Industrial Construction

Industrial construction encompasses projects that create structures that manufacture products or services. They are usually highly technical in nature and they are built by private owners in the U.S. , but they may be public projects in other countries due to their high costs. Industrial construction projects include oil and gas refineries, power plants, steel mills, smelters, liquefied natural gas plants, and fertilizer plants. Before they are built a model of the structure is built to determine whether there will be any interferences between the electrical; piping; heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems; and the structural elements.

Once the drawings and model are complete construction of the piping and other systems commences.

When construction is complete there is a large industrial complex that performs many different functions in addition to processing chemicals or materials since the finished product has to be transported or stored at sites.

Smaller industrial projects require complex structures that have to be prefabricated and erected at job sites such as oil tanks and water towers.

For mega industrial projects, such as nuclear power plants, all of the engineering disciplines are involved in the design and construction of facilities and these projects take many years to design and over ten years to construct.