Members of the CT101 team atop the newly finished cooling tower. From left: Richard Maggi, William Harrison, Donald Dains, Craig Ferguson and Robert Law. (Photo by Julie Karceski.)

Yes, it is finished. In the course of about 15 weeks, the old Cooling Tower 101 was demolished, the basin was cleaned, new base anchors installed, piers seismically upgraded, and a new cooling tower was constructed, commissioned and put on line. All the while the critical heat loads, including Building 50 and 84, were cooled by a temporary cooling tower system.

On May 17 the new cooling tower was cooling the critical loads in Building 23, the central utility plant, and by May 19 it was cooling all of SLAC's central campus. Chilled water for air conditioning systems is being provided to buildings.

"This is a nice accomplishment for all involved and it is great to have this project behind us," said CT-101 Project Manager Craig Ferguson, who is also SLAC head of Environment, Safety and Health. "Several organizations came together to pull this off and it was terrific to see so many people jump in to help."

It took a coordinated effort by the Facilities Division, Procurement Office, ES&H, Mechanical Fabrication Department, Project Management Office, Office of the Chief Finance Officer, DOE SLAC Site Office and of course the general contractor and their sub-tier contractors to complete this project. Rich Maggi, Field Construction Manager, did yeoman’s work coordinating and overseeing the day-to-day field activities. Applying previous lessons learned, a great team, good work planning and execution were key to getting this project completed successfully and without incident.

A time lapse video of the demolition of the original CT101, built in 1963, can be seen in "Cooling Tower Deconstruction." A time lapse video of the construction of the new CT101 can be seen below.

—Javier Sevilla and Craig Ferguson
  SLAC Today, May 28, 2010