Kennedy Tank and Manufacturing Co., Inc. in Indianapolis was awarded the 2023 STI/SPFA Pressure Vessel of the Year for the Harris Las Vegas Sphere Air Receiver Project.
We had an opportunity to learn more about the project from Jim Kennedy, Vice President of Sales; Jim Dossman, Sales Engineer; and Mike Curry, Vice President of Manufacturing, at Kennedy Tank and Manufacturing.
Jim Kennedy: Well, thank you everyone. I am Jim Kennedy with Kennedy Tank, and I am sitting with Mike Currie, Vice President of Manufacturing, and Jim Dossman, head Sales Engineer at Kennedy Tank.
We were so excited to win the 2023 STI/SPFA Pressure Vessel of the Year Award, for four 22,500-gallon heavy wall carbon steel air receivers we built in 2023. I’m going to have Jim Dossman talk a little bit about the start of the project, since he was the sales engineer for this exciting project.
Jim Dossman: Going back to day one, in March of 2020, I received a phone call from a previous customer of Kennedy Tank who had worked with us when he was located in their Indianapolis office. He was now in Kansas City, in that regional office, and approached me about a project for what started out as three 30,000-gallon air receivers, high pressure, as Jim indicated, heavy wall.
I started working with him to develop specs, sizes, downsizes. Over the course of about a year and a half, quoted, requoted, tweaked the specs. Our customer was in a competitive bidding situation, he was awarded the job, and issued a PO to us, and we got the order written up and entered and off to our engineering department to get the ball started.
Kennedy: Thank you, Doss.
While we were quoting the project, we knew these air receivers, which are massive compared to the typical air receivers you see in manufacturing plants, we knew they were going to the great city of Las Vegas, Nevada, but didn’t realize exactly where they would end up. One of the reasons this project is so exciting, is these were air receivers for the Las Vegas Sphere.
Now, in 2024, everyone knows about the Las Vegas Sphere. It’s the top, concert venue in the United States. It was built by the owners of Madison Square Garden. It used the fourth largest crane in the world. It seats 22,500 people and mainly uses solar energy to power the facility.
The fact that we were, involved in this exciting project that, the Sphere was in the Super Bowl, for example. The amount of eyes that have seen these air receivers is truly second to none.
Mike Curry, as far as fabricating these vessels, these were not anything out of the ordinary that we do at Kennedy Tank. They weighed about 50,000 pounds and were roughly an inch thick on their heads and shell. But anything you’d like to mention as far as fabrication goes?
Mike Currie: All those great seams were full x-ray, spot x-ray, and all the roundabouts; no failures on any of the tanks. Like Jimmy said, it was really exciting to find out where these were going and updating all our welders, our fitters, our teammates, the painters. The paint specs were really important to the customer, and the colors of these tanks were really important. They had to have a really good finish.
It was awesome to be part of this project and being able to update the welders and let them see the venue after it was completed, and relaying all the information throughout the project.
Kennedy: Thank you, Mike.
It’s been fun every time a Kennedy team teammate heads to the great Las Vegas, Nevada, we get photos of our vessels next to the Sphere.
I just want to give a couple special shout outs to Mike and Jim, obviously; John Wehr, our foreman for the project; Dave Peisker, our head engineer; Dan Yoder, Procurement Manager; and all the guys in both the fabrication, paint blast, and quality control of these four vessels.
Kennedy Tank wise, we continue to build more and more heavy wall pressure vessels, both stainless and carbon. We’re capable of building vessels up to three inches thick and would love any additional opportunities as those arise in the future.
We really want to thank STI/SPFA. STI/SPFA has been a huge part of the Kennedy family, and we are just beyond dedicated to the organization, to the networking, to the learning, and we really appreciate this award and hopefully look forward to the next one down the line.
Thank you.
