Major redesign helps float

America’s largest casino boat

By Don Doherty

In all their years in business, International Piping Systems (IPS) has taken on all types of jobs. There were a few characteristics about this one, however, that distinguished it from the others. For example, Greg Maus, IPS’s lead man on the project, was very involved before any detailed drawings were made — even before the owner officially hired IPS. He and a couple others in his firm had meetings with the marine architect, in Seattle, Wash., and the shipbuilder, in Boca Raton, Fla., flying from one coast to the other to assist in a late-inning series of value engineering and planning meetings to find a ship design and related equipment package the owner could afford.

Boyd Gaming of Las Vegas wanted to build the country’s largest casino boat operating on inland waters. The first hazard the ship encountered — albeit long before its hull entered the water — appeared when estimators actually put their calculator to work on the plan. About $200 million should do it, it was estimated, a cost nearly twice as high as initially thought. Before the project could get off the ground everyone needed to find a way to cut the price tag nearly in half. Clearly they wouldn’t get there by buying less furniture and cheaper wallpaper. In the end, one of the ship’s initial five decks had to go.

Maus, IPS’s vice president of sales, worked with the marine architect, Guido-Perla Associates, and shipbuilder, Jamestown Metal Marine Sales, Inc., to downsize the mechanical systems for the smaller boat. He was joined by IPS’s president, Robert Lempa, and estimator, Brian Lecea. Helping the IPS team was KJWW Engineering, a mechanical engineering firm in Naperville, Ill. “We fine tuned everything related to HVAC on the vessel,” Maus said. When a commitment for the new design came from the owner, IPS assigned a project manager, Dave Sawtell, to the job.

Much of the project’s design phase overlapped the construction phase. In other words, IPS was building one part of the ship before other parts were even on the drawing board. This was another unusual characteristic of the project. Sawtell said while the ship’s main deck was getting built, drawings for what would be above weren’t yet seen. “We never really knew the whole scope of the job until 6 or 7 months later,” he said.

All the drawings and submittals were done onsite, Maus said. “All our submittals and drawings were done electronically. We would have to submit information to the marine architect; they would then approve it.”

When it opened to the public on Jan. 30, the new Blue Chip Casino boat in Michigan City, Ind., still claimed the title of “America’s largest floating casino.” Two key characteristics of the ship could raise the bar for competitors. One is a far roomier, more stylish casino deck than is typically seen on gambling boats; the other is its heavy-duty, state-of-the-art HVAC system, which operates with 100 percent outside air capable of 15 air changes each hour. Maus said the HVAC system is on a par with a hospital operating room for air quality. “Smoking seems to go hand in hand with gambling,” he said, noting that air quality has been the number-one complaint of patrons of gambling vessels. The owner was careful to make sure it wouldn’t be a problem in the new boat.

IPS was the lead mechanical contractor on the job, having contracts not only for HVAC and process piping but also sheet metal, plumbing, fire protection, and insulation. Being able to coordinate the trades gave the contractor a big advantage; however, it didn’t enable them to decide when it was time to get to work. Installation of mechanical systems had to follow construction of the ship’s hull. The vessel was built entirely in place in a man-made slip alongside a waterway connected to nearby Lake Michigan. The pit remained dry while boilermakers welded sections of steel plate to form the ship’s hull.

Chicago Bridge & Iron Co (CB&I), constructed the ship. As the vessel took shape, IPS went to work as completed areas in the lower hold deck became available. There were boilers, chillers, compressors, pumps, air handlers and their related piping and ducts; also process piping for water intakes, bilge removal, ballast tanks — the normal marine systems found aboard ships — and generators the size of automobiles that could supply 100 percent of the ship’s power if it should go to sea: much, if not all of it, had to be in place before the deck was covered. Mechanical equipment, ballast tanks, and other large components were laid out symmetrically on both sides of the ship’s centerline, or keel, to balance the vessel.

Sawtell said the piping, because it was high up, went in first. Behind this came the plumbing, fire protection and ductwork. Crews began in the aft end of the vessel and worked from one side to the other. “As we finished here, another trade moved in. It worked out well,” he said. When the insulators finished, the interior joiners put up the walls and ceilings.

Keeping in step with the ship builders required getting materials delivered on time and in the right sequence. Sawtell and Maus worried about delivery of big-ticket items like boilers and chillers, but they said it worked out well in the end. On the flip side of the coin, there was plenty of space onsite to store things that arrived weeks before needed. Piping assemblies were prefabricated as much as possible with all the 8-inch and smaller pipe fabbed onsite.

“One of the biggest concerns we had was material handling,” Maus said. “It was making sure the equipment arrived on time, as everything needed to be scheduled with the cranes.” A rubber tire fork truck, or “Lull,” proved an able workhorse for the task, running virtually non-stop ferrying everything to areas alongside the boat for hoisting by either the main crane or two tower cranes.

“We were able to do take-offs, have multiple items fabricated, and have it in place,” Maus said. IPS managed to use the crane, when available for prolonged periods, to set sections of large pipe on temporary supports inside the ship’s hold, avoiding a second, more arduous lift when the deck from which it would be hung was finally in place.

However, this was more the exception than the rule, Frank Camasta, project superintendent for IPS, explained. “No matter what, CBI or the boilermakers were not going to stop hanging steel. We had to fit everything in between crane lifts. That was the biggest challenge and obstacle,” he emphasized.

At one stage of the job, the dry pit in which the hull was built had to be filled with water. To accomplish this, the two tower cranes had to go, leaving only one crane from that point on. This affected everyone’s schedule.

During a month when IPS installers were going strong and access to cranes was particularly tight, overtime was necessary a couple days a week just to use the cranes, Camasta said. “We never had free rein of the cranes,” he said. “We were always at the beck and call of [shipbuilder] CB&I.”

Inside and outside the Blue Chip Casino boat there was plenty of work for welders, all of whom had to be U.S. Coast Guard certified. Frank Camasta, a former welding instructor for UA Local 597 in Chicago, said there are two kinds of welding tests for this type of qualification. One uses a box and the other a restriction ring to simulate the tight welds normally called for in shipyard work. For this project they used the latter test, Camasta said, “because it’s actually more of an obstacle than the box and more feasible in this day and age.” The Certified Welding Bureau administered these tests.

The U.S. Coast Guard also had a hand in the approval process for selection of the vessel’s mechanical equipment, as virtually everything from screws to life jackets and from pumps to welded pipe aboard ships must be U.S. Coast Guard-approved and able to withstand the rigors of the marine environment. However, the boat’s heavy-duty chillers and air handlers — far above what you’d normally find on this size ship — escaped the Guard’s watchful eye. “I’m not sure what they use on boats at sea, but they don’t have anything like these chillers,” Sawtell said.

There were U.S. Coast Guard inspectors around also when commissioning of new mechanical systems aboard the vessel got underway. Here you not only had to satisfy the owner’s requirements but also those of the Coast Guard, whose checklist covers mechanical as well as systems for fire protection, life saving, and bilge and ballast. “And they go by the book,” Maus said. A U.S. Coast Guard inspector was on the job nearly full time, Maus said, but IPS did not deal with him directly. This responsibility belonged to Jamestown, the ship building company.

The general contractor role was a somewhat unusual one for Jamestown, said Patrick Loughran, the company’s onsite production manager. “Normally we do the interior finish, the air conditioning and insulation — the parts the customer sees,” he said. But because of the nature of this boat, the owner had to decide whether to use a landside contractor or a marine contractor to build the vessel. Our thrust was that a landside guy wouldn’t necessarily know all the applicable Coast Guard regulations. We generally do in our business.”

The marine background seemed valuable at every stage of the project. “Anyone can decide they want to build a big vessel and start in their backyard if they want to,” said Loughran. Unlike projects on dry land, which usually require permits and plans that are inspected ahead of time, much of boat building takes place “on the fly.”

“So a lot of the stuff here was designed after the fact,” he said.

If you build things this way, you’d better be ready for lots of changes. Loughran guessed there were some 200 changes on the mechanical side alone (and as many on the non-mechanical parts). Most of the changes stemmed from the huge value engineering effort, before construction began, to get the cost of the boat — initially targeted at $85 million but later estimated at nearly twice that amount — value engineered back down to budget. To get there, a whole deck had to be eliminated in the plan, significantly altering the piping systems.

The casino boat is one of three phases of the project. A new, multi-level parking garage and an addition to an existing landside pavilion brought the total project cost to around $174 million.

The scaled-down version is still a very large boat. Inside the 400 x 200 foot vessel, the casino deck will provide 65,000 square feet of mostly wide-open space on one floor. The grandiose gaming area, with large chandeliers hanging from the 30-foot ceiling, may fool visitors into believing they are in a major Las Vegas hotel rather than a gambling boat. “People will be able to walk around without having to dodge people who are sitting chairback to chairback,” Judy Campbell, an executive of Blue Chip commented in an article published by The News-Dispatch, a Michigan City, Ind. newspaper.

Visitors should appreciate the more spacious, comfortable and breathable environment aboard the new Blue Chip Casino, even though they won’t see the supersized HVAC system that helps make it possible.

America’s Largest Casino Boat

• Massive supply air system to provide combustion air for boilers and generators.

• Ballast tanks, 28 ft. x 30 or 40 ft. line both sides of vessel, needed to maintain ship’s balance while hundreds of visitors move about boat.

• Generators and chillers are installed on vibration isolation pads. Pumps welded straight down.

• City water tapped from shore while boat is moored; 8,000 gallon hot water tank aboard, 15,000 gallon sewerage tank with offshore connection.

• Same with fuel oil; tank trucks fill boat’s supply tank.

• Generators and boilers are fuel-oil fired (a Coast Guard requirement), calling for additional air compressor pump to facilitate firing of boilers (no natural gas pilot here).

• Chillers and generators are cooled on vessel by water in 4 huge sea chests, instead of cooling tower. Cooling water drawn from raw water in channel. A 16-inch diameter pipe is used at raw water intakes.

Owner:

Boyd Gaming, Las Vegas, Nev.

Marine Architect:

Guido-Perla Associates,

Seattle, Wash.

Ship Builder & GC: Jamestown Metal Marine Sales, Inc., Boca Raton, Fla.

Landside G C:

Walsh Construction, Chicago

Vessel Construction:

Chicago Bridge & Iron,

Plainfield, Ill. (Midwest Office)

Mechanical Contractor: International Piping Systems Inc., Schaumburg, Ill. and

Merrillville, Ind.

Plumbing: Keough

Mechanical, Merrillville, Ind.

Sheet Metal: Area Sheet Metal, Hobart, Ind.

Fire Protection: Global Fire Protection, Valparaiso, Ind.

Temperature Controls: Johnson Controls Inc., Calumet City, Ill.

Other Key Subs:

MG Electric, Arlington Hts., Ill.

Insulation: M&O Insulation, East Hazel Crest, Ill.

Lead Contacts:

Robert Lempa, President

Gregory Maus, V.P. Sales

Project Manager:

David Sawtell

Project Superintendent:

Frank Camasta

Project Foremen:

Kevin Kilcoyne

Andy Klees

Mike Mullens