January introduced PIRTEK Long Beach into the exciting world of theme park ride maintenance.
Southern California is known for its tourist attractions and theme parks. From "The Happiest Place on Earth" to "The Thrill Capital of the World," Southern California brings in people from all over the country to experience a wide variety of theme park rides and shows.
The winter months mean "maintenance time" for most of the rides on the Midway. One of the oldest and most popular theme parks in Southern California normally rotates maintenance among its rides during the first quarter of the year to prepare for the large crowds that will descend on the park beginning with spring break and continuing through Halloween.
In January, this nationally known Buena Park, Calif., location contacted the PIRTEK Long Beach team with an opportunity to take hydraulic pipe work on one of their popular water rides, and convert the system to hydraulic hose.
Initially the maintenance chief contacted PIRTEK to get an initial quotation on the job, with the warning that it would be a competitive situation and PIRTEK would have "a couple of weeks" to get the job done.
After a thorough inspection of the system’s requirements, routing and connections, Paul Martin owner of PIRTEK Long Beach put pen to paper and developed a quotation for the customer in 24 hours.
As is PIRTEK’s normal procedure, Martin followed up on the quotation after 48 hours to see how they performed. "Well," said the maintenance chief, "your competition apparently doesn’t care enough about the job to even quote us as of this afternoon. Let me get with our purchasing department and get this going with you guys."
The following day, the PIRTEK team were patting themselves on the back for getting the job, then the real fun began. They were contacted by the maintenance chief who told them, "I know we said that you’d have some time to do this job, but our vice president walked by the ride today and said he wanted us to get it up and running by the weekend. That gives you about 72 hours to get this all done. Can you do it?"
"Do grown men squeal like little girls when they are on this ride? Of course," Paul said, and immediately set about finalizing measurements for the hoses.
The first day was carefully planned out so that PIRTEK would remove the current hard line system, affix the fittings for the new hoses, take the 40 pre-made PFMU-35S-20 hoses to the park and then proceed to quickly install the new connections on the second day.
PIRTEK Long Beach suggested they break up the lines to simplify future maintenance; the customer loved the idea. As they say, plans rarely survive contact with the enemy. Upon arrival the PIRTEK MSSTs (mobile sales and service technicians) were immediately hit with a number of requests to replace additional hoses on the ride — outside the original scope of the project. PIRTEK Long Beach accommodated the requests, much to the delight of the maintenance staff.
The customer was particularly impressed with the PIRTEK MSSTs’ ability to rapidly respond to changes because we brought the hose shop with us.
"This is really the way to go," said the maintenance chief. "We’re going to save a ton of time not having to go back and forth to the shop."
PIRTEK Long Beach Operations Manager, Geoff Martin, was always one step ahead of the process, keeping in close communication with the maintenance chief and the technicians. All three mobile sales and service technicians — Manny Sanchez, J.R. Ricuarte, and Andy Zepeda — quickly and efficiently moved through the job to the delight of the staff. The customer was impressed with the professionalism and "can do" attitude of all of the PIRTEK guys. "Your best advertisement is your people," said the maintenance chief. "They are really moving this project along and have great ideas about routing and such."
After two long days, the system was completed —hydraulic lines in place, fittings tightened. Under the scrutiny of the maintenance chief, the director of purchasing and Geoff Martin, the system was tested and retested and passed with flying colors. "You guys just earned a top spot on our vendor list," said the director of purchasing. "Thanks for all your hard work and getting this thing going for the weekend."
Since finalizing the project, PIRTEK Long Beach has been fortunate enough to obtain three other jobs from the theme park.
Thrill seeking Southern California visitors can remember to sneak a peek at the hydraulic system and look for the familiar PIRTEK lay line.
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