Martin-Manatee Power Plant Expansion Projects

Owner: Florida Power & Light, Miami
Location: Indiantown, Fla., and Parrish, Fla.
Cost: $300 million, combined construction cost; $1 billion total cost
Contractor: Martin-Manatee Power Partners, a joint venture of Black & Veatch, Overland Park, Kan., and Zachry Construction Corp., San Antonio
Engineer: Black and Veatch

Martin-Manatee Power Partners achieved an industry milestone in 2005 with the completion of two $500 million power projects within 12 hours of one another.

This achievement was the culmination of a complex, two-year construction schedule that began in June 2003 for project owner Florida Power & Light.

The 800 MW addition and conversion of existing simple-cycle units at the Martin Power Plant in Indiantown and the addition of a 1,100 MW unit at the Manatee Power Plant in Parrish provide a combined additional 1,900 MW of generating capacity to FPL's system, enabling the utility to serve an additional 400,000 customers.

The Manatee project required the installation of a new cooling water intake and discharge system and piping that tied into the existing dam surrounding Manatee's above-ground cooling pond. This work was sensitive because extra precautions were required to minimize risks to the dam.

During construction, any mistakes that might have occurred had the potential to shut down the existing plant if the dam had been breeched.

Due to this concern, MMPP collaborated with FPL and its Dam Safety Review Board to develop a design that minimized the potential for jeopardy to the dam. Over the course of a year, MMPP conducted numerous flow model studies and geotechnical modeling and analyses to address all dam safety concerns.

At the Martin project, MMPP tied into the two existing simple-cycle units and converted all four units into a single combined-cycle generating unit. MMPP was led to execute a series of outages to perform their tie-ins based on FPL's power demand periods.

This distinction from Manatee was meaningful because the outages could have derailed the projects from tracking together.

MMPP kept both projects tracking for a simultaneous completion by using a lead-lag approach. Lessons learned from the lead project helped improve processes at the lagging project to create efficiencies. The construction team was able to execute its work at both projects without disruption to plant operations.

Both projects achieved a high degree of safety. Clay Lassen, safety facilitator on the Manatee project, summed up the approach: "Safety first. Once you have that squared away, everything else can be taken care of."