In 2016, EMJ launched the Edgar M. Jolley Awards for Excellence to recognize exceptional work within the family of companies. The “Jolleys,” named in memory of EMJ’s founder, are presented in three categories: Outstanding Performance, Outstanding Servant Leadership and Outstanding Project.
In this five-part blog series, EMJ highlights our Outstanding Project recipients and why they were selected for these awards. Directors and Vice Presidents of the corporation nominate for Outstanding Project, which is given to a project team that delivered an exceptional client experience, added value, overcame challenges, demonstrated exemplary planning and execution, and built client relationships.
This year, EMJ recognized five projects with this award:
Signal Mill, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Tranquillity 8 Solar, Fresno County, Calif.
West Towne Marketplace, El Paso, Texas
Market City Center, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Wegmans, Medford, Mass.
In the coming weeks, we will highlight each project and the team that brought it to life on the blog. This week, we’re featuring Signal Energy Constructor’s Tranquillity 8.
Tranquillity 8 is a solar power project in Fresno County, Calif., on 1,900 acres that produces enough clean energy to power approximately 50,000 homes. Signal Energy Constructors, a renewable energy contractor within EMJ Corporation, delivered this turn-key, design-build project in late 2017, performing all engineering, procurement and construction (EPC).
The team repeatedly overcame major obstacles ranging from unusually heavy California rains to last-minute design revisions by crafting intelligent, workable solutions and executing them energetically and aggressively to meet critical milestones.
One issue the team tackled was a two-month delay in the inverter skids delivery. The Signal team immediately convened a meeting of all disciplines to get ideas on how to proceed, then held daily follow-up sessions until a workable solution had been decided, vetted and implemented.
The project team’s strong working relationships with the Fresno County authorities and lessons learned from previous experience on the neighboring Tranquillity “1” project helped the team foresee obstacles and proactively resolve them, thus expediting the project’s delivery and enabling the team to overcome these schedule challenges.
A testament to this proactive approach is the project’s excellent safety record. With over 575,000 hours worked, there was only one minor recordable incident.
“This safety record is the result of both good training and smart incident management,” said Chad Dueker, Director of Projects, Signal Energy. “But more than that, it is the result of on-site leadership that genuinely cares about people and doggedly insists on adherence to safe work practices day in and day out.”
“Even before the project began, the team laid the groundwork for constructive relationships among our team and subcontractor teams on-site by sponsoring a full-day ALLSAFE conference to cultivate a high degree of mutual trust and interdependence,” continued Chad.
The Signal team’s exceptional work ensured that the project remained on schedule despite these challenges, earned the customer’s gratitude and devotion, and led to the team’s Jolley award.
As the customer stated in December 2017, “Signal has set the bar very high at Tranquillity 8. This kind of performance is going to be difficult to improve on.”
Congratulations to all members of the Tranquillity 8 team:
Terry Dill, Safety Superintendent
Bob Elliott, Project Manager
Tanner Knauth, Sr. Procurement Specialist
Marc Lawrence, Assistant Construction Manager
Steve Van Langen, Superintendent
Bill Manuel, Site Quality Manager
Alex Martinez, Commissioning Manager
Michael McDonald, Project Engineer
Tyler Phipps, Preconstruction Manager
Jennifer Scoggins, Sr. Project Engineer
Audra Smith, Scheduler
Alex Torres, Superintendent
Related story:
https://www.emjcorp.com/employee-news/signal-mill-named-2017-outstanding-projects/