The doors have just opened at our new Vancouver Island office! Parksville was selected as the site for our Vancouver Island office because it is central to our clients and potential new employees. It is also in close

proximity to both the airport and ferry terminals in Nanaimo, and the airport in Comox, from which there are direct flights to Calgary. This new location has been fitted for up to 25 workstations. The new office also has a wrap around patio. Ian Cruikshank, who is responsible for the Vancouver Island region, will personally man the barbecue every Friday during the summer.

Our plan for the next fiscal year is to continue to build on the momentum of the past 9 months. Next fiscal year’s planned budget includes an investment in training that is well above the standard for our industry.

I look forward to receiving feedback from managers regarding the general training requirements of their departments and the individual training goals of their people so that we can ensure that our investment is well focused!

The grand opening of our Prince George office was a big success! With over 75 people in attendance, including representatives from all of our major clients in the area, we managed to fill up our new office space quite nicely.

In addition to strengthening the excellent client relationships our PG team have been building, the event was also a great opportunity for members of the Fransen team to get together and celebrate our successes thus far. We had 25 Fransen team members there, including senior members of the management team from Richmond, Calgary and our new Vancouver Island office.

When we first decided to open the office, it was a decision to make a long-term investment in a region that had been overlooked by our competitors in recent years.

Our Grand Opening made the local television and newspapers, who were happy to focus on the fact that we see opportunities in the Prince George region. With the successes so far of our PG team and the warm reception by our Clients and the Community at our Grand Opening, the future continues to look bright for our PG Office!

Congratulations to all Fransen staff who contributed to the success of this multi discipline project by supporting the dedicated Project Team. This project consisted of design and construction of a new metering station for a 16” crude line that feeds nearby refineries. The new metering station includes four metering runs and one bi-directional prover for calibrating individual meters.

The primary objectives of this project were

1) To monitor the amount of crude oil being delivered to the refineries

2) To provide a surge relief line and a surge relief tank to protect the crude line downstream of the station.

The design phase of the project met the revised project schedule and the project was completed within the approved final budget. The client was pleased with the overall performance of our team.

Did you know that Fransen is an industry leader at completing industrial Arc Flash studies? Our team, led by Dusan Dapcevic, has completed 12 studies and there are several more on the horizon. Arc Flash studies are used to determine the arcing potential from power distribution equipment.

The end result of the studies we complete is a report with Arc Flash energy levels at various points in the system and recommendations as to how to reduce the energy. We also provide a physical sticker that is placed on the electrical equipment that indicates to technicians the level of personal protective equipment (PPE) they are required to wear in order to protect themselves against potential arcing when they are working on the unit.

Since most of the Arc Flash mitigation measures rely on the protective device settings and selection, the Fransen Power System Group draws upon its power systems expertise to design Arc Flash solutions that are optimal for each piece of equipment. Why is this important? Well, there are studies that show that excessive PPE ratings actually result in higher Health & Safety risk than the arc flash threat itself! Fransen’s comprehensive approach helps to avoid crudely conservative PPE ratings, thereby reducing the overall Health & Safety risk.

Two main 69kV feeder cables approximately 400 m in length were replaced in this project. The feeder runs in redundant parallel systems from the BC Hydro substation to the client’s main substation. The new main feeders were sized to allow for a future load expansion to 30 MVA from the existing 20 MVA transformer for each feeder circuit. The newly installed main feeders were terminated, tested and energized during the client’s planned spring shut-down. (more…)

With the life of the mine recently extended to 2019, our client needed to upgrade their facility-wide Distributed Control System (DCS).
Unlike common DCS implementation solutions where the customer entrusts the whole job to a single vendor, the client solution was provided by an owner, integrator, distributor, and manufacturer team. (more…)

Fransen Engineering is proud to announce the opening of our new office in Parksville on
Vancouver Island. Joining our Richmond, Prince George and Calgary offices, the
Parksville office is an important step in building our comprehensive geographical service
coverage for Western Canada. (more…)