July 26, 2016 Heavy lifting

Volume 6 | Issue 3

As Jean Thilmany reports, Inco does it all – from hazardous materials cleanup to heavy lifting and building with all many stops in between.

Is there any industrial contract Inco Inc. can’t fulfill? The answer seems to be no.
Though it’s only one company, the many divisions of 31-year-old Inco Inc. of Rocky Mount, N.C., manage to serve a plethora of across-the-board industrial contracting needs.

Its main location houses facilities for custom fabrication and machining. In addition, its equipment fleet coupled with its construction, electrical, fabrication and machine shops and its engineering division all work together on jobs like process installation for clients such as Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Ill., and Tyco International of Exeter, N.H. If you need any heavy lifting done, Inco also brings in its own heavy equipment and specialized rigs and cranes on construction jobs. Among other things, the company cleans up hazardous materials, builds and modifies plants, performs environmental assessments, and provides emergency power generators to government and industry, said Jack Banning, Inco’s vice president of marketing.

“Our core business is industrial construction, which we carry out through our multiple divisions,” Banning said. “We do everything from the ground up, whether it’s all or any one part of total industrial plant construction.”

From its headquarters in Rocky Mount with offices in Raleigh, N.C., Florence, S.C., and New Bern, N.C., Inco has performed many contracting jobs – its motto is ‘no job too big or too small’ – in most states east of the Mississippi River and often beyond. DeLeon Parker, owner, president, and chief executive officer, has run Inco Inc. from the time of its 1972 founding.

Inco draws from its own 400 employees and uses its own heavy equipment for its mainly mechanical, civil, and electrical construction jobs. The contractor’s equipment division offers cranes with 8.5-ton to 300-ton capacity as well as earth movers and trucks. In addition to building new plants, Inco also performs customized services for existing plants, Banning said. Most Inco customers are drawn from the pharmaceutical, chemical, food processing, mining, and pulp, paper and wood product industries.

Inco personnel have experience installing underground, utility, and process piping including orbital welded high purity piping systems. They’ve done extensive excavation and placed concrete foundations, slabs, walls, and pits as well as erected and modified steel structures, Banning said. They’ve set, relocated and modified equipment. For instance, in work Inco has done in the past for pharmaceutical and food processing plants, this contractor has fabricated equipment in its Rocky Mount plant then installed it at the customer’s plant. Inco employees, or Inconites, as they’re called, do almost all the work themselves. For some jobs, they’ve trained workers at the customer’s plant in how to maintain the machines, Banning said. At other installations, Inconites have worked alongside employees from the customer’s plant to supplement its staff performing project work or maintenance.

Meeting every need
“Abbott Laboratories uses all our services,” Banning said. “We do construction work inside its Rocky Mount plant. For them, we do everything from building construction to mechanical and electrical. We make tanks and equipment, mostly out of stainless steel, for the plant.”

But each contract is different and brings its own special sets of needs. Some industries have specialized needs in fabrication and quality control, which Inco can meet. The company also boasts borescope and weldmapping with video tape documentation capabilities and can provide a quality control inspector to oversee construction of projects. Inco maintains an in-house staff of about 20 project managers, designers and detailers that have a variety of experience and training.

Another company might ask Inco to perform an environmental assessment on a piece of property it plans to buy. “It would want to know if a building has asbestos or lead paint in it,” Banning said. “Or, if a company considers a piece of property and finds the groundwater is contaminated, it would be responsible for cleanup. So it would want us to look at groundwater before it buys.”

No job too small
When Inco says no job is too small, it also refers to its own close-up management and attention to contracts. Inco can provide everything needed on a job site – from hammers to heavy equipment. It ships everything from space heaters, ramset guns, tamps to welding machines to the site. If a new need arises during construction or installation, Inco’s shipping department sends it immediately. This service minimizes the need for the company to hire a third-party rental company to provide those tools, Banning said.

After a job ends, a company’s contract with Inco need not end. Inco employees have stayed on the site of completed contracts to assist in start-up, maintain equipment, and oversee other aspects of the ongoing job.

“We’ve established several long-term maintenance contracts with companies in this manner,” Banning said. “We’re currently in our twenty-third year of a Tyco maintenance contract at the same Raleigh plant location.”

Many companies choose Inco not only because of the skills, equipment and management it can bring to an installation but also for one other very important reason. Inco can and will respond quickly to any emergency – or even a non-emergency that, nevertheless, needs immediate attention. It sends employees and equipment to handle the problem right away, whether the situation crops up in the middle of the night, on the weekend, over a holiday or during regular working hours.

One contractor, many divisions
From design to fabrication to installation and then to continued maintenance, Inco handles every detail. Inco’s fabrication division’s capabilities include sheet metal, plate, structural steel, pressure vessels, piping and equipment fabrication working with steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and various alloys. Its 90,000 square feet of fabrication facilities include an assortment of shears, saws, plate rolls, press breaks, and a burning table. Inco’s fabrication shop also makes use of an array of welding equipment for the many welding processes used by its certified welders. Inco’s detail and design department works closely with its engineering and fabrication division on specific jobs. Inco’s capabilities also include field fabrication by the construction division.

Inco’s machining division boasts a variety of equipment that allows machining of everything from small to large articles. The division is stocked with lathes up to 32 feet long, blanchard grinders up to 42 inches in diameter, surface grinders with up to five-foot stroke, horizontal and vertical milling machines, and other equipment of all sizes. With this range of equipment, employees can make everything from rings, tank tops and augers to motor housings and flywheels.

Inco also houses a full-serve electrical division with capabilities that include high- and low-voltage systems, controls, and process instrumentation installation and maintenance, underground installation and communications wiring.

The energy division provides peak-power and emergency power generators. Because utilities levy energy charges for large energy users like the companies that contract with Inco based on their peak usage rates, Inco furnishes and installs generators to level out those peak rates and cut utility charges to the company, Banning said.

With the variety and scope of services offered, when Banning says Inco Inc. does it all – from installation to oversight to emergency response, he’s not kidding.

Subscribe to Industry Today