An APM Fossil North team surpassed expectations earlier this month at Vectren A.B. Brown - Unit 1 in Evansville, Indiana. The crew was called out for a control valve issue and they ended up finding that the HP dense pack had liberated pieces into the steam path. This caused for an emergency outage all summer.  They removed the rotor and shipped it offsite for repairs. 

The crews were led by day shift Superintendent Brad Funk, and night shift Superintendent Harlan Schroeder. The teams consisted of about eight dedicated Millwrights per shift. Together they completed this outage with ZERO injuries or no significant quality misses, but these teams sweated out many hot days and nights on the turbine deck to make it happen.  It was a painful situation for Vectren to lose a unit for the entire summer.  The level and quality of work being done on the turbine deck helped to ease their pain.  Both Brad and Harlan did a great job of keeping their crews working efficiently with ambient temperatures over 105°F repeatedly and keeping the crews in high spirits is no easy feat.  The team's performance and quality of work was outstanding and their efforts were rewarded by returning the unit to service ahead of schedule.  It is a testament to the work of the entire team when the customer was able to successfully roll the unit and get to the synchronization to the grid on the very first try.

Brad and Harlan's mechanical knowledge and friendly, professional manners helped to turn what could have been a horrible working environment into a pleasant and relatively pain-free outage experience considering the circumstances.  APM is proud to have teams performing at such high levels and being the face to the customer.  Congratulations to the entire team that worked during one hot summer in Evansville.