Thank You for Your Service Eric

Posted by Ginny Bode on

It’s time to salute Eric Burcroff, one of our own. A Fisher employee since 1998, Eric recently retired from the United States Navy as a Master Chief Petty Officer, the Navy’s highest enlisted rank. The ceremony recognizing his 31 years of service in the Seabees was held on Saturday, April 1 at Naval Station Everett. Fisher co-workers, along with a ‘boat-load’ of fellow officers in dress uniform, attended the ceremony and reported it as an awe-inspiring ‘proud to be an American’ event.

Trained in both combat and construction, the Seabees (Naval Construction Force) is the arm of the military that builds and repairs infrastructure–during military operations and as goodwill after natural disasters.

Eric served active duty with the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion from 1983 – 1988 and then joined the Reserves, serving from 1992 – 2017. He has been deployed around the world, performing construction projects in many places including Guam, Japan and South Korea as well as supporting the war effort of Iraqi Freedom in 2006-2007. As a Project Foreman for Fisher, Eric has also served in many places–Louisiana, Alaska, and California, just to name a few.

We’re grateful for Eric’s service to our country and count ourselves blessed have employees of his caliber on the Fisher team.

Over the years Eric has worked with many on the Fisher team including (L-R) Scott Guimond, Stephanie Wood, Steve Allred, Dan Powers and Brett Berg
Eric and Lisa accept the Commander’s commendations.
Eric and fellow officers he served with

Fisher’s Team Gives Back to the Community

Posted by Ginny Bode on

Fisher’s Architecture and Engineering team recently built an outdoor shelter for Friendship House as a community service project. Friendship House provides emergency housing for men, women and children in Mount Vernon. This project was a design | build project in every sense. The team created the plans, set the footings and built the covered outdoor structure. Now complete, residents of the shelter now have a dry place outside of the four walls of the house.

Jennifer Johnson and Brett Detering led the project and lassoed their co-workers to participate. The entire team, joined by some of their family members, constructed the project over a couple of weekends.

Along with the company, Fisher has grown its offering of services.. Over the past 5 years, we’ve added structural engineering services along with the architectural design which we’ve had for more than 25 years. The A & E team now has 16 people.

NewCold and Fisher Break Ground in Tacoma

Posted by Ginny Bode on

Tacoma, WA,  January 3, 2017: NewCold and Fisher Construction Group have broken ground for building NewCold’s Tacoma Automated Coldstore, located in proximity to the Port of Tacoma and I-5.

The coldstore will use state of the art technology including automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) to automatically move and store products in the ‘dark’ high-bay warehouse. The equipment and operators will be directed by advanced software systems, while products are kept in optimal conditions with all coldstore areas cooled down to sub-zero temperatures.

This advanced cold chain solution ensures that processes are sustainable, traceable, fully integrated with the processes of NewCold’s customers, and always at the very forefront of technological developments. It offers a high and consistent logistic service level, and above all, offer a more sustainable and better food safety alternative to more conventional coldstore solutions.

The futuristic multi-customer coldstore enables food producers, including Trident Seafoods, to optimize their cold chain management, with increased agility and responsiveness to better serve the needs of their domestic and international end customers, 24/7.

Excellent Partners for This Significant Project

David Richardson, President and CEO of NewCold says “With this ground-breaking, NewCold brings to Tacoma, the Pacific Northwest, and North America, 16 years of leadership in automated cold storage development and operations.  Although our roots are in Europe, our heart is with global food producers where ever NewCold can bring value.  We could not be more pleased than to stand as partners beside Fisher Construction Company and our sponsoring customer, Trident Seafoods. NewCold highly values trusted partnerships and the partnerships created to realize this efficient, giant freezer are very special.  Our sincere thanks to the City of Tacoma for their critical support and guidance.  Pierce County and the City of Tacoma are full partners, as well. They are easy to work with and clearly focused on economic growth through leading technologies and we are thrilled to be investing here.”

We could not be more pleased than to stand as partners beside Fisher Construction Company and our sponsoring customer, Trident Seafoods. NewCold highly values trusted partnerships and the partnerships created to realize this efficient, giant freezer are very special.

Randy Furtner, CFO of Trident Seafoods continues “We have been investigating the possibilities of optimizing our cold chain with an automated coldstore for a long time. We went through a rigorous process with NewCold’s team to make sure that the coldstore solution fulfills all our needs. NewCold’s extensive experience in automated coldstore development and operation have helped us to realize our ambitions. We look forward to working together with NewCold in this generational coldstore project, which will play a pivotal role in our cold chain.”

The state of the art freezer is a joint design effort and construction by NewCold and Fisher Construction Group of Burlington (WA). The facility will be one of the largest in the USA with a storage capacity of over 25 million cubic feet, comparable to the volume of Seahawks CenturyLink Field.

“Fisher is excited to partner with NewCold on this facility, their first in North America” says Dan Powers, President, and CEO of Fisher Construction Group. “The unique method used to build this facility, and the technologies incorporated within facility are the way of the future, and we’re pleased to team with them and their storage partners to make it a reality.” Leading edge technologies used in addition to the automated pallet retrieval systems, are the building itself being supported by the structure of the storage racks which will hold the pallets of products, the low-oxygen environment reducing the risk of fire from the inside entirely, and the total building design needing only half the energy consumed by conventional cold stores to keep the products optimally frozen.

“NewCold is a great addition the logistics industry in Pierce County and Tacoma, employing up to 100 employees when fully operational, and providing vital support for the region’s robust food production capability” says EDB President and CEO Bruce Kendall. “We are thrilled they are bringing their first US operations here.  Their highly automated and energy-efficient facility will support Trident’s growing business and serve other customers”.

The permitting team at the City of Tacoma worked conscientiously to review permits and get the construction off to a smooth start.   “From the very first meeting, this project was off to a great start with successful teamwork between company representatives, designers, project managers and our permitting folks.”

Fisher Construction Group
A construction services company based in the Pacific Northwest, Fisher Construction Group designs and builds commercial and industrial facilities throughout the continental US and Alaska. Offering turnkey building solutions to the cold storage and food processing industries, Fisher’s team of builders, architects, structural engineers and food processing experts are known for building highly efficient facilities that deliver on investment. The company has steadily grown over the last five years to become the company that it is today with annual revenues of over $200 million.

NewCold
NewCold is an integrated service provider for cold chain logistics based in the Netherlands. NewCold operates a European network of large scale automated cold stores and refrigerated transport serving frozen food producers in France, Germany, United Kingdom and Poland. NewCold is further expanding its operations globally, building on decades of know how in developing and operating advanced cold chain logistics solutions.

Silver Bay Seafoods Nearing Completion

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Keeping Pace with Global Seafood Demand

Silver Bay Seafoods LLC is a processor of fish products based in Sitka, Alaska. Born out of the vision of a group of fishermen, Silver Bay’s integrated approach to catching and processing fish for domestic and international markets has seen tremendous growth. In less than ten years of operation, the company has grown from a single processing facility to one of the largest seafood companies in Alaska, operating five processing facilities throughout the state, with plans to begin processing squid in California in the near future.

Working closely with Silver Bay, Fisher Construction Group of Burlington Washington is nearing completion of a 64,679 sf. processing plant with admin office in Valdez, Alaska. Breaking ground in April of 2015, the construction crews worked 12-hour shifts through the summer to close-in the building before the first snow arrived in November. Once closed-in, crews worked through the winter installing the fire, refrigeration, mechanical systems, along with the equipment, so the facility is ready to begin processing pink salmon in June.

The Valdez processing facility will operate during summer fishing season, primarily processing pink salmon which will then be sent companies for end-use processing. Beyond the meat itself, this Silver Bay facility will process salmon roe for wild salmon caviar, and recover fish oil from the remaining solids.

With an eye towards maximum production during the peak season, Fisher installed 1,760 feet of underground supply lines to transfer fish from the tender boats to the processing plant. The underground supply lines provided multiple advantages: they are less prone to freezing and didn’t require overhead support systems.

Designed to Meet Silver Bay’s Specific Needs
To process fish as quickly as possible, the new Valdez facility features a robust refrigeration system when measured against typical food processing standards. Because the city of Valdez was not able to allocate enough power to meet Silver Bay’s needs, ten generators will support the plant, delivering 7 Megawatts of power to run the processing operations until the power grid is expanded. The two freeze tunnels and a plate freezer can freeze up to 130,000 round pounds of salmon per hour.

A refrigerated salt water system (RSW) circulates chilled water to the tanks, lowering the temperature of the fish for processing as quickly as possible, maximizing the quality of the product.

Built Clean
The highly automated facility meets food safety standards and is designed to hold up to the tough rigor of daily cleaning. A mezzanine was built to process and freeze the salmon caviar. The mezzanine clean room has a sloped epoxy floor and boxed girders to minimize the possibility of cross-contamination and harborage of micro-organisms.

It is Called ‘The Last Frontier’ for a Reason
Building in Alaska takes tremendous planning and forethought. Before breaking ground on the processing plant, Fisher built a three-story bunk house to house the construction workers, and later plant employees, in the small community on Prince William Sound whose population is about 4,000 people.

The processing plant and bunkhouse are built to withstand a winter snow-pack of up to 27 feet. From the structural steel down to every tool and its replacement, all of the construction materials were carefully planned by the construction crew and packed in containers to make the 1,500 mile trip by barge from Seattle.

The building’s structural design dealt with the particular challenge of locating in an area very prone to earthquakes. The Great Alaska Quake of 1964 caused severe damage and loss of life throughout the region. Valdez itself was relocated after the quake. Seismic engineering and construction have made tremendous advancements in years since. For this plant, Fisher’s team drove 252 steel piles in the substrate below the 10-inch structural slab and grade beams.

The processing plant is built with composite structural steel, a standing seam roof, and metal siding. The structure itself is designed to withstand the wind and snow loads that an Alaskan winter can dole out. For fire protection, a dry sprinkler system was installed, making it possible stand empty in the off season, and restart for seasonal production.

The fifth Silver Bay processing plant in Alaska, this plant will provide seasonal work for up to 350 people.

Fisher Breaks Ground for US Cold Storage in Sacramento

Posted by Ginny Bode on

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While rain in California is very welcome, it seems like much of it has fallen on the 40 acre US Cold Storage jobsite in Sacramento. Since the soil wasn’t draining quickly enough through the original sediment traps, the team resorted to creating a 400,000 gal water storage basin. Fisher mobilized on site in November, beginning work on the 210,000 sf cold storage. Chuck Roozekrans is heading up the work onsite, with Scott Guimond and Juan Ozuna managing the contracts, scheduling and material procurement.

 

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