Conventional power

Meeting schedules

The timely arrival and installation of these elements is essential to staying on schedule, as other construction and installation activities depend on them. Because one project often has multiple contractors with their own teams on-site, early planning and close coordination of different maintenance activities optimizes the schedule. Both during construction and power plant upgrade projects, the early planning, solid logistics and heavy lifting and transport equipment Mammoet offers can have a significant impact on schedules, reducing total downtime, enhancing site safety and optimizing efficiency.

Experience, expertise and equipment

Over the years, Mammoet has worked on numerous power plants, with a variety of layouts, locations and circumstances. We have built up our expertise in power plant construction, maintenance and decommissioning. Mammoet will bring a broad pool of talented engineers to your project, ensuring a highly efficient logistical process. Our large and diverse fleet of equipment – in addition to our operational expertise – enables us to safely execute jobs that are often complex and always time-critical.

Safer and more efficient

Site safety is of paramount importance to Mammoet professionals. We combine a can-do attitude to getting the job done with a stringent regard for safety, health, the environment and quality (SHEQ) on every power plant project. In many situations our safety standards not only meet but exceed local requirements. Our ability to take a project-wide view and provide heavy lifting expertise from planning right through to production means that we can help you find many efficiencies, reducing downtime. This includes optimal utilization of heavy lifting equipment throughout construction and reduction of on-site congestion. This again improves efficiency and will make the construction site a safer environment.

Construction

Optimizing construction efficiency depends on which building method is used and can range from stick-building on location to preassembling components or modules off site.

There are advantages to transporting and installing large and heavy items fully preassembled. Fabricating off site makes it possible to construct and test the parts in a controlled environment, helping improve safety, productivity, quality control and a higher degree of certainty over the costs and schedule, while minimizing disruption on-site.

Making these efficiency gains requires careful assessment by experienced engineers and planners at an early stage to be sure of the maximum allowable size and weight of the components and modules that need to be transported and installed.

Productivity

We believe that deeper analysis of the construction schedules can reveal further optimization of horizontal and vertical moves on-site by defining the right amount and type of equipment and resources needed. For example, in some cases careful timetabling of lifts may enable one larger crane to replace several smaller cranes. Having fewer pieces of equipment on-site improves safety, reduces congestion and minimizes mobilization and demobilization activities.

Preparing for success

To obtain the optimum relationship between transportability, constructability and productivity we advise early collaboration between your project managers and construction engineers and our engineered heavy lifting and transport specialists.

In our long experience, having one partner in charge of all engineered heavy lifting and transport requirements provides greater potential for bringing uptime forward and increasing cost-effectiveness, at the same time as minimizing risks. Our specialists are skilled in identifying potential hotspots in the chain of transport and installation activities early on and finding creative engineering solutions to get round them.

By consulting our engineers early, at the FEED stage of a project, we can help move deadlines forward, make planning more reliable, reduce costs and ensure an overall smooth, safe and on-time execution. 

Mammoet’s logistics experts use creative engineering to develop transport solutions that help avoid or mitigate logistical bottlenecks and any associated risks, either by bypassing them or by finding the right engineered solutions. For example, we might optimize the use of equipment to distribute loads when crossing weak structures or use route interventions such as road and bridge reinforcements, widening roads or constructing temporary bridges and jetties.

Delivering such engineering ingenuity requires expertise and an extensive fleet of equipment and vehicles at our disposal. The end result is an optimal logistical chain for all individual oversized and heavy items that aligns with the conventional power plant’s overall project schedule.

Factory-to-foundation service

It is often the case in power plant construction that different stages in the chain of land and water-based transport are handled by different operators, deploying separate transport plans, equipment and workforces. This type of separation in the logistical chain makes interface management for oversized and heavy items more challenging than it needs to be.

By choosing Mammoet as your end-to-end heavy lifting and transport partner, you opt for a joined-up approach for the total sequence of logistical activities. We make it possible to minimize risks and maximize logistical efficiency, avoiding delays and potential additional costs, such as demurrage charges.

A factory-to-foundation (FtF) service brings the advantage of working with just one experienced engineered heavy lifting and transport specialist to oversee the entire chain of logistical activities for oversized and heavy items. The logistical process starts by picking up the components for a fossil fuel power facility at their manufacturing sites and ends with installation on site.

Having fewer handover points helps reduce risks, avoid delays and increase efficiency of the transport over roads, waterways and railways — including the smooth processing of required documentation for cross-border transports and obtaining permits.

Mammoet’s FtF service ultimately delivers a tailor-made and optimized logistics chain. It minimizes the number of handover points and ensures smooth handling between different modes of transport. This reduces or eliminates demurrage charges – ensuring all components and modules arrive on time and in the right order for on-site installation. 

Mammoet’s broad overview of the entire project schedule and our streamlined working practices make executing such on-the-spot solutions a calm, efficient experience for our clients. Our ability to draw from a large pool of skilled people and specialized equipment further enhances our flexibility while maintaining the maximized use of resources on site.

Streamlining working practices on site

In a number of cases, particularly for co-generation power plants that provide heat and power to an industrial site, there may be multiple contractors on-site working according to their own scope and schedule. This can often include different pools of manpower and equipment for heavy lifting and transport jobs across the site, including the power station and industrial facilities.

The subdivision of resources and schedules is a less than optimal way of moving oversize and heavy parts across site. By choosing to work with one heavy lifting and transport company, such as Mammoet, having just one point of contact supports streamlined communication, while one pool of equipment enables optimized installation schedules and best use of machinery. This integrated approach on-site is proven to maximize construction efficiency, safety and cost-effectiveness. 

Planned maintenance insures uptime

Each type of power generating facility has been built according to the technology and design insights at the time of its construction. For scheduled maintenance, modification or expansion, certain infrastructure aspects may hinder change-out of large key components such as turbines, generators or transformers. Maneuvering heavy and awkward parts requires ingenuity and a strong engineering toolbox in order to develop tailor-made solutions to overcome any limitations in a fast, safe and efficient manner.

At Mammoet we always bear in mind that the key aim of any heavy lifting and transport job is to keep downtime to a minimum. 

Being prepared for failure

A key component could experience a mechanical or electrical failure while the power generating facility is in full operation. In many cases, fossil fuel power plants have spare transformers close at hand, stored either on-site or as close as possible to the facility. By calling on Mammoet’s knowledge and experience, engineered heavy lifting and transport specialists can ensure the facility is fully prepared for such events.

This type of advance preparation could include arranging the necessary permits and developing the best possible route to site in full compliance with local regulatory requirements. As soon as the component is exchanged, a new spare component needs to be put in place to keep the electricity supply just as secure in future.

Rapid response to unexpected problems

Of course, there are some types of fossil fuel power plant components, such as turbines and generators, which may be less readily available to keep as spares. To provide effective rapid response to the failure of one of these components, Mammoet’s engineered heavy lifting and transport specialists urgently bring together a team with the right expertise and equipment to develop the optimal route to site as swiftly as possible.

Each emergency situation presents unique characteristics but what is key to dealing with such situations effectively and safely is a profound understanding of the restrictions of local infrastructure, knowledge of local rules and regulations, and good contacts with local authorities so that permissions can be quickly arranged. No matter what the emergency, all rapid responses at fossil fuel power plants are united in a common goal: restoring uptime. 

Efficient construction alternative

Depending on its location, moving a power plant can be an attractive alternative to constructing from scratch at a new location. Relocation can help shorten time to market and make for a more cost-effective building process. To achieve this, reverse engineering is a vital aspect for either an entire fossil fuel power plant or its re-usable components.

Through our years of experience in the conventional energy sector globally, Mammoet has built up intimate knowledge of the processes and parts that go into each build. This storehouse of information can be a valuable asset for clients who choose a reverse engineering project. Even with this knowledge, we never approach a job as if it were one-size-fits-all.

In order to deliver a safe, efficient and cost-effective relocation process, preparation is key. Setting up this type of procedure needs experience, inside knowledge and specialist heavy lifting and haulage equipment to execute it in a manageable timescale. Our engineers carry out a detailed audit to uncover the best approach to the highly complex job of dismantling the plant — and how to most effectively lift, transport and re-install the main components, such as generators, turbines, heat exchangers and steam drums, at the new site. 

We then develop the safest and most efficient supply chain route possible by considering the limitations of the old and new locations when transporting oversized and heavy items. This logistical analysis takes into account, for example, on-site possibilities for transporting these items, as well as the capacity and reach of our lifting equipment for the efficient dismantling and reconstruction of the components. Our aim is always to deliver a joined-up foundation-to-foundation solution that brings the relocated fossil fuel power plant online as rapidly and smoothly as possible.

Our logistics team can conduct surveys for all substations on a network and develop the optimal logistical routes. Not only does this make excellent use of our heavy lifting and transport experience and know-how, but it means there is an agreed process in place for all parties. If an incident occurs the responsibilities and requirements are clear and can be acted on immediately. This means that our clients are fully prepared for a fast, efficient and cost-effective transformer exchange, as and when needed.

Heavy lifting without disruption

Electricity distribution networks are, by their nature, spread across vast distances and the most cost-effective solution for long-distance transmission is often provided by overhead power cables. The power pylons supporting these cables stand in many different environments, some of which can pose specific challenges during their construction.

Circumstances at these pylon locations may change and require the grid infrastructure to be moved or modified. One such project undertaken by Mammoet was in the Netherlands, where a 380-kV power pylon stood in an area designated as part of a flood zone, within the sophisticated Dutch water management system. The pylon would have to be lifted four meters to keep it above predicted high-water levels, when the zone was flooded.

Power pylons are not designed to be lifted in one piece, and certainly not while under current. Our expert heavy lifting and transport planning, design and logistics, coupled with our specialized equipment, meant we were able to engineer a safe method of raising the pylon while keeping the current on – without disrupting the power supply to millions of businesses and homes.