A massive fire at Syncrude's oil sands upgrading plant near Fort McMurray caused extensive damage to the coking facility and shut down the entire plant. Loss of the 80,000 barrel-a-day plant cost Syncrude over $2.5 million revenue loss per day. The disaster repair was the critical schedule driver.

Fluor was at work with less than 24-hours' notice to help with emergency repairs. We provided project management, engineering, procurement, construction, materials control and startup services to get the plant operational.

In addition to the fire-damage project, Syncrude took the opportunity to make changes to the oil-sands operation to increase site performance and reliability. One third of the work was new design, including modernizing the technology on Coker Unit No.2.

The plant had suffered extensive fire damage. We mobilized a team to Syncrude's facilities to assess the damages, develop a plan for rebuilding the damaged facilities and assist Syncrude in preparing estimates for the insurance claim.

To meet the client's urgent schedule recovery, we mobilized resources from multiple locations, not just Canada. We developed an abbreviated schedule that encompassed 230,000 staff work hours and 210,000 craft hours. One timesaving innovation was moving the home office to the field. We had both day and night shift construction crews engaged. We incorporated all repair work and activities of 1,700 construction tradespeople.

One third of the project included plant improvements. The balance of work involved replacement in kind. Our scope included planning, engineering, procurement and construction that would be performed in parallel. Our scope of facilities also included construction of the electrical and instrumentation works and insurance claim support. Separate construction activities, which normally are phased, were performed simultaneously as well. Engineering took place at the jobsite and included both repair work and debottlenecking to improve coker capacity. Computers were used at the jobsite to track field progress, engineering, material control, finance and payroll.

We performed all procurement worldwide, which required that long-lead delivery items such as chrome piping, fittings, and valves be at the plant site in 10 weeks. The long lead times involved in fabrication demanded that major components damaged in the fire be re-built rather than re-ordered. The damaged units were trucked thousands of miles to waiting vendors for immediate rebuilding.