A Special Holiday
Thanksgiving 1999
On the Wednesday of Thanksgiving weekend 1999, just as most employees had left offices for the holiday, Florida Power & Light (FPL) suffered failures on a critical feeder that served the huge Koger Center office park in northwest Miami-Dade. Darkness fell not just on corporate offices, but also on the facilities and critical operations of sensitive state and federal government agencies. The situation required immediate and expedited resolution. FPL quickly performed a temporary repair, but the problem needed a permanent solution by Monday morning.
The solution wasn’t easy. The job required a complete re-trench and re-conductor with roughly 4,800 feet of underground feeder. Megatran was called into action by FPL’s West Dade Service Center.
Megatran immediately supplied four underground crews that day and worked with two crews from another contractor. By 6:00 a.m. Friday we returned to the site with eight underground crews, appropriate equipment and support services such as contractors to remove excess fill and supply ready-mix concrete. On Saturday, we added two cable-pulling crews and two splicing crews. By the end of Saturday, all trenching was done, new feeder cable was pulled, and the critical portion of the feeder was completed and energized. On Sunday, we added four more cable splicing crews. Megatran had supplied 16 crews to this emergency.
What seemed like an impossible task was completed by 4:00 p.m. Sunday. The 4,800-foot failed feeder was replaced with a new 25KV feeder that was energized for all customers. The work area was cleaned up, restored and ready for business Sunday night.
Replacing nearly one mile of feeder in three days is not a typical job for a holiday weekend. But it demonstrates Megatran’s versatile experience and skills, its sense of organization and dedication, and the payoff from constant training in procedures and safety. The Koger Center job highlights the quality work Megatran has delivered for more than 20 years. And it underscores the capability of response to emergency matters—just another successful project at Megatran.
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