Case Study: Lakehead Painting Fine-Tunes Unique Gas Sphere Recoat Procedure

When Lakehead Painting took on the tricky task of refinishing one of six spherical gas tanks owned by BP in Superior, WI, the contractor's challenge went beyond getting the job done right.

Lakehead, the versatile, Superior-based firm that has notched successes in industrial and commercial projects throughout the Midwest for more than 35 years, had already completed a BP-owned sphere in 2004 with an innovative Sherwin-Williams Envirolastic AR 425 polyurea system. This time around, they wanted to match their previous success and improve the process. "Our greatest teacher is experience," says Bob Johnson, Sherwin-Williams Director of Control Tech Marketing. "We — inspectors, suppliers, contractor, safety personnel — met daily with BP's facility manager Mike Johnson to review what we had accomplished, what went right, what went wrong, and what we could do to improve our performance going forward. This style of cooperation really helped us be so remarkably successful on the project."