The new station is being built to accommodate a continually growing research community at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station. To avoid interrupting ongoing research, the National Science Foundation (NSF), which administers the station, requires the existing station be maintained until the new station is fully operational. Maintaining all the interconnections between the old and new stations means running two stations while planning a complex series of utility, telecommunication, and operational transitions that assure continuity of operations for scientists.

Since the South Pole is 850 miles from the nearest U.S. port in Antarctica (McMurdo Station on the Ross Sea), anything going to the station—people, material, equipment, and fuel—must be flown in. Then consider the project's unique planning window, which requires that most of the construction be performed during the austral summer (November 1 to February 15). Add to this a logistics network that is two to three years long, and one of the world's longest construction supply chains. Add to these the difficulties of finding materials suitable to the extreme climate at the South Pole, and you have a project that calls for some very nimble planning and logistical finesse.

"There are a lot of 'what if' scenarios we go through to make sure that the on-site team is working from the time they get off the first plane until they leave on the last one," says Louis DeMaria, project manager for Raytheon Polar Services Company, which provides operations, logistics, engineering, construction, and facility maintenance support for the NSF's U.S. Antarctic Program.

The first section of the elevated station, including new dining, kitchen, and housing facilities, was occupied in March of this year. The project is scheduled to be complete in 2007. [For more information on the new station, see South Pole Station Modernization Project.]

An Entirely Different Mindset

"For anyone who doesn't have some time there, it can be pretty daunting," says Carlton Walker, construction manager for RPSC. Walker has put in some time, having worked on projects at the South Pole since 1990. "The single biggest change to those of us who've been around for awhile is the sheer number of people. When I first started, the summer population at the South Pole was 100 total. Now I have that many people working directly for me. It's an entirely different mindset."

Winter season at the station has also expanded with both an increased research presence and a larger construction crew. This winter also marks the first winter occupancy of the new elevated station.

"Winters used to be basically a maintenance mode, just to keep things running and maintain what's there," says Walker. "We used to winter a maximum of 28 people. This winter the population is 58."

Another unique aspect of working at the South Pole is the concentrated proximity of the work force. There's no leaving the job site at the end of the shift, because the job site is where you live.

"You work with these people, eat with these people, sleep in the same building," says Walker. "You either get really close or really far apart. There's basically no middle ground."

Shift Work

As the SPSM project grew, it was no longer feasible to have the station's entire summer population of 220 people on the same schedule. So in the 1997-98 austral summer, the construction team moved to a schedule of three shifts a day, six days a week. During the winter season at the Pole, the schedule reverts to a six-day week with one shift per day. [See Wintering Over at the South Pole.]

According to Walker, working in shifts accomplishes two things: it spreads the load out on the infrastructure of the station (bathrooms, dining facility, etc.) and is also the most efficient way to utilize the equipment. For example, instead of a crane running nine hours a day, it runs the full 24 hours.

"Since the vast majority of equipment only operates during the austral summer and is then 'put to bed' for the winter, the life span of the equipment in calendar years is probably not much different than it would be anywhere else in the world," says Walker, adding that the SPSM budget includes replacing all or most of the fleet of rolling stock at the Pole (including loaders, bulldozers, cranes, snow mobiles, cargo sleds, and snow removal equipment) at the end of the project.

Supply Chain

In late February, the majority of the team returns to Raytheon Polar Services' headquarters near Denver, Colo. Over the next several months, they meet with NSF officials to review the work accomplished during the previous season, assess priorities for the winter, and plan the next season's work. The time is also used to evaluate whether materials have been purchased and to procure those required for the following season.

The supply chain for the SPSM project starts in the U.S. The vast majority of materials and equipment arrive in Antarctica by ship, although Walker notes that if something critical is discovered to be broken once the crew is "on the ice," they can fly in a replacement from the U.S., Australia, or New Zealand.

Materials are ordered from vendors around the U.S. and shipped to Port Hueneme, Calif., where they are crated and loaded. A re-supply vessel leaves around January 1. After a stop in New Zealand, it arrives at McMurdo Station approximately one month later.

Construction materials and support items are unloaded from the vessel at McMurdo Station, palletized in the freight staging area there and flown to the Pole in ski-equipped Hercules LC-130 cargo planes. On average, 300 to 330 flights are scheduled during the season, although few are dedicated solely to construction materials. Personnel transport, station operational supplies, and research materials are also accommodated by these flights.

All cargo shipments to the Pole must conform to strict size restrictions dictated by the size of the aircraft. Individual cargo pallets can be no more than 84 inches wide, 104 inches long, and 100 inches high. The maximum inside dimension for cargo is 37 feet, which includes all packaging material and any lifting attachments. Weight is a secondary constraint, with each flight having a capacity of approximately 26,000 pounds.

The 36-inch diameter reinforced steel columns that support the station were shipped three at a time. The single biggest pieces of the new station are the saddle trusses, the main truss that runs between each pair of columns. Even broken down into pliable components, each one of these weighed about 50,000 pounds, or two airplane loads.

On the Ice

The construction program is planned around a specific number of flights between McMurdo Station on the Ross Sea and the South Pole. However, the weather has resulted in a reduced number of flights virtually every year, so the team is constantly having to adapt the actual work performed to the materials available. Staging cargo properly once it arrives at the Pole is very important if the schedule is to hold.

"We track all materials by their installation activity," says DeMaria. "If materials are not delivered, we know what work can and cannot be performed."

In the summer season, materials go first to the logistics area for verification and assignment, then are sent to either the station for installation or to the snow storage berms for warehousing.

Any materials that won't be used until the coming summer are transferred to snow berms located downwind of the station to avoid snow drifting. These berms are manually mapped and marked for future retrieval.

"The berms are laid out in a such a way that if we need something in the winter we can look at a drawing and know that a certain piece of steel is in a certain place and then go digging for it," says Walker.

Walker notes that the SPSM team has tested numerous bar code systems without success.

"Either the labels won't stick to the boxes or, if they do stick, the scanners don't work because of the light refraction or the cold," he says.

During the last few weeks before the station closes for the winter, the crew goes through every box, verifying contents and checking for damage. If a certain kind of material isn't at the Pole when the station closes, the work will have to be delayed until the following sunrise in November when planes start flying again.

Material Considerations

The extreme temperatures at the Pole make it a challenge to find materials that are suitable. Over the years, the team has developed expertise regarding the types of materials and applications that work best.

"We're somewhat limited because the market for materials suited to extreme cold temperatures is very small," says SPSM project engineer Dave Scheuerman. "Most manufacturers don't offer off-the-shelf products for extreme cold situations, so we look for materials that are best suited for the temperature ranges that we operate in. Sometimes we push the limits on those materials."

In many cases, standard equipment can be oversized for safety and longevity. One example is the winch-and-cable hoists installed on cargo decks in the elevated stations. The manufacturers of these systems can guarantee that their equipment will work in the -60° degree range but the station regularly sees temperatures in the -80° degree range and even lower in the winter months.

"We haven't found a manufacturer that will provide a guarantee for that range, so we have to improvise."

For the cargo deck hoists, Scheuerman says they've gone with a standard product but oversized it to add a greater factor of safety.

"The idea is that the larger unit won't have any failures because it will be handling much lighter loads than it's designed for," he says.

While many standard off-the-shelf products work well at the Pole, some standard practices in the U.S. can become problematic in the extreme conditions at the station. For example, door manufacturers routinely apply a sheet of plastic film to protect doors during shipping and installation.

"That plastic comes off easily at normal temperatures, but when we install it at -20° or -30° it either doesn't come off or it tears or breaks," says Scheuerman.

Manufacturers also apply grease to door hinges before shipping them. If the grease isn't rated for extreme cold temperatures, it will turn into a solid paste and render the hinge inoperable. If such a hinge reaches the Pole, it must be brought inside, thawed, cleaned and a temperature-appropriate grease applied.

One instance of using cold weather materials is the elevator in the tower connecting the elevated station with the station facilities below the ice. The tower is wrapped in a corrugated aluminum shell, but this provides only protection from the wind. As the elevator sits outside the thermal envelope of the station, it regularly experiences temperatures of -50° to -70°

Scheuerman says the manufacturer was able to supply an elevator that was standard in most respects but with beryllium-copper gears rather than the standard carbon steel gears.

"At extremely cold temperatures, regular carbon steel goes through a phase transformation where the structure of the steel becomes brittle," says Scheuerman. "With high stress on the gear teeth you could end up with a catastrophic failure. Beryllium copper is more expensive but you don't get that phase transformation."

Because all the materials need to be flown to the Pole, logistics considerations drive many material decisions. For example, the structural steel specified for the station is at a higher yield strength of 50 ksi, versus the industry standard of 36 ksi.

"That increased strength gives you the ability to size the structural steel members smaller," says Sheuerman. "Smaller means less weight, which means it doesn't cost as much to ship."

DeMaria notes that while resistance to wear-and-tear is a high priority in specifying materials for the station, a concerted effort is made to keep the interiors from being too austere.

"You want to provide a decent living condition for the residents since they are tied to the place for nine to 12 months without leaving," he says.

The new kitchen is state-of-the-art and probably the best in Antarctica, and tunnels interconnect all primary facilities within the station to minimize the need to walk outside during the winter. Numerous gathering areas are located within the new station and the housing areas in A1, A4 and B1 have showers near the sleeping quarters. The existing station requires personnel to walk outside between facilities to use these same types of facilities.

Because warm storage is at a premium at the South Pole, one very important aspect of storing materials is determining whether it goes in the DNF or "do not freeze" category. DNF materials and equipment include paints, mastics, caulks, and sheetrock mud, as well as computer and IT equipment, UPS batteries, most electronics, delicate equipment like instrumentation, rotating equipment such as motors and fans, and fire alarm and detection equipment.

Project Management Software

The SPSM project team uses Primavera Project Planner® (P3®) to track construction schedules, equipment, and materials usage. Document control for the project is handled by Primavera Expedition®. An older computer program called CTS (Cargo Tracking System) is used for materials management.

"In the initial years of the program, P3 was less effective because the software was not necessarily suitable to the Antarctic program," says DeMaria. "But as the software's capabilities have improved, so has its value to the project."

"P3 drives everything for us," says Walker. "It's a way for us to track material and to understand manpower, resources, and duration, since for all intents and purposes our staff is fixed. We can't call up the union hall and ask them to send us six more carpenters next week."

Walker adds that the SPSM team takes schedules to a detail level he's never seen at any other company.

"All the bits and pieces go into P3, and it spits out a report that gives us the number of carpenters, iron workers, electricians, and so on. We build all the construction activity logic into the Primavera schedule, and that sequence drives how we stage material. We also use it to determine where a particular piece of material is in the stream."

Every activity gets a tracking number in the P3 schedule. For example, if the activity is hanging doors on the first floor of module A3, a log window with all the tracking numbers for that activity can be found in the P3 schedule. The cargo people then rely on CTS to tell them exactly where the doors are stored at the South Pole.

Expedition tracks punchlist items, costs, RFIs, action items, drawings, change orders, and meetings. Funding and actuals are also tracked in Expedition. The activity tracking numbers in the P3 schedule link to a punchlist item in Expedition.

"If a punchlist item in Expedition requires a particular piece of material, Expedition allows you to assign a ball-in-court to specific team members," says Rita Pitmann, SPSM project planning and controls manager for RPSC. "If that material issue requires an RFI that can also be done in Expedition. So at any one time we can go to the punchlist and see what's going on."

Reports and audit information used by management and oversight committees are also generated using the information found in Expedition.

The RPSC team is currently migrating the project from P3 to P3e/c™, Primavera's enterprise-level scheduling tool. P3e/c will enable the RPSC team to track schedules for the entire South Pole station.

"Rather than just the SPSM project having a group of resources assigned to it, the enterprise-level system lets you put all the resources at the South Pole into the tool," says Pittmann. "Then each division at South Pole will pull from that pool, giving you an enterprise-level view of what's there, not just the SPSM project."

Pittmann says that having a wider view of station resources should help with flight planning since there are a limited number of pounds per flight. It should also help in forecasting peaks and valleys, both in terms of station population, building materials for the construction team, and station supplies. It will also aid in making projections for future activities.

By Lee Ingalls

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