No bang for the buck

Consolidated gives Airgas a safe home

By Jennifer Pfaff

There's something a little unsettling about designing a building to explode, especially if it isn't part of a Hollywood set.

So Consolidated Construction kept its focus on the alternative as it designed and built a 43,000-square-foot headquarters for Airgas in Appleton. The contractor created a state-of-the-art ventilation and alarm system for the project to help prevent explosions in the new building, which contains a variety of combustible materials.

Airgas is an industrial supplier of welding supplies, medical oxygen, and gases for welding and cutting. Its new Appleton building includes a retail area, office, and manufacturing and warehousing operations.

"There's a lot of hazardous space, which in the code book is about as bad as you can get," said Joe Truehart, Consolidated's project manager. "You have a number of areas within this building that are classified as hazardous - the loading docks, the filling area, the warehouse. All of this needed to be treated with special attention."

	Project Name: Airgas Location: Appleton Submitting Company: Consolidated Construction Co. Inc., Appleton Design/Builder: Consolidated Construction Co. Inc. Project Leaders: Brian Gebauer, Consolidated's project manager; Joe Truehart, Consolidated's project manager Architect: Consolidated Construction Co. Inc. Engineers: Larson Engineering of WI, Appleton, engineering designer; National Survey & Engineering, a division of R.A. Smith & Associates Inc., Brookfield, survey and engineering Owner: Airgas Inc., Radnor, Penn. Project Cost: $3.9 million Project Size: 43,000 square feet Start Date: October 2005 Completion Date: August 2006

That special attention extended to Consolidated's design of a gas-detection system calibrated for all of the gases at Airgas. When gases are present at a dangerous level, the system sounds an alarm, turns on a high-volume exhaust fan that pumps three times the required amount of air through the building to diffuse the danger, and drops fire doors to protect openings to other areas of the building.

The one area most likely to experience a problem is the loading dock, Truehart said. At any given time, acetylene and oxygen can be near wood pallets, welding rods, clothing and other items stacked for distribution to clients.

"All you need is a leaky tank and a spark, and you've got the Fourth of July out there," Truehart said.

To minimize the danger, Consolidated carefully analyzed the covered canopy and shipping dock area and created a series of checks and balances to make sure catastrophe doesn't strike. The overall system meets the company's needs so well, it is being used for new Airgas buildings nationwide, Truehart said.

The safety system treats different work areas as separate spaces while keeping like jobs together. Four-hour firewalls separate hazardous areas from nonhazardous spaces, essentially creating five different buildings under one roof.

A careful study of how people work and how products flow through the building led to Consolidated's redesign of Airgas' original layout. And with a bigger building and the same number of employees, the new headquarters is helping Airgas achieve a higher volume of work, Truehart said.