BANG-UP Job

Kraemer picks up the pieces for Foremost Farms

Foremost Farms Plant Rebuild

By Chris Thompson

Photo courtesy of Kraemer Brothers LLC

The Foremost Farms plant rebuild started with a bang.

And it was a big one. On the morning of Dec. 23, 2003, a boiler explosion in the mechanical room ripped through the middle section of the 85,450-square-foot dairy plant, blowing off big sections of the roof, scattering debris to neighboring properties and sending vibrations all the way to downtown Reedsburg a half-mile away.

Kraemer Brothers LLC was on the scene a few hours later, assisting the fire department, cleaning up the site and working with architect and engineer Mead & Hunt to assess the damage.

"This was very large," said Kevin Kraemer, vice president of Kraemer Brothers. "There was stuff hanging from trees, and people couldn't come out of their houses."

Only two Foremost workers suffered minor injuries, but the plant was a disaster. The middle section, which held the plant’s mechanical systems, was practically destroyed, and both the production end on the west and the cooler and warehouse end on the east suffered structural damage from the vibrations.

As soon as the site was secure and the insurance team had left, Kraemer, which has worked with Foremost since the 1950s and remodeled the Reedsburg plant in 1989, got to work with Mead & Hunt.

"We never left the site," Kraemer said. "We were constantly reviewing with the architect and owners. Some of the walls were just teetering."

he first priority, Kraemer said, was to get the production end up and running because the cows didn't care if there was an explosion. So Kraemer went through the structure, determining what sections had maintained their stability and what sections had to be replaced.

	Project Name: Foremost Farms Plant Rebuild Location: Reedsburg Submitting Company: Kraemer Brothers LLC, Plain General Contractor: Kraemer Brothers LLC Architect: Mead & Hunt, Madison Engineer: Mead & Hunt Owner: Foremost Farms USA, Baraboo Project Cost: $6.2 million Start Date: December 2003 Completion Date: October 2004

"It was a challenging job from the standpoint of all the shoring we had to do and determining how far to go back," Kraemer said. "If anything looked questionable, we had a conversation with Mead & Hunt.

"Their whole plan was if it was questionable at all take it out. They had a very conservative and intelligent rebuilding package. It was exactly how everyone wanted to proceed."

From the production end, the construction team worked its way around the structure, stabilizing, shoring, tearing out walls in 20-foot sections and replacing them.

"We got the top half of the building stabilized, and then it became a normal job," Kraemer said. "The build back of the exploded area was no different than a remodel."

Kraemer had the milk intake back in service by Feb. 9, butter production in service by March 8, a damaged evaporator tower working by June 8 and the east end's freezer, which had a longer lead time for material, running by Oct. 9. And the company did all the major work in the dead of winter.

"Looking back on it, it was a lot of fun," Kraemer said. "Maybe we shouldn't have fun on something like this."