Alba’s Potline 5 start-up phase will begin on March 7 with a 100-day start-up period, possibly the shortest ever for a project of its kind.

“Our intention is that the start-up will be twice as fast as anyone has started,” says Bruce Hall, adding it would be a “source of pride and sense of achievement.”
Potline 5 will have a capacity of 310,000 tonnes per year (tpy) raising Alba’s total capacity to 830,000 tpy. Bechtel is the engineering, procurement, construction and management (EPCM) contractor. As part of the expansion, Power Station 4 - a 660-megawatt (MW) plant is also being installed to add to the total existing capacity of 1,500 MW.
The full complement of 336 pots, positioned in two rooms, each of 1 km in length, would yield the full capacity of metal for the potline by mid-June 2005. Line 5 has the world’s largest number of pots.
 “I feel good talking about the project. It’s on schedule and within budget. We have been able to do some creative things while maintaining budget discipline. We have also introduced new innovative environmental management systems to the potline,” said Hall.
The safety record on the site is world class with just four lost-time accidents while the project consumed about 22 million man-hours. There are about 7,500 men on the site currently.
“Our threat (problem) detection system is very good and I am very happy with the monitoring of the potential threats to the project, whether it is an engineering problem or a delay in contracted work. Lots of people working on the project were willing to check their own jobs and ensure that they haven’t made a mistake. There is a very high level of enthusiasm among the staff and all conditions in preparation for the start-up are in excellent shape,” comments Hall.
Though the $1.7 billion project is the biggest single investment in Bahrain, the installed cost — dollars per installed tonne of capacity — is one of the lowest in the world. “This has been achieved ‘because we are good.’ We negotiated the contract well and we caught the market at a time when there was not a lot of work going on. The project was also managed well,’’ says Hall.