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Fast Break
July 2017, Volume 22
Spotlight on a Super Project
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)
Special Contributor: Ryan McKone, VP Project Management, Precision Pipeline
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) was one of the most publicized oil projects in recent history, primarily because protesters made it difficult for crews to perform their jobs. The total length of DAPL is 1,172 miles, and MasTec’s subsidiary Precision Pipeline (PPL) constructed 852 miles of it. They started work in early 2016, and are just now finishing up, restoring the right of way back to its natural beauty.
Fast Break talked to several of the project leaders to ask about challenges working on DAPL. “Protesters sidelined our crews on several of the days. Many of the protesters weren’t even from N. Dakota. They came there because they heard the controversy on the news,” said Ryan McKone, VP of Project Management. “But, I would say our biggest challenge was all the facility crossings we had to pass through, including waterways, utilities and other buried pipelines.”
On one of the sections, only 249 facility crossings had been documented on blue prints. But PPL is fierce about safety, so they sent out their own “locating & pot- hole teams” to ensure there weren’t any unmarked facilities, such as unrecorded utility lines and pipelines. They found a total of 640 crossings; almost triple what was indicated on the blue prints for that section. “We consider one
unmarked facility to be too many, so finding 391 hidden structures is an enormous find. If we break any one of those hidden lines, it could cause an explosion or shut down electricity for miles around,” said Steve Heavin, who is head of safety for that section. “Our locator team is the best there is. Because of them, we can provide our crews, and our
customers, a safe job every time.” A locator team walks in what’s called a 4-way sweep formation: two men crisscross every inch of the pipeline right- of-way, holding an M-scope to detect structures under the earth. When a structure is found, the pothole team digs around it then marks it so the excavation team sees it when they come along with heavy machinery.
Precision Pipeline had over 9,500 employees assigned to DAPL, of which 50% were hired from local unions in N. Dakota. Precision’s leaders worked incessantly to bring the teams together like one big family, and they succeeded. DAPL is one of MasTec’s most successful large-scale projects ever, with only 1.14 safety TRIFs.
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