Business View Magazine | May 2019

83 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MAY 2019 NAT IONAL WELDING CORPORAT ION to rehabilitate large steel pipelines. So, we coupled our welding and developed innovative methods to install steel liners within tunnels and pipelines. The difficult- to-perform projects seem to be the best and most fitting opportunities for our company.” BVM: What do the firm’s operations and capabilities encompass? Williams: “At NWC, we consider ourselves a specialty subcontractor for the heavy civil construction industry and target unique work scopes that match our abilities. A strong market for us is to provide innovative solutions for tunnel/pipeline rehabilitation and solve constructability problems by designing one- off equipment. The best way to describe this capability is by telling you about a few projects. “We were awarded a hydroelectric project in rural Georgia that required us to install a 12’ diameter pipe made from 1” thick steel plate to reline an existing 1,000’ long penstock through the middle of a dam. The challenge was that each pipe section weighed 50,000 pounds and the existing tunnel only allowed 8” of annular clearance. While traveling through the tunnel, our system also had to manipulate the pipe in every axis, due to irregularities within the existing tunnel which was built in the early 1900s. It was a good challenge.