Western Australia's newest and largest power station is a showcase for the diversity of BlueScope Lysaght's range of steel purlins, roofing and wall cladding.

The recently commissioned A$400 million NewGen Power Station on the coast at Kwinana, 30 kilometres south of Perth provides 320 megaWatts of baseload power.

Construction of the state of the art plant was a joint venture between multinational construction company Laing O'Rourke and Alstom Power.

The facility is Western Australia's most efficient gas fired, combined cycle power station and will provide electricity to Western Australia's main electricity grid, the South West Interconnected System (SWIS).

BlueScope Lysaght supplied 8,500 square metres of roof and wall cladding products for the project, as well as 80 tonnes of purlins.

Fabricator Western Construction fixed LYSAGHT® Cee and Zed purlins in a range of sizes on various buildings throughout the plant.

Industrial Roofing Services completed the installation of the roofing and cladding using a team of up to six men at various stages throughout the project over a 20 week period.

To meet the highly specific acoustic requirements of the turbine hall, BlueScope Lysaght roll formed 5,500 square metres of LYSAGHT SPANDEK® in COLORBOND® Ultra steel.

The specially produced sheets were roll formed 12 metres long and at 0.80mm were nearly twice as thick as normally specified, presenting a handling challenge for the cladding fixers.

Alan Croll, General Manager of Industrial Roofing Services said, "Initially the extra length, thickness and weight of the sheets made handling a challenge.

"We developed a rope and pulley system, which allowed us to align the sheets in the correct position. Once in place, securing them was very simple.

"LYSAGHT® cladding is an excellent construction product to work with and BlueScope Lysaght followed the order specifications exactly," Alan said. "All materials were delivered to site cut to size to simplify installation."

LYSAGHT® cladding material used on the NewGen Power Station buildings was supplied in three sheet thicknesses to suit individual applications.

SPANDEK® in COLORBOND® Ultra steel was used to clad the workshop/warehouse, and the central control and fire fighting buildings.

For the even more demanding environment of the demineralised water building of the power plant, nearly 800 square metres of SPANDEK® in SuperDura™ Stainless steel provided an exceptionally high performance cladding.

All cladding was supplied in the COLORBOND® steel colour Deep Ocean®.

Careful production planning and sequencing the delivery of the various LYSAGHT® products was essential to avoid delays during the installation phase.

"The successful completion of the project was helped by BlueScope Lysaght delivering all the materials to site as we needed them. This also ensured the project ran very smoothly." Alan said.

NewGen Kwinana power station operator ERM Power is now pushing ahead with construction of another gas fired power station, the 330MW NewGen Neerabup power station, 36km to the north of Perth.