By Jeff Amy-Mobile Register- May 12, 2008
The trees have been cut down, most of the dirt has been moved, power lines have been strung and pilings are going into the ground. That's the visual evidence of the coming of ThyssenKrupp AG's $3.7 billion steel mill a year after the company announced that it would build on the site straddling the Mobile-Washington county line.
The main phase of construction is still on the horizon, with company officials expecting it to start when foundations are poured beginning later this summer.
The long buildup reflects the project's complexities. There's customized equipment to be installed, and the plant will need its own river terminal, water treatment plant and railroad yard. ThyssenKrupp is acting as its own general contractor, and it is still picking engineering firms to manage some of the 16 pieces it has broken the overall work into.
Company officials say that they're on track to begin operations in January 2010. And they're serious about meeting that deadline.
"If you're not making that schedule and things aren't progressing, you're gone," is what one company official told potential contractors at a meeting in Mobile last week. "The schedule is the schedule."
The company, based in Dusseldorf, Germany, plans to process steel and make stainless steel on the site, hiring 2,700 employees by the time operations are ramped up.
State and local governments offered more than $811 million in incentives to ThyssenKrupp to entice it to choose Alabama over a competing site near Convent, La. The prize was the largest industrial project announced in the United States in 2007, and the fourth-largest in the world, according to Conway Data, which publishes Site Selection magazine.
Here's a look at the status of some parts of the project.
Employees: ThyssenKrupp has hired about 120 of its own employees, who are working out of an office on Downtowner Boulevard in Mobile. The company is preparing to hire the first production workers screened through Alabama Industrial Development Training, a state training agency.
Construction workers: There are about 400 construction workers at the site, mainly working for the excavation contractor and for several piling companies. The number of workers is expected to surge around August, when work begins on pouring the slabs for various parts of the complex. By then, the company plans to have built two on-site concrete plants. ThyssenKrupp is also considering off-site parking lots to accommodate large numbers of construction workers.
Construction progress: Excavation contractor RaCon of Tuscaloosa has continued to move dirt around and level the site. A berm has been built around much of the site's border to prevent noise from escaping, and work continues on a northern exit to Paul Bayou Road. Some dirt has been piled to compress the yard where the company plans to store raw steel slabs after they are unloaded from barges, to prevent the land from settling under the weight of the slabs. RaCon also won the contract from the state Department of Transportation to build an interchange at the plant's entrance off U.S. 43 and a bridge over the adjoining railroad tracks.
Contractors are also digging out an area for a substructure under part of the carbon steel mill. Plans call for going more than 31 feet below the current surface, then installing pumps to remove water from the foundation area, before filling it back in. Last week, excavators had gotten to 18 feet below grade.
At least three separate contractors are driving concrete piles on the site. Morris-Shea Bridge Co., based near Birmingham, and Baker Concrete Construction, based in Ohio, are handling pilings for parts of the stainless steel mill. Berkel & Co. Contractors, based in Bonner Springs, Kan., is driving piles for parts of the carbon steel mill.