The San Roque Project
Setting a Goal
The San Roque Project is a $700 million multi-purpose embankment dam
project, located in the town of San Roque, in the province of Pangasinan,
on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines. The entire project consists of
a dam, power plant, concrete chute spillway to allow excess water to
bypass the dam, diversion tunnels to re-route the river past the dam site
during onstruction, and an electrical substation.
Once completed, the dam will be 3,600 feet (1,097 meters) long and 650 feet (198 meters) high, making it the largest dam in Asia, and the 12th largest embankment dam in the
world. Along with providing an additional power source to the people of
Luzon, the dam will harness the water of the Agno River, and help irrigate
more than 215,000 acres (87,000 hectares) of agricultural land. Further,
it will reduce, by at least 50 percent, the amount of perennial flooding
that takes place each year, inundating communities and destroying millions
of pesos worth of crops vital to the economy
of the region.
The dam also has the
potential to have a huge impact on the local tourist economy. Japanese
investors have been watching the area, with the intent of building new
hotels and water sports facilities for skiing, rowing and fishing.
But, before the dam could be constructed, the San Roque Power Commission had to move millions of tons
of earth from one location to another to dig tunnels and connect the two
mountains that lay across a deep gorge.
Background
In March 1998, Raytheon Engineers & Constructors was awarded the contract to build the San Roque dam. Faris Engineers &
Associates of Bellvue, Washington was the consulting engineering firm
working for Raytheon to develop the initial design and specification of
the conveying system and auxiliary
components.
"By bringing all of the contractors under common
control, Raytheon became the project's turn key contractor," said Michael
O'Connor of Falk. "The company became responsible for the overall financing and execution of the entire
project."
Raytheon had planned to
accomplish the task of constructing the dam by asking their standard list
of multi-industry OEMs to bid on the design and supply the respective
systems necessary to complete the project. However, as the company began
to collect proposals from the OEMs, they realized that the project would come in
significantly over budget.
Rather than start the project in the red, and only
working with specific OEMs, the decision was made to
change course and to rely more heavily on internal resources.
Under the new plan, Raytheon would take
responsibility for specifying and purchasing the gear drives, pulleys,
idlers, belts and structural steel components necessary to construct the
conveyor system that would
move the earth during construction of the dam.
The original design
specified by Faris consisted of a parallel shaft, foot-mounted gear drive.
The Wisconsin-Chicago sales office had initial contact with Roberts
& Schaffer out of Chicago during the budgetary quotation stages.
Roberts & Schaffer was one of the original OEMs initially quoting the
conveyor system to Raytheon.
Since first being offered, the RFQ had undergone
several revisions. The final version calling for a complete drive package
with motors, backstops and brakes. The mechanical spreadsheet, engineered and developed by Faris, specified non
competitive
gear drives.
"When the prints were
generated with the respective part numbers & gear drive sizes they all
had Dodge-Flender drive sizes," said O'Connor. "For some reason, there was
a tremendously competitive slant away from our company. According to Raytheon,
there was no good answer as to why we weren't invited to
participate."
In addition to the slanted
specifications, O'Connor noted that the timeline called for shipment by
the end of September, with delivery to the
construction site by the end of 1999.
"That meant the
company awarded the contract, would have a previously unheard of deadline
of 22 weeks manufacture and ship approximately 40, 500hp and 800hp gear
drives."
Thanks to our
positive image in the industry, the company was invited to submit a bid
for gears drives to be used on the
San Roque project.
Product Recommendation
The
proposal submitted suggested use of the company's Alignment Free
Drive™ - a right-angle, shaft-mounted gear drive featuring
bolt-together construction.
"When we
first developed the Alignment Free Drive and compared it with the
installed cost for a conventional bedplate mounted drive, we realized that
the Alignment Free Drive could result in start-up savings of up to 20
percent," said O'Connor. "Since Raytheon was extremely budget conscious about this project, we knew
that the cost savings potential would have a positive impact on their
decision."
O'Connor said that the
Alignment Free Drive would also appeal to Raytheon because it would allow
the company to standardize on only two gear drive sizes. In addition, the
drives' simple registered fits and bolt-together construction would help
to overcome the low skill and language barriers of workers in the field.
"It comes as a
completely assembled package," said O'Connor. "All they have to do is
connect the head shaft pulley to a hollow quill, torque it down, fasten
it, connect the torque arm, and it's ready to go."
Showing Up
Unannounced
The initial proposal was
conceived and developed approximately 48 hours after receipt of the RFQ – an extremely fast
turnaround time for a project of this size.
While unable to schedule an
appointment with Raytheon engineering personnel to present the proposal,
our engineers and sales representatives chose to travel three hours to
Raytheon headquarters, show up unannounced, and attempt
to hand deliver the document.
The cold
call strategy worked. Upon initial review, Raytheon found the proposal to
be attractive, but with one final hurdle. Raytheon had specified a 1.5
service factor. Our conservative approach to developing service factor
numbers brought the company's service factor ratings in between 1.29 and 1.36 – too low
for approval.
But, after careful scrutiny by both Raytheon and the
company's outside engineering consultant, our drives were deemed
"technically acceptable" with a 1.25 service factor over motor horsepower and a 1.5 service factor
over brake horsepower.
Only two weeks after being
informed of the opportunity to bid on the project, we received a letter
of intent, accepting the company's proposal for manufacture and shipment
of 36 Alignment-Free gear drives, low speed backstops, steelflex and fluid
couplings, and motors.
"Two weeks from being informed to acceptance of
proposal - talk about making your head spin," said O'Connor.
The
Falk Alignment
Free Drive™ is currently being used in an overland conveyor system at the
future site of the San Roque dam. The system is transporting earth and
rock to a process plant where they will be used in the construction of the
San Roque Dam in the Philippines. The projected should be completed by the
year
2003.
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