Fabric structures provide answers to hard questions
When it comes building fabric structures, few places provide better proving grounds than the often cold and wind-swept Prairies of Canada.
From the driving snows of winter, to the equally strong forces of wind and rain during the summer months, the conditions North of the 49th Parallel provide many challenges when it comes to providing shelter from Mother Nature.
As tough and rugged as heavy mining equipment is, sheltering it from harsh environments often requires structures to protect it from the elements and on a similar note, so too do the supplies used in the day-to-day operation of a mining project.
Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is one of those processes that relies heavily on supplies (frac sand) to aid in the fracturing process and Source Energy Services (SES) of Summer, Wisconsin, is one company that has emerged as a leader when it comes to being a reliable source of sand.
In fact, (SES) is one of the faster-growing industrial sand suppliers in North America and is believed to have one of the larger production facilities for silica sand. Its single location in Summer is set up to produce more than two million tons of proppant annually.
Sand from Wisconsin is delivered to storage terminals located near key shale plays across North America, including a new frac-sand distribution centre in Wembley, Alberta.
Local infrastructure in many cities and surrounding areas hasn’t developed fast enough to keep pace with increasing fracking activity and as a result, production and support companies have had to resorted to makeshift options, particularly when it comes to erecting any buildings required for their operations.
SES has been designed to avoid the pitfalls of growing too quickly. Rather than putting up lesser structures that only meet immediate needs, the company says it strives to be at the forefront of trends and facility builds, ensuring that its buildings will continue to serve well for the long haul.
“By today’s standards, the buildings we’re designing are of world-class caliber in Canada and the U.S.” says Mike Miller, Vice-president of Construction for SES. This was the mindset at work when determining how to proceed with the company’s new frac sand distribution facility in Wembley.”
The purpose of the building was to provide large format sand storage for the area’s oil and gas industry. In fact, upon completion, it became the largest facility for this purpose in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin.
The facility is capable of receiving several unit trains on a monthly basis, with each train usually carrying more than 10,000 tons of material. By contrast, Miller noted that most trans-load distribution centres in the area provide about 2,000 tons for an oil or gas frac.
“We have a ‘tank farm’ utilizing 300-ton tanks about 25 kilometers away that was constructed as a trans-load storage facility for many suppliers,” says Miller. “However, as drillers have been needing to facilitate larger frac silos, tank trans-loads do not have the operational capacity to fill those needs. The large-format facility in Wembley is designed to solve any supply issues.”
In keeping with its philosophy of advancing its construction methods and facilities to a higher level, while still taking into account the timeline that would be required to engineer and construct a new building, SES focused its search on tension fabric building contractors. After reviewing and comparing specifications, materials and costs from a handful of manufacturers, the company selected Legacy Building Solutions of South Haven, Minnesota, for the project.
“Legacy offered several features that put them at the top of the list,” says Miller. “We were very impressed by their engineering team. They are unique among fabric buildings in that they build on a rigid-steel frame. Everything looked good, from the eave and ridge ventilation system to the method for installing fabric panels. Combined with material delivery times and the time to construct, Legacy seemed like the perfect choice for our application.”
In the design phase, SES worked to define exact needs in order to narrow the parameters of the facility. One key goal was to house all workers and operations inside the building, protected from the constantly gusting winds of the Alberta prairie. This type of initiative could have resulted in a massive structure exceeding the scope of what was truly needed, but SES and Legacy worked together closely to come up with the appropriate heights and lengths, as well as multiple lean-to areas.
The outcome was a building designed to allow the full use of its storage volume of almost three million cubic feet. The main body of the fabric structure measures 140 by 480 feet, with three lean-to sections measuring 60 by 40, 60 by 80 and 24 by 200 feet, respectively – adding up to a total of 79,200 square feet. An offset peak and varying leg heights further characterize a building that is fully customized for the specific facility SES envisioned.
“We have a drive aisle that connects the entire building at its core and allows us access to our stock piles,” said Miller. “We utilize two of the lean-to spaces to load our feed hoppers, and the other lean-to is a heated shop that has lined walls and is equipped with infrared heating units. We have 18- by 18-foot access doors big enough for loaders and skid steers to enter. The whole design is very efficient for our operations.”
The rigid frame design of the Legacy building proved beneficial as SES implemented plans for a conveyor that would be suspended from the rafters and run the length of the building. After performing a structural analysis and determining load requirements, the structural design was easily modified to accommodate the conveyor system.
“Flexibility is key, especially when the building is a ‘first of its kind’ for this industry,” says Miller. “We had one design change after the whole plan was in place, to widen our trapeze in the structure that supports the conveyor, and Legacy was able to make that change without any problem. The conveyor system fits and operates just as it was designed.”
According to Miller, SES is always looking to design facilities that use natural sunlight, which made Legacy’s 15-ounce, fire-rated polyethylene roof – which allows abundant daylight to permeate the structure – a perfect solution for the new facility.
“In far northern Alberta in the summer, the sun stays high for long period of time, so we take full advantage of any light we can get,” says Miller. “We believe naturally lit areas are good for worker morale, since they feel more connected to the outside environment. And, of course, it also saves on our facility operating cost, since the fabric allows us to work with the internal lighting systems off, even on cloudy days.”
The facility in Wembley officially opened on schedule last summer, despite a rough Canadian winter that set SES’s concrete contractor behind more than a month on installing the building’s foundation.
“Legacy knew our schedule and saved us over 30 days of downtime,” says Miller. “They stood the frames for the entire structure in a single day, and everything – conveyors, electrical, fabric – was completed within five weeks of them coming to the site. It was a Herculean effort on Legacy’s part. It was fantastic.”
As part of its continued growth to support fracking operations and other exploration activity, SES is working toward several other new facilities in the near future, and Legacy figures to be a part of the picture.
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