We are excited to announce our Creekstone Farms Premium Beef project in Arkansas City, KS, received two project awards. Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of Iowa held their annual award ceremony on April 23. This project received the Award of Excellence in the Electrical - $1-5M category, as well as the overall Project of the Year award. Each project submitted is judged on areas such as attractiveness, unique challenges, innovation, and complexity. Landon Ragon, the on-site Project Manager for Interstates, credits the project’s success to the team. “It is rewarding to see the collaborative efforts of each team acknowledged for executing a project efficiently and accurately. Our people set us up for success.”
PROJECT DETAILS
At Creekstone’s beef processing and distribution plant, we provided electrical construction, power engineering, controls engineering, network design, instrumentation procurement and installation, controls design, checkout of hardware and VFDs, commissioning support, control panels, motor control panels, PLC control panels, and HMIs.
The distribution center warehouse is 41,000 square feet, including a 35,000-square-foot main floor and 6,000-square-foot mezzanine. The facility includes an automated storage and retrieval system capable of handling 27,000 boxes in a nine-hour day, with more than 37,000 box storage locations.
PROGRESS DESPITE MUDDY CONDITIONS
On average, this area of Kansas receives four inches of rain in May. However, during this project, the construction site endured over 18 inches of rain just as underground work was commencing. The extreme moisture created inconvenient and muddy working conditions on the job site. Since the meat processing plant next to the distribution center never shut down production, work had to continue as planned. Breaking work out into phases and coordinating with the operating plant’s schedule helped avoid congestion and keep the project on schedule.
VALUE ENGINEERING AND INNOVATION
Value engineering on this project played an important role for Creekstone Farms. Measures included using M12 plug-and-play cabling systems in place of traditional conduit and wire, eliminating field terminations, saving hours of work, and increasing safety by taking additional labor out of the field. Further innovation included using MCP panels in place of MCC panels, allowing for localized wiring for easy maintenance in the future.
Scott Koll, Senior Project Manager, says there was unified teamwork between everyone on-site. “Collaboration happened not only within Interstates but also with the owner, general contractor, equipment supplier and each vendor on-site. It’s a great working relationship and produces the highest quality for the client.” Our work on the Creekstone Farms distribution center underscores our commitment to quality, innovation and award-worthy project outcomes.
