Driven By Innovation: Mike Aurelio, Garrett Bartok, and Cyrus Patel
In July of 2021, WAM invested in a state-of-the-art Cobot (Collaborative Robot) welder for our piping fabrication shop to increase our capacity for prefabrication. We installed a NovArc welder that decreases our welding time as much as 80% on larger pipe sizes. This greater capacity to prefabricate large, welded pipes and flanged connections will help to decrease overall weld time in the field.
One of our first projects where we successfully utilized the NovArc Cobot was at 111 Pine St, San Francisco where we were able to 3D detail and prefabricate dozens of piping sections. This allowed us to rig piping spools and bolt and flange them in place at the site decreasing the downtime for our client at the site – as well as reducing the overall rig time, which can be crucial when working on these tight projects in the middle of a large city. We were able to save 200+ hours in the field and 100 hours in the shop, with careful coordination between the BIM design team and the shop fabrication team.
We then set our sights on a larger project at Keysight in Santa Rosa. This is a large cooling tower change out with large piping up to 20” around. We wanted to follow the same method to BIM detail the job and prefabricate as many sections as possible in our shop.
The shop fabrication team, consisting of Shop Superintendent Mike Aurelio and Lead Cobot Operator Garrett Bartok, worked with the NovArc team to do some test spools on multiple large pipes to optimize the quality and decrease the weld time. Once they had test sections done, we employed pre-fabrication for the piping systems at Keysight that is set to be complete in April of 2022. This process, like any other, has its challenges in learning and implementation, but the shop fabrication team has done a great job in tackling these head-on to help WAM reduce overall costs on these projects.
Cyrus has been working closely with Mike, Garrett, and our foremen to help drive the implementation of pre-fabrication on current and future projects and is looking for ways to increase the utilization of the NovArc for future projects.
A big thank you to these three folks for helping drive innovation in our piping shop. WAM is continuing to invest in automation in our piping shop that will be added for our new facility in Union City. This will help expand our capabilities and opportunities for more large-scale projects in the future.