Industrial facilities require large amounts of energy to build and operate. Owners of these facilities are forever balancing their energy inputs and outputs against commitments to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions to help combat climate change. For nearly forty years, Melloy Industrial Services Inc. has been helping clients navigate this complex journey.

“Sustainability and resiliency are not choices for industry; they are strategic imperatives,” says Mitch Soetaert, vice president and district manager of Melloy, a member of the PCL family of companies that specializes in turnarounds and maintenance. “Our clients are very conscious about being more efficient; They want to produce more with less.”

The steps taken depend on the facility and the owner’s goals. There are different options depending on whether the work involves a legacy facility that could be improved with more efficient equipment and process or a brand-new facility that is tracking embodied carbon and aiming for net-zero carbon emissions. But whatever the scope or scale of the project, Melloy brings decades of experience working in the fast-paced world of industrial maintenance and construction to these unique challenges.

Melloy’s business services manager, Allan Rose, says that although the work Melloy does is generally known in the industry as maintenance and turnaround, this feels like a bit of a misnomer.

“Our sector really should be called maintenance and improvement,” he says. “Everything we do on a turnaround is about bringing things up to a new code, a cleaner code, increasing sustainability, reducing emissions or improving process safety.” This work includes fabrication, site execution and ongoing facility maintenance. “We're a big part of the energy transition and an important partner for clients seeking sustainability and a secure resource future.”

Rose says one goal for Melloy’s clients is to keep everything “in circuit,” meaning heat recovery and waste product recovery are fundamental parts of their thinking. “How they go about it may differ – it may be co-generation or heat recovery or more efficient, cleaner equipment – but everything goes into that calculation.”

Soetaert says clients building new facilities are also considering embodied carbon. That means measuring all the CO2 emissions generated in the production, transportation and installation of the facility’s basic building blocks, the concrete, steel and machinery. “All environmental aspects of a project are considered,” Soetaert says, “so embodied carbon is absolutely in that discussion.”

Whatever the situation, Melloy brings the most value to clients when it is brought in during the planning phase of projects to advise on materials, processes and general constructability. “We put our seasoned folk on those sites to collaborate on ways to do things more efficiently and effectively,” says Soetaert. “We’re kind of our own worst enemy because the better job we do, the quicker we finish, always working ourselves out of a job and ideally into the next one.”

Corrosion is a major challenge in many industrial facilities. In addition to the direct cost of repairing or replacing infrastructure, indirect costs include loss of productivity, environmental damage and safety concerns.

In response, owners are using materials like stainless steels, nickel, titanium and increasingly complex alloys to reduce corrosion and extend the life of components, allowing plants to run longer and more efficiently. “Alloy steel might cost more than carbon steel, but the return on investment will be there because there will be less need to replace and repair,” Soetaert says. “It’s about increasing reliability and reducing material waste.”

PCL brings a unique skillset to the installation of these components, with advanced weld procedures and welders that can perform any task put before them. “It’s very much a specialty,” says Soetaert. “We’re developing weld procedures just about every week for some new metallurgy, some new heat treatment, some new process so these plants can be more efficient, produce less waste and meet demands.”

Design choices can also impact the sustainability of a facility. Different alloys will improve the system and different configurations will improve efficiencies. “It can be something a straightforward as a material change or a dimension change or a routing change,” says Rose.

All of these improvements, from the smallest components to the most important processes, are crucial steps as the world grapples with environmental challenges. Industry is eager to adopt sustainable practices, and Melloy is here to help them every step of the way.