Featured Project: The Maritza Power Plant
Scott McKay, Senior Project Manager

The Maritza Power Plant project proved to be a chance for the Dowco team to "show our stuff" and the Maritza crew came through with flying colors.

The Maritza Power Plant – Boiler House Project was designed by Alstom Power Systems GmbH of Stuttgart Germany.  The project consists of two (almost identical) Boiler Houses (Unit # 1 and Unit # 2) each of which weighs about 4400T (excluding the main steel support for the boilers). Unit # 1 was detailed by companies in Finland and China but when Alstom received the shop drawings they were not satisfied with the results.  After some investigation, Alstom (through our Tekla connection)  contacted Dowco, explained the situation and requested a meeting in Stuttgart.   Dowco's rep flew to Stuttgart and provided a proposal which included a “review” of Unit # 1 drawings and connection design and modification to approximately 30% of the Unit # 1 shop drawings (which were to be used for the modified Unit # 2 configuration).  During Dowco’s review of the Unit # 1 - Tekla Model (and drawings) we discovered that there were serious problems with both connection design and with how Unit # 1 had been detailed (many of the pieces could not be erected as shown).  Dowco's scope of work was subsequently modified several times and we ended up providing new connection design and shop drawings for most of Unit # 2 and even some for areas of Unit # 1. Dowco’s scope of work (and the actual design of the project) continued to be very dynamic from the beginning to the end and ultimately involved almost 70,000 man hours of detailing and 16,000 man hours of connection design.  Dowco was also asked to send Tekla support personnel to Stuttgart to help Alstom keep their Tekla engineering models up to date as all of the design changes occurred.  Alberto Guandique (Langley office), Mike Wolfram (Langley office), Matthew Duong (Langley office), Roberto Vazzaz (Burnaby office), Arek Wojcik (Burnaby office) and  Paola De Jesus (Toronto office) agreed to assist Alstom in Stuttgart and we thank them for going the extra mile (no pun intended).  Our team in Stuttgart and our domestic teams worked closely with Mr. Thomas Hirsch and Mr. Lars Lusebrink of Alstom whose extraordinary dedication to the project guided us through literally hundreds of design issues and changes.

The Maritza schedule required our crews to work many long days and weekends and we’re proud to say that our team was up to the task. The dynamic nature of the Maritza project required extensive coordination and involved our Burnaby, Langley and Toronto offices on the detailing side and Integrated Design Engineers (supported by Structural Consultants Inc.) on the connection design side. The team performed extremely well and the first phase of the project is currently being erected. Our colleagues at Alstom have asked us to participate in a “residual program” which is currently on-going and will continue for some time to come. We expect that the residual program will involve additional field modifications to both Unit # 1 and Unit # 2 framing.

To our entire Maritza crew, a sincere "well done!"