Problem
When a Virginia cigarette-manufacturing facility needed to eliminate 30 years of coal ash and dust, it chose the one company it trusted to complete the job with an emphasis on safety, efficiency and quality of clean. That company is MPW Industrial Services. The plant was decommissioning its coal-fired power source in favor of natural gas, so it needed the area to be like new. The project would be demanding considering the facility had never had the area professionally cleaned to this standard in the past. The scope of the project included a boiler, a power house, precipitators and coal silos.
Solution
Although MPW utilized its high-tech Supersucker Vacuum Trucks for the majority of the project, certain aspects (coal storage and others) of the cleaning were best suited to MPW’s foam cleaning services, which are ideal for the removal of combustible and non-combustible dust, dirt, oil, grease and more. Foam cleaning also helps eliminate fire hazards by using non-flammable chemicals. MPW used three to four vac trucks — each with an 18-cubic-yard payload capacity — and up to 35 technicians per day and made sure its own Operations Managers and Health and Safety officials were on site daily to keep the operation running smoothly and safely.
Results
The project, which lasted nearly four months, was executed seamlessly during a particularly stifling summer. MPW worked 25,751 man-hours with zero lost-time injuries, zero safety issues and zero OSHA-recordable incidents. Ecstatic with the quality of the clean, plant managers communicated to MPW representatives that the venue had never looked that great. On a Job Performance Evaluation, the facility’s construction manager graded MPW “Very Satisfied” on five key performance categories, writing “Overall project was very successful and I would absolutely use MPW again!!”