State of the Park 2012 • Major Milestones 2011

• BMT-Northwest continues to roll out diverse projects from its massive work space in the former Turbine Building, providing jobs for the community. But this year, it wasn’t just the local community that took note, more than 120 engineers, technicians and owners from steel tank manufacturing plants throughout the Americas visited the plant in May as part of the Steel Tank Institute/Steel Plate Fabricators Association’s Quality Control conference to see first hand how BMT-Northwest transformed a building once meant to house twin steam turbine generators for a nuclear power plant into one of the largest steel fabrication plants in the country.

• Tunnel Vision continues to grow at the Park. With major tunnel construction and repair projects underway in the Pacific Northwest, workers need construction and safety training to build tunnels and first responders need training to perform rescues inside tunnels. Thanks to Satsop Business Park’s rich heritage, which includes 12-foot diameter underground pipes, a Tunnel Training Center is developing. The Northwest Laborers-Employers Training Trust, offers SHAFT (Safety & Hazard Awareness for Tunnels) classes – complete with a tunnel boring machine – to help laborers learn how to work in tunnels. In addition, it is partnering with the Park to develop a complementary program aimed at first responders. Work has already begun to create a Tunnel Rescue Center so that various entities can create training scenarios within the existing pipes. With agencies like The Seattle Fire Department already signed up, the unique structures being unveiled promise to become a state-of-the-art training program, which will soon draw organizations from across the nation to train in this unique setting.

• Weapons of Mass Destruction? – Activities at Satsop Business Park included specialized training for the Army’s 110th Battalion, which is one of two CBRNE –chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive – battalions in the nation. The maze of 5-foot thick concrete walls, tunnel network, confined spaces, vertical descents and stairways within the never-finished Satsop nuclear power plant offer the perfect place to create various scenarios for soldiers to learn how to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction. In fact, Maj. John Gervais said that while in Iraq, the soldiers often reflect back to what they learned at Satsop. The Army’s use of the facilities at Satsop represents just some of the unique training opportunities available at the Park.

• Not Quiet at the Sound Lab – Former rocket scientist, Ron Sauro, who has developed a state-of-the-art acoustical testing lab inside the former nuclear reactor building, is now experiencing a bit of a deja vu moment. In addition to testing materials such as windows, doors and ceiling tiles, one of his latest projects inside the world’s largest acoustical reverberation and transmission loss suite is testing various “skins” for rockets. Talk about coming full circle!

• Try-a-Trade is an annual event at Satsop Business Park, put on each year by the Regional Education and Training Center (RETC) where high school students can literally try their hand at many trades, encouraging them to consider the possibilities of pursuing an apprenticeship and a trade for a career. Each spring students have a day where they can operate a jackhammer, a manlift, a steamroller, a backhoe and perhaps try their hand at setting tile, building scaffolding or constructing a tunnel.

• The Grays Harbor College/Satsop Business Park’s joint programs continue to flourish. The popular forestry program, which gives students the hands-on experience of managing an FSC-certified forest, has included planting, harvesting and creation of trails. Other Grays Harbor College programs at the Park include the Industrial Control Systems Technology (ICST) Program and the successful Commercial Driver’s License Training Program, in its sixth year at the Park.