Chennai Radha Engineering Works (P) Ltd (CREW), the company that helped resume operations at the Mettur Thermal Power Plant within 20 days of a fire accident, on Saturday thanked Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Tamil Nadu Electricity Board officials for their support.
After a meeting held to thank the CM and TNEB officials, V R Senthilkumar, managing director of the company, said that support from both the government and the electricity board were immense.
“At one point, we needed a crane with a capacity of 250 tonnes to hoist blocks to a height of 42 metres. While we operate our own crane, it would have taken us a while to bring it to the location. However, the TNEB chairman quickly got us one,” he said.
He praised the excellent coordination between the State Government and TNEB, which, according to him, made a quick assessment of the situation and swiftly awarded the contract to fix the damage and restore the production of the maximum 840 megawatts of power.
On May 10, 2012, a fire broke out and damaged a 160-metre long double conveyor system of 1,500 tonne per hour (TPH). Had the conveyor system not broken down and collapsed, the damage could have been much greater.
“We brought 450 of our crew members together and worked round the clock along with TNEB officials and completed the task of restoring the conveyor belts. We managed to complete the entire restoration task within 20 as against the 35 days allotted by the government for completing the job,” said Senthilkumar.
CREW completed the entire restoration work at a cost of `7 crore and within a 20-day period as against the 45-day period that other vendors had requested. The company undertakes projects in Thermal Power Plants and Ports. It has operations in East India and across Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.