Robert Phelps       Director, Power and Recovery (retired)  Smurfit Stone Container Corporation  Hopewell, VA

"I worked in the pulp and paper industry throughout the South and Southeast for 48 years.  I recently retired as Director of Power and Recovery from the Hopewell, VA mill.

During my career, I have worked with numerous power plant contractors on boiler maintenance and capital projects.  I consider RMR Mechanical among the best I have worked with.

I initially used them many years ago as a trial on a small project.  Their performance was excellent and they completed the project under budget and ahead of schedule.  So, naturally they earned more work. Since that initial trial, they have been my sole boiler repair contractor, performing annual outages, major boiler outages, emergency shutdown services, and even capital projects.

They know their business and are quite creative in helping customers get the most out of their repair or project budgets.  For example, they were bidding a big capital project ($8 million economizer upgrade) along with several other contractors.  The approach selected by the other contractors was to come in through the roof of the boiler building. This would have involved removing the precipitator and quite a bit of other equipment on top of the building.  Removing and reinstalling this equipment would have been very expensive and time consuming.  RMR had the idea to replace the economizer through the side of the boiler building by opening a narrow slot in the structure.  They are very competent "riggers" and boilermakers.  These skills, and their capable supervision, allowed them to complete the project – again – under budget and ahead of schedule.  This saved our facility significant expense in terms of labor and equipment costs.

RMR has quality people – probably the best field supervisors in the business.  They have an excellent QA/QC program and a first-rate Safety program.

Thanks to RMR's input into scheduling and coordinating, and their skill at managing manpower on-site, our annual outages have been reduced from the original 12-14 days down to 8-10 days.  The savings is significant and gets production back online quicker.

I would not hesitate to recommend RMR to any company.  I've known these guys for years and trust their knowledge and judgement."