Atco signs adorn mulltiple structures even ‘blast-proof’ units
The black-on-yellow ATCO signs found at mine sites across Canada are almost as common as rocks are to quarries. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a site almost anywhere in the country that doesn’t have some structure without an ATCO sign attached to it.
From the smallest tool shed at a remote fly-in camp, to storage and maintenance facilities for trucks and other assorted mining equipment, to sprawling accommodations to house more people than many small towns, the structures built by ATCO Structures & Logistics of Calgary have become synonymous with mining at all levels, and in all places.
Next to tents and drill rigs, the company’s structures are often the first sign that some form of mining is about to begin. And, because of their portability, a barren site can often be transformed almost over night into a noticeable spot on the horizon.
With manufacturing facilities in North America and Australia, ATCO’s structures are in use at sites that are drastically different. Currently, the company is constructing accommodations for BHP Billiton’s Jansen Potash Project, 100 km north of Regina. The 2,586-person lodge is the largest Canadian contract in ATCO Structures & Logistics’ history.
“With this project, we a looking at more than 1000 individual units for the complex and engineering to help withstand the snow loads of Saskatchewan,” said George Lidgett, Chief Operating Officer, Americas. “Alternatively, for the Australian market, we design buildings that can withstand cyclonic winds.”
One of the key benefits of modular construction is indoor manufacturing, as the modules are manufactured in a dry, secure facility, where predictability of quality centred in a factory benefits the project. Modules are easily transported to site for installation and then the Lego-like fun begins.
Within hours, structures of all shapes and sizes can literally emerge from nothing into shelter for both miners and machines alike, and as mentioned earlier, the size and various configurations the structures offer are almost endless when it comes to imagination by the company’s engineers and designers.
For example, rarely do you find any structures located adjacent to blast sites but thanks to new and innovative technology, ‘blast-proof’ modular buildings are now available to crews to be on site during the early and on-going exploration and development stages of blasting rock.
This is not only a safety factor, but it’s also a time and money saver because personnel are not required to totally vacate the zone during blasting.
Unlike conventional structures that could not withstand the seismic pressures from a blast, the blast-resistant buildings (designed and built in a joint-venture partnership with Hunter Buildings & Manufacturing LP) are certified to meet strict Canadian guidelines and American Society of Civil Engineer blast resistant design criteria.
Chad Bjorgan, Product Manager, ATCO Hunter Blast Shelters, says that blast-resistant modular buildings have been around since ATCO and Hunter became partners in 2010 and through on-going ‘live testing’ with high explosives, they are one of the few companies that has put its buildings through the rigors of actual site blasts.
“Believe it or not, blast testing blast-resistant buildings is not something done by every member of our industry. It is a very, very expensive and irreplaceable way to test predictable engineering integrity.”
Bjorgan said that to help ensure the company’s structures meet the strict government requirements of a blast-resistant building, a building is randomly selected from the fleet and blast tested at a test facility. An 8 PSI blast design has become the industry standard for modular buildings, however, higher or lower designs are provided at the customers’ request.
To put this 8 psi pressure into perspective, Lynn Efferson, General Manager of Hunter Buildings & Manufacturing in Houston Texas, explained: “People can relate to say, wind-load, and what a 50-mile-per-hour wind load feels like and what a 150-mile-per-hour wind looks like in a hurricane. A hurricane with a 150-mile-per-hour wind can do a tremendous amount of damage so what does wind-load mean on one of our blast-resistant buildings?”
“A 150-mile-per-hour wind will not even make 1 PSI impact on the structure, it’s actually 0.85, so you can see how strong a building tested for an 8 PSI blast really is and why it’s well suited for mine sites where blasting occurs.”
Efferson talked further about the company’s blast-resistant buildings by saying: “Using a third party to conduct and evaluate an 8 PSI test, we subjected a standard, randomly chosen building to a live blast and equipped it with all of the necessary monitors like pressure transducers to measure shock and vibration, acceleration compensators, crash-test dummies, and high-speed cameras (inside and out) to record the blast.
“We used 1,250 pounds of ANFO, which is ammonia nitrate fuel oil, and placed it 100 feet from the building. It really went ‘boom’.”
After the blast, Efferson said the effects of the blast were nothing more than a covering of dust on the test building and inside, the crash-test dummy (positioned sitting in an office chair close to the wall facing the blast and wearing a pair of glasses and holding a can of pop) was intact, still in the chair and still wearing its glasses. The vibration of the blast, however, caused the dummy to spill some of its drink. Dummy!
Anyway, Efferson said the dummy and the structure clearly demonstrated resilience above and beyond the blast resistance requirements of the building. Later in a separate test, forced entry and ballistic testing was conducted by the Oregon Ballistic Laboratory and witnessed by the U.S. Government’s Department of State. This official test was passed with “flying colours” there too. The ATCO – Hunter designed buildings recently passed tornado testing in a west Texas laboratory.
But blast-resistant buildings aren’t the only structures manufactured by ATCO because as stated earlier, the company also builds more conventional units designed for stand-alone purposes like lavatories and site offices to multi-unit configurations for workforce housing.
A good example of the latter is to build a 1,200-person housing facility for the Shell Carmon Creek Project near Peace River in Northern Alberta. The core building will consist of 94 modular units in combination with a panelized system in the lobby to create an open hotel-like feel.
The dormitories will feature single-occupancy bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms. In addition to relaxation and recreation rooms, a stand-alone gymnasium will include racquetball and squash courts, a running track and separate weight-training area.
Also in the plans is a 200-person open-concept office complex.
From blast-resistant structures, to single-purpose buildings for storing tools, to vast housing facilities designed for hundreds and even more than a thousand people, ATCO structures are well-suited to meet the needs of Canadian miners and like the miners themselves, they can be found almost everywhere across the country.
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