WSM Works On New Local 150 Expansion

A team from Westside Mechanical recently wrapped up expansion work at the William E. Dugan Training Center in Wilmington, Illinois. The 342,000-square-foot center was upgraded to house an indoor training area, 30 classrooms, a construction material testing lab, state-of-the-art welding facility, 200 pieces of heavy equipment and more. The $2 million project took approximately 9 months to complete.

Scope Of Work

The WSM team provided the engineering, design and drawings to upgrade the existing training areas for diesel heavy equipment and road paving heavy equipment. They were able to double the training area by adding 79,000 square feet. Input from the general contractor and Local 150 personnel was imperative to refine the design and meet their operational needs.

Challenges And Successes

According to John Shaw, WSM Vice President – Sales Engineer, a basic concern with this particular project was the smoky atmosphere when diesel and gas equipment would run indoors during cold weather. The WSM team designed the system to provide conditioned heated makeup air as required (variable) and exhaust fans to increase air changes to maintain low smoke, CO and NO levels. A full building automation system with detailed control sequence to control temperature and ventilation rate was included, with CO/NO detectors.