What happens on site, hour by hour

Plate 01

Before anyone arrives

The paperwork comes first: the purchase agreement, our certificate of insurance naming your entity, the site-specific safety documentation your facility requires, and a written removal scope stating what is being taken and what is being left.

Then the isolation plan. Somebody with authority over the electrical system has to confirm what is de-energized, how it is locked out, and who holds the locks. On live plants this is the step that sets the schedule, because it usually has to happen during a window that does not interrupt production.

Plate 02

Day one: verification and teardown

A crew arrives, walks the scope against the written list, verifies de-energization with instruments regardless of what the tags say, and establishes the work area and the travel path. Anything that does not match the written scope gets raised before tools come out, not after.

Teardown then proceeds in the reverse order of installation. Cable terminations are freed, breakers are racked out and crated separately, and line-ups are unbolted into shippable sections. Equipment that is being resold is protected during this stage — sections are covered, hardware is bagged and labeled, and drawout units are secured.

Plate 03

Rigging and load-out

Sections move on skates, pallet jacks, forklifts or cranes depending on weight and geometry. The path documented during the survey is the path used, and the constraints identified there — door frames, floor loading, overhead clearances — are respected rather than discovered.

Trucks are loaded, blocked and braced, and paperwork is signed at the dock. On liquid-filled transformer removals the fluid documentation is completed here as well.

Plate 04

Where schedules actually slip

Almost never during rigging. Delays come from three places: an isolation window that moves, a scope that turns out to include equipment still feeding something in service, and site access requirements — badging, escorts, hot-work permits — that were communicated late.

All three are solved with information rather than labor. The more completely a site's access rules and system conditions are stated before mobilization, the more likely a removal finishes on the day it was scheduled to finish.