FTLComm - Tisdale - May 4, 2000

It is humbling and somewhat comforting to know that we in the computer industry are not the only folks who occasionally have to deal with mistakes. The huge construction project in Hudson Bay involving the building of their new strip board plant has seen a good deal of exotic products head down the highway. This one came back. The planners working on the new plant needed a pair of cooling units and order two tanks from Northern Steel equipped with the complex heat exchanger pictured above. It was then discovered that this system was not what they needed and they serious considered digging two big holes and burring their mistake. But the clever folks at Northern Steel explained that the problem could be solved and so the tanks were shipped back to the Tisdale plant and are being modified to the newly identified needs. The cooling coils are produced by a pipe fabricator in Saskatoon and they have shipped out two new coil systems, the originals have been removed and Northern Steel specialists are fitting the new set up back together. When I asked what will become of the removed coils one fellow remarked that they might come in handy if someone was planning a playground because for now the exotic combination of intricately bent pipe is scrap metal

Many specialised vessels have been created for the Hudson Bay project including a series of tanks like the one on the right. Each of these eleven or so tanks have walkways and hand rails on top of them and the interesting rings on the tank are to provide support for the cladding. These tanks once they are on site and positioned are then insulated and given aluminum surfaces to protect the insulation.