POWERLINE - Riggs Distler

The
POWER LINE
Fall, 2009
100 Years - A Look at Our Past and a Glimpse of Our Future
Leo Sniger, CEO
A Look at Our Past
This is an historic year for our Company. At 4:00 PM on July 8, 1909 in
Baltimore, the Riggs Linthicum Company was formed by three gentlemen:
Charles Linthicum, George Linthicum
and Thomas Dudley Riggs. Our first
President, Thomas Dudley Riggs, was a
member of the distinguished Riggs family of Baltimore who owned the Riggs
Bank and which actually helped finance
the Mexican-American War for the US
government. Three years later the Company name changed to Riggs Distler &
Company, Inc. when Mr. John Distler,
who hailed from New York became the
new president of the company. He was
a Lehigh graduate.
Through the years our Company has
participated in the construction of some
of the most notable building projects
in the United States: The Empire State
Building, Greenbrier, The US Supreme
Court, The Federal Reserve Building,
The Library of Congress, The Internal
Revenue Building, The Breakers, The
Willard Hotel, The National Constitution Center, Charity Hospital in New
Orleans, and hundreds of power plants,
government facilities, refineries and industrial facilities are just a few projects
that the Riggs Distler name can be associated with. Our company was ranked
# 3 contractor in the US by Engineering
News Record in 1973, and had offices in
Atlanta, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington DC.
Riggs Distler has survived through
some of the most devastating events in
history such as the 1918 Flu Pandemic,
the First and Second World Wars, the
Great Depression, the Cold War, etc.
It is an amazing accomplishment to be
in business this long when the national
average for a business like ours is just 5
years.
A Glimpse at Our Future
In today’s very competitive marketplace, clients are moving their business
to larger contractors who can provide
the complete package of services that
they require. Specialty contractors
who cannot diversify and broaden
their service offerings are being
squeezed out by the big roll-up
contractors and are slowly being
pushed out of business.
We recognized this trend, and
concluded that the best way for us
to continue to grow was to partner
with a company who could provide
the services we currently did not
offer and who had a marketplace
that we currently did not participate
Pictured above is one of the original
stock certificates from the Riggs Lin- in.
After nearly a two year search
thicum Company, founded in 1909.
we found the CVTech Group of
The value of the certificate was $10.
First President of the
Riggs Linthicum Company
Thomas Dudley Riggs - Photo
courtesy of Wikipedia.org
Drummondville, Quebec and joined
their company on July 21, 2009.
CVTech has operations in Canada, New
England, India and France. Their union
construction company, Thirau, provides
distribution, transmission and substation
services to their clients in Canada and
New England.
CVTech will provide transmission
and substation services to our clients
and we will provide underground, electrical and mechanical services to their
clients.
Recently, Engineering News Record
published their list of the largest utility
contractors. Although we did not report
our revenues to ENR this year, if we
had, we would be listed in the top 10
largest utility contractors in the US.
The financial strength and capabilities of the CVTech companies will
provide new business and growth opportunities for our company that previously
did not exist.
Current plans are to remain a standalone entity, with no changes planned
in our name, location or outstanding
employees.
Project News
“Under One Hat - One Responsibility” Exemplified
Paul Bizon, Vice President, Electrical Group
During the Spring, a South Jersey
refinery kept us busy working on
many instrumentation and electrical
projects leading into the Turn Around
which took place in mid-April. The
outage was adjusted from 60 plus
days down to just 33 days. There
was no reduction in work, just less
time allotted for the projects to be
completed. There were 14 active
projects during this outage utilizing
up to 70 men. We had electricians,
fitters, instrument techs, laborers,
carpenters and communication techs
all working together to give the client
peace of mind that the job will get done
on time. What better demonstration
of our tag line “under one hat – one
responsibility”.
During this outage the majority of
the work was performed on the Coker:
The goal was to provide tri-dundancy
(3 separate controls of each system
monitored) in the system so that in
the future any one incident will not
interfere with the operation of the
equipment. Items addressed were the
replacement of the power and control
of the delta valves, main controls
and instrumentation for the entire
structure, as well as changing all of the
heater controls and instruments. We
also modified the K-201 compressor
with a new control panel, new field
instruments and replacement conduit
& wire.
The dock portion of the site moved
along nicely. Cable tray has been
installed, 5kv feeder cables, new
ductbanks and foundations for light
poles are all in place. The water side
of the job has installed cable tray,
conduits and cables for the loading
arms, Marine Vapor Recovery system,
oily water separator, in addition to
lighting and power. We have set the
substation, electrical building and
the operator’s shanty that houses all
the instrumentation and controls for
the facility. Last on the list was the
process of interfacing with the existing
systems and moving them over into the
new facility.
We recently completed a new
addition to an ethanol loading facility
at a Philadelphia area liquids terminal.
The completion of this project provides
the owner the ability to load liquid
ethanol into tanker trucks from several
locations within their facility. Due
to engineering issues this project
had an extremely tight time frame to
get completed. Our team was up to
the challenge and met the owner’s
expectations.
We have expanded our involvement
with a major producer of specialty
chemicals and gasses, this time
providing services to their New York
facility. As with past projects we’ve
performed at their other locations, the
client remains extremely pleased with
the quality and performance of our
work and continues to request pricing
on projects. This will increase our
role as the electrical/instrumentation
contractor working to maintain daily
operations of their facilities and install
new capital improvements.
The resurrection of the 859
unit at Sunoco has been well under
way and will be nearing completion
shortly. We have been working on
this I&E project since September
and are looking at startup to begin
any time. This is a major project for
us in that we are the mechanical and
electrical contractor for this project.
The Instrumentation and Electrical
work has included everything from
high voltage service into the Unit,
new substation, power distribution,
lighting, power to equipment, controls
and instrumentation. Once again
we provide “under one hat – one
responsibility”. We have electricians,
fitters, and instrument techs working
together. We are installing all new
controls and instrumentation for an
entire unit that has been out of service
for quite some time. The new state of
the art instrumentation will provide
reliability for years to come.
This same facility also has a boiler
retro-fit project in which we are
providing the backbone infrastructure
for the controls to 3 existing boilers
slated to be renovated this year. We are
installing numerous control/instrument
cabinets that tie into the owner’s
existing DCS system, significant cable
trays and homerun cables to many field
control panels and terminal boxes. The
existing facility where the tray and
cables are installed stands 40 feet tall,
is difficult to reach and temperatures
rise as high as 120 degrees F.
Celebrating a Century of Service Excellence
1909 - 2009
Page 2
The Power Line
Fall, 2009
www.riggsdistler.com
Let There Be Light
On the Mechanical Side
Our group is currently involved with a roadway
project which stretches between two counties in the
Mid-Atlantic region. The ICC (Intercounty Connector) is keeping us busy as we are providing pole relocation services, as well as temporary and permanent
street lighting along the corridors of several major
highways. The total duration of the project from beginning to end is approximately 5 years.
Our crews have also been working on adding 69kv
circuit and 13kv lines for a major utility in Maryland.
This summer we were awarded a multiyear maintenance contract for a major east coast power producer. Under this contract
we will rebuild the turbine generators, repair boiler walls, install
piping and equipment, paint, erect structural steel and provide
electrical instrumentation and control services. The primary
focus of the contract is currently in the fossil plants, but may
migrate to their nuclear plants.
Recently our crews completed a Feedwater Heater project
for a repeat power generation client who has a major upcoming
pollution control project ready to begin. Our crews performed
extremely well and the outage was completed ahead of schedule
and on budget. As a result of our crews’ effort we have been
selected to submit a proposal for a major portion of the new
project.
Our Alliance crews continue to perform in the top tier. A
recent scorecard rated our crews “exceeds expectations”. With
multiple outages ongoing this fall it has been a busy season for
our Alliance crews.
On a recent Sunday evening, a major paint manufacturing
client called with an emergency total plant, forced outage due to
a blending tank failure. We responded immediately and worked
around the clock for 15 days to cut out and re-weld a new skirt
plate for this Code rated vessel. The work was completed ahead
of schedule and under budget without an injury. Great job and
congratulations to all!
As a result of an explosion at a Texas refinery a few years
ago, many refinery owners are hardening or blast proofing their
control rooms that cannot be relocated. Our crews are currently
blast proofing (3) control rooms for an east coast refinery. The
work includes new foundations, structural steel, reinforcing of
walls and roofs, installation of blast resistant doors etc. All work
is performed with the control room in full operation. The project
is progressing well with (2) completed and (1) to go.
-Scott Zemaitatis, Project Mgr, OverHead Utilities
Below: Our crews at work relocating the poles and
hanging temporary street lighting in connection to the
Intercounty Connector project.
-Joe Seaman, VP Mechanical Group
Celebrating Safety
Joe Seaman, VP Mechanical Group
The 859 Unit at Sunoco in Philadelphia is now
completed and operational. We completed this $200 million dollar / 1 million craft hour project without a recordable injury. The
client rewarded our crews with an all hands safety appreciation
luncheon with great give a-ways such as lap top computers, flat
screen TV’s, golf clubs and gift cards.
With over 14,000 welds of all types and sizes, our LU 420
welders achieved a remarkable weld rejection rate of less than
1%. This is a credit to our welders, as well as our QA/QC team.
www.riggsdistler.com
The Power Line
Fall, 2009
Page 3
A Warm Thank-You to Our Cold Weather Crews
Steve Zemaitatis, Jr., VP Utility Group
In December of 2008 and throughout
the early part of 2009 our crews were
deployed to several locations to asMy name is Tina Guthrie and your crew was here after the
sist in power restoration efforts after
ice storm in Corning AR. I would like to commend you for
devastating ice storms wiped out
having such a wonderful group of men. Your crew made quite
power to hundreds of thousands of
an impression on many of the people here.
They held their safety meetings at Sollis Grain Bins/S
residents and businesses. The con& L Irrigations and were very well liked by the owners there.
ditions were both treacherous and
Waitresses that served them commented on how nice they
hazardous, the work was challengwere.
ing, but very rewarding. What
Since they worked in my neighborhood, I feel they went
made it most rewarding was to
above
and beyond, considering how unorganized our utility was
know that our crews performed
at
getting
things done.
their jobs in such a manner that
Steve Koonz is an exceptional man and seemed very dedinot only put the power back
cated to his job and helping the people here.
on, but left a lasting impresEverywhere I go I tell about the great guys of Riggs Distler
sion on the people we served.
from West Virginia . What your company does is very imporI am proud of our crews and
tant and I am very grateful to your men for what they did for me
the work they performed,
and my community.
but mostly for the positive
Please thank them and let them know how much they are apimpressions they left long
preciated.
after the storms had passed
May God always keep them safe.
and the lights were back
Sincerely,
on. Great job!
Tina Guthrie
Garden State First
Steve Zemaitatis, Jr., VP Utility Group
I am very pleased to announce Riggs
Distler has been awarded a three year
contract from PSEG to install 200,000
pole-mounted solar panels throughout
PSEG’s New Jersey service territory.
This project is the first of its kind as the
solar units will be connected directly
into PSEG’s electric distribution system
and the power will be sold into the PJM
wholesale grid. It will be the largest
pole-attached solar installation in the
world. Riggs Distler is very excited to
be the sole installer of these 200,000
panels as we continue to expand our
presence within the Green Energy Field.
We Support
Our Troops
Right: Solar panels waiting for
their turn to be installed. We
have the tools & the know-how to
contribute to a greener America.
Page 4
The Power Line
Employee News
Wedding Bells Ring!
We would like to congratulate the
following employees on their recent
marriages and wish them much happiness in the years to come...
Scott & Kristin Zemaitatis
3/20/2009
Nancy Ambrose & William McNamara
4/18/2009
Julie Uhlein & Steven Boyd
5/23/2009
Fall, 2009
Craig & Kelly Zemaitatis
8/15/2009
www.riggsdistler.com