Primus’ Case Farms project in Winesburg, OH is on a winning streak! Last spring, it was awarded Best Industrial Warehouse/Storage Project by the Design-Build Institute of America’s Southeast Division. Now, ENR Midwest has awarded it two honors: Best Project for its Excellence in Safety Award, and an Award of Merit for the overall project.
Primus provided turnkey design build services. The 161,000 SF poultry processing plant addition has innovative features that make it stand-out. These include:
- -33° VRT that circulates cold air around product cases, reducing freezing time down to 17-24 hours, about half the time of a traditional blast freezer.
- Palletizing area that utilizes ProSort technology to scan product labels and determine which lane of eight the products proceed to.
- Double layer conveyor belt that sandwiches each product case to pull it up an incline faster. The steeper angle allows for more floor space.
- Pressure Point Conversion System to regulate merges and element product jams.
The facility processes about 2.3 million pounds of chicken per week, or about 520,000 pounds a day.
Being recognized for executing the project safely is a huge honor. The biggest challenge was ensuring a safe work site in an active food processing facility that housed over 500 workers outside of the construction crew. Below are highlights of Primus’ safety plan.
- A site containment fence with zero breaks was installed to separate construction and processing activities. This funneled traffic and personnel through security stations.
- Reinforced concrete jersey barriers lined all of the drive lines which aided in the clear separation of highway traffic from construction equipment.
- A split role shift was implemented to minimize worker fatigue.
- Reinforced steel plating was installed daily on all open trenches throughout the project.
- Three major separations of the roof structure took place during construction. This required building supported stair-towers to be erected and inspected for access to the roof. Roof access permitting was required and filed for each subcontractor doing work on the structure. Full perimeter warning lines were installed around the entire roof 15 feet back from the leading edge and were maintained throughout the entire project.
- A full-time safety manager was onsite along with the superintendent to ensure proper safety, barricading and egress were maintained.
Primus is honored to have this complex project recognized by ENR Midwest. Congratulations to the team!