MEGlobal BOOKRAMEG Project | Submitted by MEGlobal, Worley and Fluor
Freeport, Texas 
Region: ENR Texas & Louisiana

Owner MEGlobal
Lead Design Firm/General Contractor Worley
Mechanical Contractor (equipment/steel/piping) Fluor Corp

Collaboration was the watchword for this monoethylene and di-ethylene glycol production facility project. Operations personnel from owner MEGlobal embedded with Worley engineering teams in Houston and Mumbai to expedite issue resolution and ensure necessary resources were always available for the construction team, submitters say. “Engineering and procurement were there to make sure construction could succeed,” says Ron Kluwe, Worley executive project manager.

Fluor took a complementary approach to their day and night shifts. More than 1,100 Fluor craftworkers were on site at peak. The firm “devised a way so the night shift performed activities like tack welding, and then the day shift finished welding and did QA/QC,” says Clarence Stadlweiser, MEGlobal project director. A key to this approach was having general forepersons work between noon and midnight to overlap both shifts. “It eliminated finger pointing … [and] kept safety, productivity and quality all in line,” says Rocky Plemons, Fluor vice president of construction. The approach helped the project achieve a low 0.19% weld reject rate.

With miles of piping to install in the 10-story structure, proper sequencing was critical, says the project team. Kluwe credits the work of Worley’s Mumbai office. Despite some delays in equipment and material delivery, construction finished in 21 months, seven months earlier than industry average for similar U.S. Gulf Coast projects, says Jim Breuer, president of Fluor’s energy solutions group.

The project met the highest safety standards, with a total recordable incident rate of just 0.054 for 3.7 million worker hours. In addition to safety training, the project team kept completion pressure off craft workers by not stressing to construction crews “what the finish date was,” says Kluwe. “When crews try to meet a certain date, they start taking shortcuts, and that’s when you have injuries.” Instead crews focused on weekly goals.

The project also boosted investment by allowing site managers and field engineers to help plan the installation work packages. “It became their plan,” says Fluor’s Plemons. “As long as those plans produce results, everybody was a winner.”

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