Innovation at Kelly Klosure has always been driven by customer needs.

Monday, February 24, 2014 1:47PMBy Andrew Stamp |

Manager of Design and Engineering

2014 seems to be the year of new products and new features at Kelly Klosure. Innovation at Kelly Klosure has always been driven by customer needs. Two areas of great interest to our customer recently has been Labor Savings for projects in the oil and gas market especially in the Northern Canadian oil fields as well as factory assembled or “Pre-Built” buildings.

LABOR SAVING FEATURES

Recently, we have seen a lot of interest in work related to the oil fields in Northern Alberta, Canada in the area around Ft. McMurray. In this area, due to its extreme growth in the oil industry and the remote area, labor is scarce and very expensive. Therefore, customers are very interested in features or changes in our system’s design to further save labor. Our buildings are already uniquely tailored to quick field assembly and we are now looking at ways to further save labor on projects in this area. Design features and factory installed components that may not be cost effective on projects in our normal markets in the US we are finding are very cost effective in Ft. McMurray, Alberta. The added cost at our plant in Nebraska is significantly offset by saved labor up North.

A few features we are working on for a customer who uses our enclosures to enclose modular skids:

  • Factory installed pipe ferrules and roof curbs designed to allow the building to be installed around pipes already stubbed out of the enclosure. This prevents the need for field cutting openings and patching sheet metal and insulation around piping.

  • The roof of these skid enclosures previously used a roof truss at 3’ c/c per our standard design. However, on these enclosures, per our customer’s request, we have designed a heavier duty roof truss that is installed 6’ c/c. This means during assembly, each 6’ roof section is sub-assembled with a roof truss on the ground and no intermediate trusses need to be installed in the air. This saves considerable labor on projects that are very schedule sensitive.

This customer assembles our enclosure on to their skid offsite and then delivers the complete unit to the oil field at Ft. McMurray as part of a steam generation system.

KELLY PRE-BUILT’S

Another request we have heard from many existing and new customers is to have small enclosures fully assembled and finished at our shop and delivered ready to install. We are cleverly calling these “Pre-Built” units. We are actively engaged in R&D related to how we can best deliver these pre-builts to maintain our reputation for quality and still be competitive with the market.

Our manufacturing facility is completely designed around efficiently producing our modular panel building system and at first glance did not seem to be ideally suited to pre-builts. To “re-invent” the wheel and stick build a pre-built module like other manufacturers seemed to me, at first, to be the only way to be competitive. Everyone else does it that way so it must be the best way, was my initial thinking. However, I then realized that we have already invested in the equipment, processes and methods to quickly and efficiently build modular panels. If our modular panels are easy for our customer to assemble in the field, then they are going to be very easy for us to assemble in our shop. Why not take advantage of our efficient manufacturing procedures for our modular site assembled system for these pre-built units as well?

To that end, we are working on the concept of a one piece welded steel skid that can be lifted by forklift or by crane on top of which we assemble our modular wall and roof panels. We are tweaking the sizes of all the components to maximize the usable space allowed by different methods of shipping. For instance, we are looking at using a standing seam roof system that is rated for 1/4:12 pitch. This system allows us to use a very low slope single span roof. This has a number of benefits including maximizing interior clear height without going over the maximum shipping height on a truck. The standing seam roof may also be eligible for a 20 year leak warranty which is good feature for electrical, process control and MCC type enclosures.

The Kelly Pre-Built units can also be factory wired for electrical service using licensed electricians and EMT or Rigid pipe depending on customer requirements. This is a feature we have been unable to offer in our field installed pre-wired electrical packages. Our field installed electrical packages are only able to be offered with flexible metal conduit. This does not always meet code or customer / site specific requirements. With Pre-Built units, we are able to offer pretty much any electrical system that a customer can specify. This saves the customer significant time and money by not having to install this equipment onsite. The Pre-Built unit arrives ready to be “plugged in” and put into service.

As we continue to develop our Pre-Built system, our hope is that will become a new standard product for Kelly Klosure to offer to our existing and new markets.

To see how Kelly Klosure can assist you with your project - please visit here or request a quote.