Coordinating the construction of a generation facility is no small task, as at any given time there can be several dozen to several hundred people working together efficiently and safely to get the job done for our members.

Darrell Slavick, Basin Electric construction coordinator III, is responsible for day-to-day oversight of contractor activities, and any coordination between contractors and plant personnel, on the Pioneer Generation Station Phase IV (PGSIV) project. When complete, the natural gas-fueled, dispatchable generation facility near Williston, North Dakota, will be an important component to Basin Electric’s all-of-the-above energy portfolio.

Slavick meets with contractors frequently to review schedules, progress, and any safety incidents that may have happened. “It’s juggling all the bits and pieces to make sure at the end of the day that we’re all pulling the rope in the same direction,” he says.

Coordinating a project of this size also includes managing money. Investing in assets on behalf of our members requires sticking to a budget. “Every line item is budgeted, every dollar spent is accounted for,” Slavick says. “Contingencies are built in for the things that you don’t foresee, but managing and sticking to that budget all the way back to the project management group is critical.”

For Slavick, a can-do attitude helps get things accomplished for our members. “I take a lot of pride in the concept-to-completion mentality and being a part of it, knowing that this was a wheat field not too many months ago, seeing where it is now and where I know it’s going to be in the next year and through its completion, it’s exciting,” he says.

Building a power plant involves teamwork, time, communication, and planning. It can take five years or more to develop and build a large generation or transmission project due to front-end scope and engineering design development, permitting, right-of-way acquisition, equipment procurement, and construction schedules. “A project budget requires an accurate cost estimate, and cost estimate accuracy is a function of how well-defined the project scope is. It can take a year or longer to work through enough of the early development activities and produce a cost estimate for budget purposes,” says Matt Ehrman, Basin Electric vice president of Engineering and Construction.

Space is reserved at the initial phases of Pioneer Generation Station to possibly convert the facility from simple cycle to combined cycle and for possible future emissions controls such as carbon capture. “We also leave space in electrical rooms, cable trays, and other similar areas to accommodate some amount of plant modifications that we can reasonably expect over the course of a facility’s lifetime,” Ehrman says. “That flexibility allows us to respond to future events sooner and ultimately provides us with reliability for our members.”