Projects  /  Gilbert Northwest Water Treatment Plant

4,530 Linear Feet · Clear Anodized Aluminum
Guardrail, Stairs, Embeds & Stainless Structural

Gilbert Northwest Water Treatment Plant

Gilbert, Arizona  ·  2025 – 2026  ·  In progress
Second plant for the same steel fabricator
Supply only  ·  Sundt / PCL

Anodized aluminum guardrail running along the edge of a concrete basin at the Gilbert water treatment plant in late afternoon light
General Contractor
Sundt / PCL
Our Role
Non-ferrous sub to
S&S Steel Fabrication
— supply only
Materials
6063 & 6061 Aluminum
316 Stainless Steel
Finish
Clear Anodized
Quantity
4,530 LF rail
Duration
2 Years

They had already
watched us do it once.
Then they sent the bigger one.

Gilbert is the second water treatment plant we have supplied for the same structural steel fabricator — 4,530 linear feet of clear-anodized aluminum guardrail, plus aluminum stairs, embeds and stainless structural. It is 63% more rail than the first one, and it is still going.

The second job is the one that means something

Winning work once can be price, timing or luck. Winning the next one from the same customer is a verdict. S&S Steel Fabrication held the steel on Willamette in Oregon and does not self-perform non-ferrous work, so that plant's aluminum rail scope went out across several suppliers. Ours was one of them.

Which is the part worth sitting with. When the next plant came up in Arizona, they already knew what four or five aluminum shops could do — and the bigger package came to us. That is not a relationship built on being the only option. It is one built on being the one they'd choose again.

Two plants, two states, 7,310 linear feet of anodized aluminum guardrail between them.

This package is supply only — fabricated and finished in Logan, crated and shipped to Arizona for another crew to set. That does not mean we stop caring what happens to it. Our crews have been on site at Gilbert working through field conditions on the installed package, alongside the installer, as they come up.

Supply only describes where our contract ends. It does not describe where our responsibility does.

Wide view of the Gilbert plant under construction — long runs of anodized aluminum guardrail along concrete basins beneath a tower crane

01 — The advantage

The second one starts with a process, not a problem

On the first plant, anodizing was the unknown. We had never run a package at that volume, the finish happens in somebody else's building, and it took locating and trialing several anodizers before we found one that could hold the standard.

By Gilbert, that was settled. The vendor was proven, the batching was worked out, and the shop already knew how to keep the floor busy while a load was out being finished.

That is the real return on a hard first job. The learning curve gets paid for once. Everything after it is throughput — which is exactly what a 4,530-foot package on a tight schedule needs.

Crated anodized aluminum guardrail assemblies stacked on shipping frames in the Arnold Quality shop
Finished assemblies, crated in sequence.

02 — Volume

4,530 feet is a logistics problem wearing a rail costume

At this size the fabrication is not the hard part — the order of things is. Parts get cut and welded in batches, leave for the anodizer, come back, get assembled, get crated, and get loaded onto flatbeds bound for Arizona. Nothing can be built in the order that happens to be convenient, because it has to arrive in the order the site can actually set it.

Crate the wrong run first and you have not made a shop mistake. You have put a truck on the road with 800 miles of the wrong material on it.

So the package is planned backwards from the site: what gets installed first gets built first, gets finished first, and gets loaded last so it comes off the trailer first.

Flatbed trailer loaded and strapped with anodized aluminum rail and stair assemblies outside the Logan shop
Loaded out for Arizona.

03 — Where it ends up

Every foot of it is fall protection over live process

This is not decorative rail. It runs the edges of open concrete basins, the length of elevated grating walkways, and around pipe galleries carrying treated water at pressure. What is on the other side of this guardrail is a long fall into moving water and machinery.

That is why the specification reads the way it does, and why the package also carries aluminum stairs and aluminum embeds — the embeds set in the forms before the concrete is poured, months ahead of any rail existing.

It is also why anodized aluminum is the right metal for the building. A water treatment plant is a permanently wet, chemically active, sun-exposed environment that has to run for decades with minimal maintenance. This is a finish that does not get repainted.

Anodized aluminum guardrail and grating walkway above a pipe gallery inside the treatment plant
Guardrail and grating above the pipe gallery.
Anodized aluminum stair running down a concrete wall at the plant during construction
Aluminum stair, installed
Close view of a welded corner on an aluminum stair stringer before finishing
Stringer weld, before finish
Guardrail running the full length of a concrete basin wall at the plant
Basin edge, full run
Sun setting through the plant structure over guardrail, grating and process piping
4,530 LF
Anodized aluminum guardrail
7,310 LF
Across both plants, same customer
2nd
Treatment plant for the same fabricator
2 yr
In progress

Non-ferrous package on a water or wastewater plant?

Anodized aluminum guardrail, stairs, embeds and stainless structural — planned backwards from your set sequence, not forwards from ours. Send us the drawings and a bid date.

Request a Bid Our Capabilities

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