The Chinook Power Station is a 350MW combined-cycle natural gas power plant near Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

PCL was brought on to the project as a subcontractor to Burns & McDonnell based on our strong working relationships with them in the past, and tackled the equipment installation, mechanical scope, piping, insulation and some fabrication work for the plant, which has helped the province of Saskatchewan reduce its reliance on imported electricity.

On site, PCL controlled the site overall for our partners. Our breadth of expertise allowed us to bring experienced staff from Houston to assist with the installation of the HRSG unit, and the project was finished on time and under budget, with over a million man hours without a single lost-time incident and only two weld repairs on over 4,000 welds. That’s a repair rate of just 0.77% against an accepted industry standard of 4%.

One of the innovations PCL came up with on this job was to utilize the heavy lift crane in place for the equipment setting to expedite other areas of construction. For example, we were able to preassemble some roof sections on the ground and install the Q deck before using the crane to lift the roof into place, rather than building it at elevation. We were also able to install prefabricated pipe down comers for the HRSG in one piece to reduce the amount of welding to be done in a manlift.

Another issue our construction team overcame was the hardness value of many of the P91 pipe fittings. We identified that many of them were too low, and we were able to come up with ways to test and replace the pipe in many congested locations on the site.