LHS Students visit Preferred Building Systems and Canam Bridges/ Manufacturing Month

On Tuesday, October 22, the Lebanon High School Systems Engineering and Applied Science classes visited two manufacturing plants in Claremont, New Hampshire.  Both companies build large products that go through a final assembly in the field. We felt greatly welcomed at both facilities and learned a great deal.  

At PBS (Preferred Building Systems)  we saw the manufacturing process that creates a high end modular home in a controlled factory environment.  The tour was conducted by Bryan Huot, VP and Sherri Hurd Asst. Sales Mgr. The students could see raw lumber come into the facility and processed into job lots of the correct size.  The materials move on to being integrated into floor decks, side and internal walls, and roofing components. The modular structures are filled with a fireproof cellulosic insulation, then sheetrock finished, doors and windows mounted, plumbing, wiring and cabinetry installed.  At the end of the process modules as large as 16’ x 60’ - which are combined in the field - are loaded onto delivery trucks and shipped as far away as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Bryan Huot went through the science of heating and insulating a structure, as well as some of the financial considerations when considering building a house..

At Canam Bridges, we saw, firsthand, how highway, railroad, and pedestrian bridges are created.  Canam is the dominant fabricator of bridges in the northeast US and Canada. During the tour, the shop was in production and students saw an amazing array of huge steel - some larger than 50 tons -  that were being fabricated, inspected, coated, finished and prepared for shipment. One of their recent projects was the 3-mile long New York State Throughway bridge at the Tappan Zee river crossing.  This project took Canam 3 years to complete. The Zakim Bridge, in Boston, is another example of Canams’ product output. Special thanks goes out to Tammy Ayers, the Human Resources Manager, who was our facilitator during the tour.

After having spent the day in manufacturing environments, we stopped at a family farm on the way home.  In a nod to Social and Emotional Learning we stopped to learn a bit of animal husbandry and enjoyed interacting with donkeys, goats and bulls.  This was a fun way to get outside for a break and and have many of our students outside their normal realm of experience. Both Mr. Anikis and Mr. Carey enjoyed the excellent behavior of the 21 students that made the trip.