Powerhouse Players: Surgeons In the Hospital, Surgeons On the Roof

It is easier to set up a crane and lift a prefabricated building to its end location than it is to have hundreds of trade workers traverse stairs over a six-month period to work on the roof of a hospital.

That is true even if Trachte needs to place a prefabricated e-house that is 26 feet by 66 feet and weighs more than 80 tons on top of an eight-story building in Manhattan, according to Rob Chaffee, and that process saves time and resources.

Chaffee is Executive Director of Integrated Packaging Sales at Trachte. He spoke with Tyler Kern on an episode of Powerhouse Players.

This scenario is not one that Rob plucked from the air. In this case, the hospital, which had been there for decades, had switch gear that had aged out, and they had reliability concerns.

“We packaged their switch gear inside of a transportable e-house,” Chaffee said. “We transported that house, which was then taken to Manhattan. It was then assembled and put into service by a local electrical contractor.”

He said that, based on the location the e-house is being delivered to, Trachte needs to be able to adapt.

“Trachte has been around since 1901,” he said. “Many power utilities companies, engineering firms and end-user clients trust Trachte.”

For the project with the Manhattan hospital, the City of New York gave Trachte a little more than 10 hours of a clear street to finish the project.
“That’s when all the fun starts,” Chaffee said.

Chaffee has been having fun for more than 30 years working with e-houses and major electrical projects and has been involved in the integration of e-houses for more than two decades.

He mentioned how important that fun is to his work.

“Babies are still being born and surgeons are still operating, so our work had to go on unnoticed to the rest of the hospital,” Chaffee said.

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