On Sunday evening, August 23rd, 2020, Talen Energy experienced a devastating turbine oil fire at their Martin’s Creek 1750MW power plant facility, located in Bangor, PA. JGM was Talen’s first call at 6am the following morning to support the critical rebuild efforts to get the power plant back online. Martins Creek consist of 2 steam turbines generating critical peaking load to the PJM Grid in the northeast region. Within 6 hours of the call JGM had its engineering and operations team onsite to quickly assess and put a plan in place to rebuild their turbine building. Within the next few days JGM mobilized our project team along with a 450 Crawler crane and 110 ton Hydro Crane.
After the assessment, it was clear that the 100’ clear span roof & 100-ton turbine deck overhead bridge crane had experienced significant failure. The failed roof section was directly above the turbine generator. JGM put together an engineered demolition and reconstruction plan to remove & replace the 100-ton overhead bridge crane, all existing rooftop mechanical equipment, 50,000 Sf of roofing membrane and metal decking, 120 tons of structural steel, 24,000 SF of wall panels, and all new roof drains and associated piping
In order to safely and efficiently demo the roof we needed to solve 2 challenges. First, We needed to provide protection to the existing turbine generator below. Second, we needed to provide safe access to our workforce from above. We utilized a scaffolding system that provided the required protection to the turbine during the demolition phase. The safe access, for our crews during the demolition and reconstruction phase, was achieved by designing and fabricating 10- 125’ long custom horizontal life line systems. This was a key component of the project success.
JGM’s fabrication capabilities played an integral role that allowed us to deliver the accelerated construction schedule. Time was everything. We provided all the engineering, detailing and fabrication for over 120 tons of plate girders and secondary steel for the roof replacements. All steel received a SP-6 prep with a 2-coat paint system. All fabricated steel was delivered within 6 weeks.
We developed an engineered rigging & lift plan to remove and install a 100-ton overhead bridge crane. This was no easy feat. We had significant ground bearing pressure constraints that required a custom designed matting system. The only location we could place a crane was over a 12’ diameter underground concrete pipe. This crane weighed more than 200,000 pounds.
The wall panel system was unique in the fact that they didn’t make it anymore. We worked with several key suppliers that custom rolled the panels to match the existing system. We replaced over 24,000 SF of panels on the turbine building and 13 story boiler building.
This project required over 40,000 manhours and was executed with zero lost time incidents.