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Similar to Victaulic Grooved Piping Implications For Workforce Management
Similar to Victaulic Grooved Piping Implications For Workforce Management (20)
Victaulic Grooved Piping Implications For Workforce Management
- 1. Grooved piping implications for workforce management
- 2. Grooved Construction Reduces Field Manhours Large Component of Total Manhours
- 5. Anatomy of a Grooved Joint
- 10. Hoover Dam
- 11. Ontario Power Generation Healey Falls G.S. 145” Penstock Expansion Joints
- 12. Canoe Creek Run-of-River British Columbia 36” Grooved Penstock
- 15. FACT: The average age of welders is 54. * * According to the American Welding Society
- 16. Skilled Labour Allocation Pipefitters Specialized Welders Crew Mix: Journeyman Fitter Apprentice Crew Mix: Specialized Welder Pipefitter (journeyman) Systems/Applications: Cooling Water Compressed Air Water Treatment Fire Water Domestic Water Process Water (Penstocks) Systems/Applications: (P91) Steam NG Hydrogen
- 17. Schedule Impact with Grooved Construction
- 18. Case Study Portlands Energy Centre Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- 20. John MacFarland Power Market Manager [email_address] 416-580-3007 Resources: www.victaulic.com www.compressedschedule.com
- 21. Grooved piping implications for workforce management
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon, my name is John MacFarland, Power Market Manager for Victaulic for our Canadian Operations. As you can see from the title of my presentation I intend to explain how grooved piping can have positive implications on how developers can manage the labour available to them on a construction project.
- What is important to understand is that Piping makes up a significant percentage of the total manhours required to construct a Power plant. And it is manhours, particularly field or site manhours that is often the unknown variable and biggest area of risk for project developers. I will show how grooved piping compared to traditional weld/flange methods can reduce this area of risk.
- Typically for welded construction the total cost breakdown is that the percentage of cost is weighted in labour vs. material costs, which is as I mentioned risk intensive and leaves project stakeholders with a level of exposure. Conversely, with the grooved piping method, the labour to do the work is far less and therefore carries with it less risk and exposure.
- Victaulic finds it roots during WW1 when the British War Department sought a faster way to join water and fuel lines that were used to serve the constantly moving front lines. The new method was nicknamed the “Victory Joint” at the time and when our founders incorporated the company in 1925 they combined the words Victory and Hydraulics to come up with our company name – Victaulic.
- Since being invented in 1925 by Victaulic, grooved mechanical piping systems have changed the way contractors, owners and engineers view piping systems by providing a faster, easier and more economical way to join pipe. The economics of the grooved method derives from a simple assembly that involves three basic concepts: - A pressure-responsive gasket that creates a leak-tight seal - Couplings that hold the pipe together and; - Bolts and nuts that secure the couplings to the pipe. A groove is rolled or cut into the end of the pipe to engage the couplings, where upon the gaskets seal on the outside diameter of the pipe between the grooves. The sealing action is enhanced as the system is pressurized or a vacuum condition is introduced.
- This animation will show you how the groove is created in the pipe. The pipe is inserted into the tool where a mating set of rolls, cold forms a groove into the pipe under hydraulic pressure as the pipe rotates.
- Once the grooved pipe ends are in position, the coupling is stabbed onto one pipe end, the other pipe is inserted into the other side of the coupling and the bolt and nuts are tightened so that the bolt pads come into metal to metal contact which indicates the joint is complete.
- Victaulic was founded on innovation and product development and we continue that mission today by bringing labour saving solutions to the mechanical marketplace. Our Pressfit System delivers time savings for small diameter pipe versus threaded and welded methods, our grooved concepts carry the pipe range through to 60” in diameter and for very large pipe systems such as Hydroelectric Penstock piping we offer couplings and expansion joints to 192” and larger if required.
- The insights being presented today is drawn from our experience resulting from decades of working closely with Power plant constructors. The following is a partial list of some of the prominent customers who specify and purchase Victaulic.
- Examples of Grooved piping can be found in Hydroelectric, Nuclear, Coal, Gas Fired, Biomass, Geothermal, and Solar projects all around the globe. The Hoover Dam is one such example.
- Closer to home, here is a photo from the site of an expansion project at OPG’s Healey Falls G.S. near Campbellford, Ontario. Our couplings and expansion joints are being used on the Penstocks at this plant.
- On Vancouver Island, again our couplings are being utilized to connect Penstock piping in difficult terrain and weather conditions which otherwise pose for challenges in executing a welded build strategy. On the day this photo was taken the rain was so prolonged and heavy that the weld crews were taken off the mountain but we were able to assemble couplings.
- This is a photo of both our Grooved and Pressfit piping installed on Utility piping systems at the Greater Toronto Airport Cogeneration plant. On this project, the contractor flipped the plant piping which was designed as welded to Victaulic so could ensure they could meet the aggressive construction schedule.
- To support my earlier comment that Grooved piping takes less time to install than welded we put together a graph to plot Labour Units that are published by the Mechanical Contractors Association for pipe components such as valves, tees, couplings, etc.. When applied to a typical Bill of Materials you will get the following data. For sizes from 21/2” through 24” this chart indicates the estimated time it takes to install welded, shown in Green and the time to construct with Grooved, shown in Orange. You can see that the industry acknowledges that it takes ½ the time to construct piping with grooved than with welded.
- A major problem that plagues the construction industry is that the average age of welders is currently at 54 and continues to climb. As a wave of retirements loom, welding schools and on-site training programs aren't pumping out replacements fast enough.
- So recognizing this problem with Specialized Labour many Owners, Engineers and Contractors are planning their projects so that they utilize the welders they can find on the Piping Systems that must be welded and use Pipefitters from the Labour Pool to install Victaulic Grooved and Pressfit systems on the Balance of Plant systems such as Cooling Water, Process Water, Compressed Air, Penstocks, etc.. This strategy also saves money when it comes to the Crew mix that can be utilized. In other words on the welded side a Specialized Welder is required, accompanied by a Journeyman Pipefitter, whereas on the Grooved side only a first year apprentice and a journeyman pipefitter is required.
- So by reducing man-hours required to do the work the Schedule can be positively affected. Less men on the jobsite for less time, resulting in less risk of delays or project schedule overruns.
- I’ll end with a Case Study that pulls together the points I have been making. The Portlands Energy Centre was recently constructed in Toronto’s Portlands to provide much needed energy to the city’s core. Our Victaulic grooved and Pressfit systems were utilized on the project for water and air systems.
- The constructors were faced with a challenge of meeting a tight schedule on the project and the added pressure at the outset of construction with a skilled welder shortage. Additionally the site footprint was tight, so that much planning went into ensuring they didn’t run into site congestion issues. The result was that they utilized the welders they had for High energy systems such as the gas and steam piping and used Victaulic for water and air services. What they found was that by using grooved and Press technology they were able to reduce 3 person teams down to 2 person teams which helped address congestion issues and ultimately they commented in some areas they realized up to 10 times more productivity than they would have seen with weld/thread methods. The Construction manager was quoted as saying at the end of the project that he; “ Recommend any time Victaulic can be implemented it should be, because it allows the constructor to maximize available labour and improve utilization of higher quality labour.”
- Thanks for your time. If any of you have any questions you can catch up with us at at booth here at the show and lastly I’d like to thank the APPrO organizers for affording me a few minutes to share this story with you.
- Introduction