Loading...Hello, and welcome to this edition of ElectricTV. As you can see, we’re outside the studio, and I’m dressed to go indoor skydiving, where NECA contractor Lauderdale Electric and IBEW Local 117 makes flying a possibility.
I’ve got to say, this is my idea of skydiving, but I’ve got a long way to go to be able to do this, or this, or this. iFly in Naperville is the newest place where thrill seekers 3 years old to 103 can take off. But, without gravity, which typically does the hard work when skydiving, how is this all possible?
Maggie Westlove, Director of Sales and Marketing, iFLY
“We have four fans at the top of the tunnel that blow out and come down around the building and come up underneath the tunnel, and they blow up so you are actually floating on a column of air, rather than some where there’s a fan on the bottom and pushing you up, or a fan at the top sucking you up. With the system that we have here, it goes all the way around. It’s recirculating air so it’s just like we say for our male flyers, you’re like Superman, and our girls are like Tinkerbell floating around in the tunnel.
“There would not be an iFLY tunnel without the electricity. That is the anchor that keeps the tunnel going. If we didn’t have any electricity, we wouldn’t be able to power the fans, we wouldn’t be able to have our control mechanisms there to keep everything in place. That’s the key to keep the tunnels running.”
And while this may not be a hospital setting with a critical life safety system, safety is still paramount. Any misstep on any part of the installation was not an option. Enter the NECA-IBEW team.
Bruce Creen, Executive Director, Northeastern Illinois Chapter of NECA
“You had the experience of signing the liability waiver when you came in. So you know it’s serious business, and you know that the turbines have to work – not only the first time, but every time.”
Beau Lauderdale, Foreman, Local 117 IBEW
“First, it starts outside. There’s a 3000-amp, 480-277 volt service that feeds upstairs 2400 amps. The fans are controlled with the VFDs. Each VFD gets 600, so there’s four of them, powers the 350 horsepower fans. Four of those, 1400 horsepower. Everything feeds back to the console and the instructor in there ramps them up when they need to go higher. The more power and the lighter the person, the lower the miles per hour.”
Bruce Creen, Executive Director, Northeastern Illinois Chapter of NECA
“It really is incredible, the range of work the NECA contractors do. I mean, anything from residential to an indoor skydiving facility to a power plant project. They can do it all.”
Bill Lauderdale, Vice President, Lauderdale Electric
“One of the largest problems we had was doing the work when it was minus 20, minus 30, roughing in the floors, up in the slabs. Fifty feet, 60 feet up in the air. We had to figure out how we could do that and still try to keep this on time, and that was quite a challenge.”
Beau Lauderdale, Foreman, Local 117 IBEW
“My guys, 117 guys, show up to work every day, work as hard as they can. Their knowledge is bar-none, one of the top trained, being union guys. They worked through the conditions, they work for their trades. They knew what they had to do and they got it done on time.”
Bill Lauderdale, Vice President, Lauderdale Electric
“This is living proof that when you have great IBEW workers and they’re trained like we train them here, we did this job with three, four, five guys at the top.”
This project, compared to others, apples-to-apples, was done with a 75 percent reduction in man-hours due to the NECA-IBEW team’s expertise.
Bill Lauderdale, Vice President, Lauderdale Electric
“It’s just how well they’re trained, and how well we in the office can put their game plan together and work together with the GC to make this all happen in this short amount of time.”
Maggie Westlove, Director of Sales and Marketing, iFLY
“Working with Lauderdale was absolutely amazing. Their crew, everybody was fantastic. They were extremely professional. We knew from the beginning what we were going to be getting, they had no hidden agendas. They were extremely on-key, on-target with everything that they were doing for us. Without them, I don’t know that this project, as big and as extreme as it is, would have gone as well, because they were just simply amazing. We had absolutely no problems, no hitches, everything was on-target, everything was on time. They were genuine, really down to earth people. Great, great people to work with.”
That’ll do it for this edition of ElectricTV. From hospitals to high rises, and even including indoor skydiving, the NECA-IBEW team can get your project done right, on-time and on-budget. See you next time.