The second quarter of the year was a busy one! Here is what we had on the go the last couple of months:
Shop Update
Take a two minute walk though our shops to see just a snapshot of what we have been working on:
Safety Topic: Ergonomics
Welding and Metal Fabrication can be a very taxing career on the body. As displayed in this photo, you may be in various awkward positions for prolonged periods of time, performing repetitive motions and working with equipment that can pose ergonomic hazards. Ergonomics need to be at the front of mind when determining the safest and most efficient way of performing our jobs.
Ergonomics involves the concept of “fitting the workplace to the worker”, not the other way around. Musculoskeletal disorders such as strains and sprains occur when the demands of the job exceed the capabilities of the person doing the job. Just because one person can do a job without risk of injury doesn’t mean everyone can. Variations in worker size, strength and endurance need to be considered when determining capacity for physical demands put on each individual worker.
In this topic, we cover four main ergonomic hazard factors to be aware of and how we can control them, creating the safest working environment possible.
For the full topic, click here.
Project Updates
Potash Chutework
For the past couple of months, our team at the 56th street location has been fabricating and assembling a significant chutework project for a potash customer in the province. This chutework is fabricated from stainless steel, then lined with ceramic tile by our partners, Commercial Sand Blasting & Paint. Extra care and attention is needed when fabricating with stainless steel to ensure it is not contaminated by any carbon steel particles from tools, equipment or the shop environment. Additionally, all the fabrications are pickled and passivated, which removes any remaining contamination – and it makes them look super cool! After this is complete, all the items are returned to our shop where they are test assembled to make sure each connection fits as required.
Terminal Piping Replacement
JNE has been working with a terminal customer near Saskatoon to replace several hundred meters of piping within the terminal. Of course, the new piping must fit and measurement of field conditions by hand is very time consuming. So JNE, together with our engineering partner Kova Engineering (Saskatchewan) Ltd., developed a digital twin with the planned new piping overlayed on a laser scan of the existing facility. Laser scanning is an exceptionally effective way to measure since it provides millions of points for measurement in the same time that a human can gather just a few with a tape measure. This project is now busy in the fabrication stage, and we are confident of a good fit because of the extra effort invested in the digital twin.
Flare Knockout Drum
This pressure vessel was highlighted in our update a couple months ago, when shop fabrication was complete and it was shipped to our partner Park Derochie for blasting, painting and further installation work. While it was at Park Derochie, we also had our partners at Thermal Systems insulate and clad the vessel, and our partners at CSI Heat installed heat tracing on the lower portion of the vessel.
This vessel was successfully shipped by NexGen Transportation to our customer in the Industrial Heartland area of Alberta. We are excited to share this is the first vessel we have delivered to a refinery customer in this area, with hopefully many more to come!
Combined Strength Podcast
We had a great response to the inaugural episode of the Combined Strength Podcast and as promised, we are back for more!
Over the last handful of months, four new episodes were released including JNE project updates and interviews with industry leaders from across Western Canada as well as those here in our home province.
Follow the links below for the full episodes:
Google Podcasts – The #CombinedStrength Podcast (google.com)
Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/combined-strength/id1618315829
Podbean – Combined Strength | a podcast by JNE Business Development (podbean.com)
Thanks for listening!
Employee Updates
Welcoming New Employees
As industrial projects ramp up in the province, we have stepped up our game in both capability and capacity. Since the beginning of April, we have welcomed 17 new employees to the JNE team including Jay Janzen, filling our Production Manager role and Roozbeh Leylabi in our Welding & Quality Assurance Manager role. These two positions have been vital in taking JNE’s internal capabilities to the next level and ensuring we are prepared to respond to industry demands in the coming months and years.
We have also been so fortunate to find and bring on a whole crew of skilled workers in a relatively short period of time. These are the people who enable us to work toward achieving our mission of being the steel fabrication industry’s most responsive, dynamic, and customer-focused supplier, delivering on the needs of our customers:
Arnold – Labourer
Robert – Labourer
Yu Gu – CNC Programmer
Josh – Shipping/Receiving
Mitchell – Labourer
Vanni – Labourer
Driek – Welder/Fitter
Thomas – Welder
Jaycie – Welder
Crawford – Welder
Aeron – Welder
Alex – Welder
Darien – Welder
Aleksandr – Welder
Welcome aboard!