As the Piping Supervisor at the Dos Bocas Refinery project in Paraíso, Tabasco, Edilberto Martínez and his team laid the pipes for three of the five plants that Techint E&C is running at this megaproject.

With over ten years of experience at Techint E&C under his belt, mechanical engineer Edilberto Martínez has put all his knowledge and experience as Piping Supervisor at the service of the exercise to lay the underground pipes at the Dos Bocas project, in Paraíso, Tabasco, México.

“I joined the company on February 6, 2013, and have been involved in many different projects, such as the construction of the Compression Station in Naranjos, Veracruz and Tamazunchale, in San Luis Potosí. Or building the Pesquería Thermoelectric Power Plant in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and then the construction of the Tenaris Plant in Bay City, Texas. Then there was the Compression Station in Altamira, Tamaulipas, the Norte 3 Project in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and now this project in Dos Bocas, Tabasco,” says Edilberto.

Later he joined the Dos Bocas Project to take on the role of Pipe Assembly Supervisor.

The challenge: laying underground pipes

Edilberto considers that laying pipes underground is probably one of the toughest challenges they had to face, as much due to the complexity of the land as to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Here, the ground is damp and sandy and, added to the bad weather, the biggest challenge was being able to assemble and weld the pipes while complying with all the safety measures and keeping a healthy distance from each other because of COVID. Working against the clock, having to start work to assemble the pipes in trenches during the rains, continuously draining the water so that employees would be able to work on lowing the pipe into the trenches, while permanently respecting all the safety measures, was an incredibly challenging task,” he states.

Another key aspect was ensuring coordination with the various areas involved. “There was always an excellent communication with the civil engineering team, as everything had to be extremely well planned in terms of timing. After the inspection with the customer, we had to excavate, lower the pipe in, align it, thermofuse it, then came the customer’s inspections, and then we had to fill in and cover each trench that had been opened, all of which had to be done in a maximum of three days... No more!" recalls Edilberto. And he adds that: “We had to deploy all of our experience to make up for lost time while continuing with the full range of activities in other areas, which came after the pipelines. We had to comply with the schedule no matter what, to make way for the construction and then the commissioning activities.”

Currently, Edilberto is supervising pipe-laying activities at the Amine Regeneration Unit, and he’s very happy to be part of such a great project as the construction of the Olmeca Refinery. In these two years of the project, he has not only dedicated himself to applying his knowledge in the area of piping, but also focused on helping new generations to learn from people with more experience and longer professional careers.