BREWER – Employees at the Eastern Manufacturing Facility have started constructing portions of the 70 or so building modules that have been ordered by a Texas refinery, but the company is nowhere near to having the 500 employees Cianbro leaders have been saying would start by April 1.

“We started fabrication of pipe on March 7” with about 40 people, Chris McGary, human resource manager for the Brewer project, said recently. “By the middle of May, 100 people will begin fabrication of the modules.”

Cianbro Corp., a Pittsfield construction company known around the state and the nation, has won a multimillion-dollar, 15-month contract to construct building modules – prefabricated, self-standing building skeletons for a large, approximately $7 billion refinery expansion project in Texas.

Once the building modules are constructed, prewired and all the utilities and piping are in place, they will be shipped out by barge to Texas and will be put together on-site.

Once fully operational, the Brewer facility will employ at least 500 local welders, pipe fitters, electricians and other skilled personnel building the modules.

Many will be relocated Cianbro employees, but a good number will be new hires.

Employee numbers should start to increase in the near future, with a peak in the fall of about 500, Tom Ruksznis, project manager for site development, has said.

Over the last six months, Cianbro and its subcontractors have worked to change the 41-acre defunct Eastern Fine Paper Co. mill site, which closed in 2004, into a modular manufacturing facility.

Cianbro’s decision to name its plant Eastern Manufacturing Facility was to honor the former employees, many of whom spent a good portion of their lives in the old paper mill.

Gone are most of the old buildings and smokestacks, and there is a newly constructed slab where the modules will be built and a bulkhead to bring in supplies and ship out the massive structures.

Dredging the river was required to make a channel deep enough to handle the heavy barges that will be used to transport the modules, which can be as tall as five stories and weigh up to 1,200 tons. That has stopped for the time being to avoid a possible adverse impact on native fish, but will resume on Aug. 1.

The historic administration building has new utilities and a new staircase, and has been totally remodeled.

The pipe for the modules began arriving last month and the steel was scheduled to arrive this month.

Cianbro set up eight facilities across the state to train people for its welding jobs, and is training people on-site in Brewer.

The company is accepting applications online at www.cianbro.com.

nricker@bangordailynews.net

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