Page 100 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

CORE VALUE: CUSTOMER FIRST
media. Imagine the uproar that would have caused.” Ultimately, they did not evacuate the medical center, but it came very close. “They’ve got the pharmaceuti- cals. They’ve got the patients. They’ve got open-heart surgeries and transplants going on that require very precise temperatures. And the university has all its re- search processes and thousands of square feet of serv- ers that are a major hub of the internet for the West Coast. The heat wave just about brought them to their knees. There were some very excited, wound-up people trying to deal with it all.”
That August, Randy Young got several calls for tem- porary chilling for the university. “The Director of Thermal Energy met us out at the site, which was the soccer field, about a quarter-mile from the central plant. He pointed out where he thought the 24-inch pipeline was buried and the general footprint for the proposed equipment. We were to provide all the distri- bution electrical panels, temporary hose, power cables, pumps, and eight chillers with three thousand tons of chilling capacity.” The job was quoted that afternoon and awarded the next day. Stanford needed it yesterday.
That first weekend, Peterson’s crew installed fifteen hundred tons of chilling capacity. “It was exhausting and extremely hot. But we had it online and running by Sunday night,” says Young. “That Monday, they said: ‘Fantastic job. We need another fifteen hundred tons by next weekend.’”Peterson didn’t own that much equipment, so Young started calling every Cat dealer who might have chillers and got it trucked directly to Stanford. That next weekend, they were back doing the second install. “By Sunday night, we had a total of three thousand tons of temporary chillers online delivering 40°F water to Stanford’s central plant,” says Young. “It just about killed us, but we got it done.”
After the emergency was over, Peterson’s chillers and support equipment returned to the TC yard in Beni- cia. The next spring, Stanford requested three thousand tons on the same soccer field for six months. When they repeated the request again the next year, Young suggested they keep it on-site to avoid the wear-and- tear on the equipment and crew. “The Stanford job
98 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG