We are excited and honored to announce that Trekker Group has won two 2020 SAIA Project Awards! These annual awards from the Scaffold & Access Industry Association (SAIA) recognize member companies that make extraordinary contributions to projects in the scaffold and access industry.
Trekker won the following two awards for our scaffold work for the SeaWorld Wild Arctic Dome repair project:
- Supported Scaffold Project of the Year Award
- Innovation Award
About These SAIA Project Awards
The SAIA Supported Scaffold Project of the Year Award is given to a company whose supported scaffold was used to:
- Raise the overall level of safety on a project
- Contribute to the overall success of the project and/or
- Complete a dynamic installation in a new or innovative way
The SAIA Innovation Award is given to a company that:
- Demonstrated a new or innovative way to use an existing product on a project or
- Delivered a new product to the field
Trekker’s Scaffold for the SeaWorld Wild Arctic Dome Repair
Trekker Distributor has a long history of innovative scaffold solutions for uniquely challenging projects. The SeaWorld Wild Arctic Dome repair project is a perfect example.
It started out as a fairly standard supported scaffold project. But we found that one of the client’s big concerns was the need to drain the 300,000-gallon pool, adding significantly to the cost and time required for the repairs. It takes two days to drain this pool and three days to fill it, at a cost of $75 per gallon. If you don’t want to take out your calculator, that comes to $22.5 million just to deal with the water, before even getting to the repair work.
We determined that we could eliminate the need to drain and refill the pool. Trekker has two Divemasters on staff who trained our scaffold erectors as divers. We developed a project and safety plan, accounting for a number of special challenges.
For example, the floor of the pool is designed to resemble the rocky Arctic Sea bottom, complete with a shipwreck. The water is also as salty as the Arctic Sea, adding significant buoyancy for divers to overcome, and it’s kept at 52 degrees Fahrenheit, creating the risk of hypothermia.
We came up with ideal solutions for these and other challenges, and SeaWorld accepted our proposal. We love a challenge, and we love being able to help our customers complete their projects on a shorter timeline and at major cost savings!
So, thank you to SeaWorld for this opportunity. And, of course, thank you to the SAIA for recognizing our innovative work with these two 2020 SAIA Project Awards!
