Coast's largest industrial facilities, International Cooling Tower (ICT) uses innovative construction methods for complete cooling tower replacements during planned or unplanned outages. ICT has been successfully engineering, procuring, constructing and performing replacements of cooling towers since 1958.
ICT started as a small company focused on optimizing facilities' cooling capabilities by using only the highest-quality materials and components. This still holds true today, but ICT has grown over the years into a North American market leader in industrial cooling tower design, manufacturing and field services. ICT has expanded across the U.S., with offices in locations such as Deer Park and La Porte, Texas; Chandler, Arizona; and Edmonton, Alberta. Integrity, experience and striving for innovative solutions have formed the foundation on which ICT's current longterm business relationships are built.
To demonstrate how much ICT has grown recently, the company's man-hours in the U.S. went from 300,000 five years ago to approximately 1.2 million in 2019. In 2020, ICT has completed projects for some of the largest refining, chemical and petrochemical companies on the Gulf Coast.
"We are always expanding and growing," said ICT CEO Brent Middleton. "Whether it's with new geographic regions or markets, we look toward controlled growth. We are also continually looking for new customers and opportunities. One of our founders once said, 'You only want one new customer per year, but then you keep that customer forever.' That is our strategy on controlled growth. We have the expertise to service any new technology that emerges."
According to Middleton, ICT enjoys building its relationships with customers.
"Time after time, we show our customers how we operate," he said. "ICT executes its projects well. When we show up on a site, the customer knows what they're going to get: a strong, turnkey project that's completed on time, within budget and safely. We have long-standing relationships with our customers, some dating back over 50 years."
Middleton said he's excited about what's been happening at ICT. In addition to ICT completing its many quick-turnaround projects, the company has also been at the forefront of new construction methods and new material-design options for cooling towers. In the early 2000s, fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) was introduced as a replacement material for pressure-treated wood. ICT has been an industry leader, helping facilities implement FRP upgrades.
"We continue to complete wood-to-FRP upgrades of cooling towers," Middleton said. "In Chandler, Arizona, we have our own fabrication facility that fabricates FRP and other specialized cooling tower components for a quicker design-to-fabrication turnaround. We can do all the design and fabrication ourselves, so we don't have to wait on someone else for materials."
Whether it's in regard to safety, construction, engineering, quality, planning or materials management, ICT strives for excellence in all areas of operations.
An expert in project planning, safety
When it comes to using modular construction for cooling tower projects, ICT is an industry expert. ICT also uses innovation and the most up-to-date industry standards and guidelines to build strong, lasting towers.
"Today, we have to update existing cooling towers to make them resistant to 150-mile-per-hour winds," said ICT VP of Engineering Brad Vickers. "We update a cooling tower using its existing concrete base. There are challenges when it comes to putting in anchors and anchor bolts while the cooling tower is still on line, but ICT is always prepared to face these challenges."
According to Vickers, the Gulf Coast has a large number of cooling towers that were built in the '60s, '70s or '80s and have reached the end of their service life. These towers require a structural renewal, and ICT has several options for this.
"For example, we can revamp a cooling tower with one or two cells shut down while the rest of the tower remains on line," Vickers said. "We can also perform the cooling tower replacements during very short outages and use a modular build, which allows us to shorten the timeframe of the outage significantly."
All cooling towers that ICT rebuilds require a review of the structural specifications.
"Most customers don't want to 'grandfather in' the original design conditions, because those were only designed to resist lower wind speeds," Vickers explained. "Cooling towers now need to withstand higher wind speeds, in accordance with American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) guidelines. With Hurricane Laura, we saw several of our towers built within the past couple years make it through the storm without any or very minimal damage. The towers ICT builds can withstand the severe weather we see on the Gulf Coast."
Furthermore, ICT is able to perform modular builds of cooling towers, and Vickers emphasized this is what sets the company apart from the competition.
"We're asked to design towers and build them in our yard or near the existing towers on-site to shorten the length of outages," he said. "Modular builds also allow us to minimize the amount of on-site labor. Our engineering and construction teams work closely to make sure no one is in harm's way during a lift and the installation of modules. Working safely during the entire modular building and lifting process is our main priority."
ICT's superintendents and field staff conduct continuous safety training, stressing proper work procedures and the importance of self-awareness on-site.
"Safety is one of ICT's core values. We want all of our employees to return home safely to their families each and every day," Middleton said. "We have a lot of behavioral-based and on-site safety assessments that occur throughout the day on any given project. There are no shortcuts when it comes to safety. It's always paramount. ICT is a family, so we watch out for each other and want everyone to be safe at all times."
An expert in cooling tower solutions
ICT provides turnkey industrial cooling tower solutions that offer clients enhanced cost management and a dedicated design, engineering, procurement, construction management and implementation team that ensures a project is completed on time and within budget. ICT recently completed a multicell, turnkey cooling tower replacement for a refinery in the Gulf Coast region.
According to ICT Operations Manager Aaron Schumann, the project involved tearing down a dilapidated tower and performing a complete rebuild.
"The tower was demolished and rebuilt within a very short timeframe," Schumann said. "If this cooling tower would have fallen on its own, the whole refinery would've needed to shut down. That would've been very costly and dangerous for the owner. The refinery had a very short outage window and we were able to achieve the project's goal for them."
"The job went very well," said ICT Gulf Coast Project Director Mike Zazulak. "The key with this rebuild was having a lot of time to plan it out. Sometimes we get awarded a job six weeks before it's supposed to start. That wasn't the case here. Also, the customer provided us with precise communication, and it allowed us to execute the plan exactly how we laid it out."
With the project involving a complete teardown and rebuild within an allotted window of time, ICT had to remove all of the existing mechanical components from the base of the tower. ICT then had to start from scratch and build two new cells, but Zazulak said the team was prepared for any obstacles.
"We were able to really focus on project management, control and planning, which mirrored how well the project went," he said. "Because we were able to develop risk planning and a very good communication plan, if any risk came up -- whether it was planned or unknown -- we had a game plan on how to fix everything effectively. We had the ideal amount of people in a very small space to efficiently finish the work on time. What we really benefited from was being able to systematically plan each activity very precisely. As we completed work, we moved our crews around very quickly and performed parallel tasks. All in all, the project was completed on schedule and safely."
ICT has also been very busy responding to damage on the Gulf Coast as a result of Hurricane Laura. One of ICT's customers had 14 cooling towers on-site, with three of those towers having been built by ICT in the past four years. The three towers ICT built had no damage as a result of the hurricane.
"The towers ICT builds withstand their design parameters," Zazulak said. "Our structural engineering team is very robust and follows the latest ASCE standards. We make sure the foundational connections are where they need to be. We sometimes have to get creative with our anchor systems. But when the towers are hit with an event like Hurricane Laura, they do very well."
What's next for ICT?
According to Middleton, ICT strives to be the best at what it does and will continue on that path moving forward.
"We have industry-leading experience and the best talent in the business," Middleton said. "Our people are solutions- driven; they're smart and hard-working, and they embrace innovation and technology. I think those two strengths -- our experience and our people -- will continue to serve us well as we move into the future."
With grant-funded research by ICT, the company continues to work with mechanical engineering students at Texas A&M University to explore future design options and innovation. ICT believes it's important to engage the industry's future engineers early on. The company is also investing in its engineering systems and industry-leading construction software.
"We will always be committed to having a strong engineering team and hiring good engineers," Middleton said. "We let our engineers come up with innovative ideas and then our construction group plans the projects well."
Even with all the hurdles COVID-19 has created for industry, ICT will continue to build on its success. ICT's commitment to safety, quality, innovation, engineering, project planning and environmental sustainability has been the focus of its business practices for the past 60-plus years.
For more information, visit www.ictower.com or call (832) 780-6900.
