As a prime contractor working closely with general contractors, facility owners, and design teams, we know the ins and outs of how new and renovated manufacturing spaces come together. It’s a process of collaboration, coordination, and timely decision-making to develop a space that will meet both current and future needs.

We’re playing all the roles in our own space development project as our new fabrication facility takes shape. We’re putting all the best practices of how we work with our clients into our own process, including collaboration in design, overcoming the ongoing challenges of the current market and supply chain, and building in our plans for the future in today’s decisions and design.

A Collaborative Design Process

Our early Autumn achievement is completing the design phase of our fabrication facility project. We worked with Nathan Vigil and his team at Vigilant BIM & Construction Consultants to support us in this phase. Having a group of people to collaborate with through brainstorming and developing our facility plan and processes has been extremely helpful. It’s not an easy task to get a space up and running that meets a variety of near-term needs and also includes the vision for growth in the future. A lot of thoughts and discussions have informed our design, including facility workflow, equipment selections, and developing detailed workstation layouts.

We’ve put a lot of thought into our equipment selections to achieve our requirements for capacity and quality. We’ve taken into account the higher production rates and increased reliability that automated and semi-automated machines provide, which enables greater capacity over traditional cutting and welding stations and supports our quality goals.

Overcoming Challenges

Like any project, ours has not been without complications! With the wide range of equipment options and choices for programming and different technologies, it can be challenging to find the right mix of solutions that align with our goals. We’ve looked closely at what we know has worked well in the past and combined it with a well-researched view of newly developed technologies in order to make informed decisions.

And like our clients, we’re running into the hurdles of the pandemic and supply chain disruption, having to plan around long equipment lead times to minimize schedule setbacks.

Planning for Today and the Future

We’re also looking to the future with a multi-phased buildout of our fabrication facility that will accommodate ongoing growth and additional capabilities. As we make our decisions for what to include in our initial phase, we’re also staying up to date on newly developed equipment, software, and fabrication processes that we can implement in our everyday work as our fabrication business grows. We’ll have capabilities for modular construction, custom steel and skid fabrication, and pipe supports in order to effectively fabricate for clients in all of our industry sectors, with each requiring different systems and high-precision quality that we’ll have capability to provide.

As Fall and Winter progresses, our construction phase will get underway in earnest. We’re excited to see our vision and design come together over the coming months!