Big River Steel

Big River Steel, the nation’s most technologically advanced steel mill, is located on a 1300-acre site in Osceola, Arkansas this “Flex Mill” has the capacity to produce 1.7 million tons a year of hot-rolled coiled steel. Virtually every division of CVE was involved with this project, including heavy industrial, electrical construction, transmission live, Avtec physical security and CVE Technologies Group.

Early CVE work included temporary power—using a massive 35KV thru 480V underground distribution system—to the site. This provided power to 40 dewatering pumps that pumped 230,000 gallons per minute to lower the ground water to allow excavation of deep foundations. CVE’s Line and Substation Division built a 230KV substation, six 35KV switchyards and installed two Static Var Compensators to stabilize the system and regulate the voltage, power factor and harmonics.
CVE’s field electricians installed the 34KV and 5KV underground distribution system simultaneously to the multiple buildings. CVE crews were also responsible for the site and building lighting, along with the utilities on the site. Newly constructed process buildings included a melt shop, tunnel furnace/hot mill, 4 water systems and a cold mill. Avtec provided support to Big River Steels Hot Mill engineering staff in designing and implementing a process control video system for the caster, hot mill, and DCT areas of the facility.
CVE’s Teledata Division installed approximately 45 miles of singlemode fiber optic cable for the plant’s level 4 communications or business network. CVE also installed OM4 fiber for the level 1 level 2, and level 3 process automation networks. This fiber facilitates input/output from the remote I/Os, providing control and monitoring of the various steel mill machinery.

CVE Technologies Group worked with Big River Steel since the project’s inception to provide a Cisco System TelePresence video conferencing solution. This technology allows engineers and operational employees in Arkansas to collaborate in real time with other staff in Germany and other locations. This allows employees around the globe to work together on proposals, design, engineering and implementation issues. CVE Technologies also worked closely with the Big River Steel information technology team to design a robust and redundant voice, video, and data infrastructure. CVE provided the data communications infrastructure for both wired and wireless throughout the mill facilities, shipping facilities, coil storage areas, and the administration building. To complete a project of this magnitude requires the cooperation of all parties.

CVE worked closely with IBEW 1516 and the Arkansas NECA chapter to meet the aggressive schedule. The Arkansas Department of Labor was also very helpful in seeing the Big River Steel project to a successful completion.

Scope of Work

• Electrical construction starting at main substation
• HV Power distribution
• Medium voltage power distribution
• Building lighting and utilities
• Overhead crane rail installation and crane assembly
• Process equipment installation
• Plant-wide fiber optic network communication system