The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is responsible for more than 15,000 miles of electrical lines and 300 substations. BPA employees, headquartered at the new operations hangar at the Redmond (Oregon) Airport, are charged with inspecting those lines. At least three times a year, crews in one of two Bell 407 helicopters patrol and inspect the company’s power lines, looking for damage to cables, insulators and towers.

The new 5,500-square-foot hangar is a pre-manufactured Varco Pruden building delivered by Advanced Steel. It was erected by David Tacy Construction Inc., of Bend, OR. Start to finish, the project, including a time-consuming site excavation, took about six months. The hangar features a whisper-quiet bifold liftstrap door from Schweiss Doors, measuring 40 feet, 4 inches wide by 20 feet high. It opens via heavy duty nylon liftstraps rated at 29,000 pounds tensile strength each. The door is equipped with photo eye sensors and a door base safety edge. It contains six windows, allowing for plenty of natural lighting.

Rob Kelleher, currently the president and founder of Kellcon in Bend, was the senior project manager and general contractor for HSW Builders at the time the hangar was built and the bifold door was installed. Kelleher says he discovered Schweiss Doors when he was building a hangar next to a tire dealership that had a door from Schweiss and he doesn’t recall looking at any other door manufacturers before going with Schweiss.

“We are very happy with the Schweiss door,” Kelleher says. “It was the first time I’d installed a horizontal bifold door like that. We had some reservations because we’d never done it before. It was interesting to see liftstraps for the first time; they seemed very simple. It worked really well and I don’t think we got any callbacks from BPA on it. We pretty much followed the instructions and we’ve looked at a lot of Schweiss doors since then.”