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Weekly UpdatesThere are many factors to consider when a company is planning to expand into a remote area, or to expand an already established work site. Along with a way to get materials to the site, there also is a need for buildings and facilities not only to house the employees who work there, but also to house equipment, and in some cases, the power sources that enable the location to expand.
For this reason, modular buildings have begun to gain popularity in Alaska. Manufactured in a controlled environment, these facilities, which can range from churches to fish camps to 102-ton process modules, are enabling businesses to expand their capabilities while lessening the complications caused by typical field construction.
"Building in Alaska means building in the weather, and this can mean freezing, thawing and rain, all of which can effect the quality of a structure," explained Margie Goodman, general manager, Alaska Modular Space. "But when you build in a controlled environment, you don't have any of these issues, which ensures the quality of the building."
Companies also save on costs related to building in the field. "Certainly, weather is a factor, because many of our buildings are made for the North Slope," said Tom Maloney, vice president of business development in Alaska for VECO. "But there are also a lot of costs associated with building on the Slope, including establishing camps, creating housing and flying the employees in. It's generally considered to be about three times as expensive to build something in the field as it is to build it in a shop."
A timesaving is also a factor, which is especially important in Alaska areas that, due to weather, have a much shorter construction season. "When you're building on site, you have to do the site work, grading and foundation before you even start the building itself," said Goodman. "With a modular building, a company can have the facility built in a factory while they are in the field doing the site work. When the foundation is complete, the building, already on-site, can be assembled in a very short time--a matter of weeks."
FROM PIZZERIAS TO POWER PLANTS
Though modular buildings are often used to make temporary or permanent offices, there is almost no limit to the types of facilities that can be created using this type of construction. Alaska Modular Space, headquartered in Anchorage, boasts projects ranging from a mobile classroom in Kotzebue, to a pizzeria in Nome, to an art gallery in Petersburg and outbuildings in Prudhoe Bay.
"When you normally think of a modular building, you think of a series of rectangles with a flat roof," said Goodman. "But modular buildings are so much more. We work with general contractors and architects to design the type of building that a client wants-from a 60-by-60 office building that is several stories high to a lodge in Whistler that features board and batten construction and a cedar shake roof."
Clients have come to Alaska Modular Space, a subsidiary of Hawaii Modular Space, with everything from a fully drawn architect's plan to an idea drawn on a napkin. "We may have to 'modularize' the plans a bit to work within 10-, 12- or 14-foot sections, but other than that, we can build just about anything a person wants," Goodman added. In addition to their custom-construction work, the company also has a rental and sales fleet, which provides premade units to customers on a temporary or permanent basis.
Just some of Alaska Modular Space's recent and upcoming projects include the Coast Guard Station in Ketchikan, a church in Yakutat, and a dormitory for Bristol Environmental. "This was a very cool project-we built a bunk house with beds, showers, a kitchen and dressers for eight employees that was then bolted to the top of a ship," said Goodman.
As clients are finding more uses for modular buildings, their perceptions are changing as well. "People used to equate modular construction to less expensive, poor quality buildings-sort of like comparing a mobile home to a stick-built home," Goodman said. "But in the commercial environment, this is a complete fallacy. We have to follow the same building code, and we use the same building materials, as a company who constructs a high-rise office building in Anchorage."
This commitment to quality building has resulted in the company receiving a number of national awards from the Modular Building Institute. Alaska Modular Space also has grown by roughly 25 percent each year for the past three years, a trend that they expect to continue.
"It's really exciting being part of such a growing field," said Goodman. "And to continue to educate people on how fast, flexible and attractive modular buildings can be."
ALUTIIQ MANUFACTURING CONTRACTORS
Alutiiq Manufacturing Contractors (AMC), a subsidiary of Alutiiq LLC, which is a subsidiary of Afognak Native Corp., has also seen a growth in opportunities in recent years. The company, which originally built modular homes for villages in Western Alaska, has since expanded to provide training ranges and housing for the military, as well as modular components for companies like VECO.
"We first got into the modular building industry when the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was providing grants to regional housing authorities to purchase a significant number of homes," said AMC's Chris Dillon, branch manager construction, Alaska and the Pacific. "We sold close to 100 houses with our patented modular design before HUD changed its funding profile and the market began to dry up."
About that same time, AMC, who had built a 30,000-square-foot plant at Port MacKenzie, was contracted by staff at Fort Richardson and asked to build a training range. "We used a variation of our modular building to create this facility, and even modularized the target emplacements, which enabled us to deliver the range seven months ahead of schedule," said Dillon.
AMC also entered into a relationship with a manufacturing company in Texas, and together they began to design and build small modular facilities for federal agencies throughout the nation. This, in turn, helped them to land a $48.3 million contract with Fort Richardson to provide housing for 456 troops and approximately 20 office buildings. They also were awarded the contract for a similar project at Fort Lewis in Washington to provide more than $70 million in modular housing facilities.
"In addition to creating modular buildings, we also put together modular components that can be plugged together on site," said Dillon. One such project includes backup pump control systems for VECO that will be used on the Alyeska pipeline.
According to Dillon, AMC is looking to expand its services into even more areas, including housing, where the company first got its start. "Housing is booming in the Mat-Su Valley, so we bought the design for a sectionalized house from a company in the Midwest," said Dillon. "We're currently building three prototype houses in our factory, which will make great starter homes once we've perfected the product and introduced it to the local market."
In addition to providing buildings for businesses across the country, AMC also prides itself on providing jobs for Alaskans. "When we first started building modular houses, we worked with the villages to bring some of their people in to work in our factory job training program," said Dillon. "These people have continued to work for us; during the Fort Richardson project, more than $1 million of our payroll went to Afognak Native Corp. shareholders."
VECO
Though both AMC and Alaska Modular Space have provided modular building services to VECO, the company also creates its own heavy industrial modules designed to go into processing facilities. "We first started building modules 20 years ago, and we've built about 600 modules to this point, mostly for the oil and gas industry, though we also do work for the mining industry," said VECO's Maloney. "The majority of our work is truckable modules, which we build in Anchorage, Kenai, Port MacKenzie and on the North Slope, and we also build sealift modules."
In the past year, VECO built 52 truckable modules, which was a record year of production for the company. "Of these modules, some were electrical modules, which control all of the equipment that runs in the field and provides self-generating power," said Maloney. "We also built 12 pump modules for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. for their pump station reconfiguration project."
Process modules like these can take a variety of shapes, from a 10-by-10 square unit to a module 84 feet long and 16 feet wide. These modules can weigh up to 102 tons, and contain all of the equipment needed for a company to run power or pumps out in the field. "We outfit the module in our shop, and check it all out here," said Maloney. "That way, when it gets out to the field, all they have to do is set it up and plug it in."
Modules are designed so that they can be used together, or can be stacked on each other. "One of the projects we did for ConocoPhillips was a group of stackable modules that ended up being three-stories tall and two-stories wide," said Maloney. "They used a heavy lift crane to stack them, and then hooked them up using the tie-ins between modules."
In addition to creating truckable modules, VECO also is the major producer of sealift modules in Alaska. Though they are similar to truckable modules, they are much larger-a module for NorthStar, for example, was 200 feet by 80 feet by 100 feet and weighed 3,000 tons. "It's actually less expensive for a company to do a big unit like this instead of multiple truckable modules," said Maloney of NorthStar's 30-megawatt power plant.
One drawback to sealift modules is that, because of weather conditions, they often have a much shorter timetable during which they can be transported to the site compared with truckable modules. "One of the big advantages of our company is that we built the modules in Alaska, so we when a transportation window opens up, we can get the module delivered quickly," said Maloney.
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