Bringing all aspects of our tension fabric structures in-house has been part of Legacy’s evolution these past 10 years. That’s what single-source means to us.
We began with the fabric plant, welding our own fabric panels for walls, roofs, end walls and liners. Then we began fabricating our own steel beams for the frames. Finally, in 2019 we built our paint shop where we apply our proprietary epoxy coatings.
Add to that our own installation teams, and you can see the complete chain of logistics that Legacy controls. There can still, of course, be speedbumps in the process such as weather and pandemics, but we have ironed out as much of the operational elements as possible so we can deliver what we promise to our customers.
Finally, having our own design and engineering team to get the ball rolling is vital to creating a complete project.
Tight Deadlines
In a few cases, the ability to turnaround a project quickly has made all the difference. Completing this project—a biosolids composting structure in Southeast County, FL-- was a direct result of Legacy owning all the logistical pieces. We knew what we were capable of and we knew we could meet the challenge of a tight deadline.
This structure was a very large covered building open to the air, and this project was using a new composting process that turned biosolids into usable compost very quickly. The process was proprietary and had only been used once before in the pilot project.
For this project, we partnered with TLC Diversified, a water treatment and management contractor to get this building installed. Original plans suggested the project be split into two buildings, but because of Legacy’s use of solid steel rigid I-beam frames, we could make the entire project into one building of 139,750 square feet. That’s about 3 acres completely covered by our structure.
This composting facility had to be done, start to finish, in six months. That was the requirement from the county. The use-it-or-lose-it approach to budgeting for public agencies sometimes makes for incredibly short timelines. Our combined teams collectively analyzed the necessary actions that needed to occur, and with communication and support from all parties involved, we decided they could make that timeline.
Beating Our Best Estimates
We came back to TLC and said, not only could we meet that timeline, we might be able to do better than that. John Elder is a project manager for TLC and he said: “The thing that impressed everybody was the fact that Legacy came through and said, ‘hey we are going to better our time as far as manufacturing and shipping.’ And if I remember right, it was at least by a month.”
Installation began the beginning of August 2019.
Other challenges that the team faced were poor soils, more slope than they anticipated, and a very rainy “rainy season”. Nevertheless, the foundation was right on target, all 650 feet of it. Every anchor for the structure was precisely perfect.
Dalas Lamberson, vice president of TLC, said that a lot of the success of this team effort was due to communication. The urgency of the project had everyone answering their phone right away. “We all had our problems, but we found solutions quickly,” he told me. “It was exciting to build it in six months.”
Many of our own values and efficiencies have pushed us in the direction of being a single-source provider of tension fabric structures. By eliminating obstacles, or potential obstacles, we have discovered that we can meet our deadlines and deliver for our customers. That means delivering on our promises, and that something we are proud of each time we finish a project.
