Chobani and Me...

[tobyw]

So, as some of you know, I spend a lot of time at work… My chosen profession keeps me challenged and my family fed, so I have few complaints. While I typically dabble in the government contract world, my current project is overseeing the construction of a new production facility for Chobani. What makes this one unique is the scale: the building itself is roughly 1,000,000sq-ft under roof. Yes, that is one million. Take your average Wal-Mart Super Center and multiply it by 5, and you’ll have some idea. Toss in a few hundred acres of access roads, parking, and gratuitous landscape, and you’ll be there. Here are some pictures of the journey thus far.

From the front door of my office trailer, circa early February 2012:



We were hanging steel and running underground drain lines in late February. We were extremely lucky with the mild winter weather this year:





By mid-March, we were erecting more and more sections of the building:



In early April, the boilers started arriving:



Our piping fabrication facility starting pumping out some of the large-bore spools and delivering to site around the same time:



Itsy bitsy hole for the main process drain sump pit and lift pump station. What's cool about this hole is that it required dynamite to get through nearly 9' of bedrock to achieve the depth we needed:



It’s not every day you get to drive a road grader inside a building:



Flying the first sections of cooling towers to the roof of the Refrigeration Building:



A few days later the upper sections arrived:



Not your average PVC sprinkler pipe going in below grade… This is the main inlet piping for that process drain system going into the pump pit and lift pump station:



We fabricated this 80,000 gallon tank on site – the walls are ½â€

[SPR]

Neat stuff. That big of a building must mean the market for yogurt is good. Why did they choose that part of the country? Are there a lot of dairies in that area to supply the milk?

[OldGreen]

I will answer that. Idaho produces far more milk than Wisconsin. #1 in the country by far.

[TJDave]

I thought Idaho had more Greeks living there than any other state.

Very, very cool pics.

[mattawajeep]

That's a big building.

We we're going over a bunch of blueprints and designs for a CA building this spring, big building with all that cooling equipment is not cheap - and the building we were looking at was probably a 1/20th the size. Very cool.