Hut Away from Home

“It has a lot less mancamp feel, and the guys really appreciate that because they can have their own rooms,” he says. “In a mancamp scenario, they usually work on shifts, so if a guy gets up to go to the bathroom at midnight, he has to walk down a creaky hall past everybody’s room.”

Olgoonik Oilfield operates and leases mobile camps called cat trains. The camp structures—sleeping quarters, dining room, kitchen, showers, laundry room, workshop, medical clinic, and office car—are connected wagon-train style in groups of three to five, loaded onto skis, and hauled to the worksite.

“The cat camps are really unique, like a self-contained RV on skis,” Nunley says. “They’re 40-foot trailers, 10-feet wide. When you stop, they put the stairs down. One trailer might just be three rooms to sleep six men, two guys in a room. The front car is the power car, and power cords run down and over the top to bring the entire train online. It’s quite an intricate system.”

Happy, Healthy, and Fed

While the method and means of building a camp vary, the goal of every camp is simple and straightforward.

“Having a good, clean, safe space with some amenities is what companies usually strive for,” Church says. “The most comfortable for everybody is to have their own room, and that depends on whether it pencils out for the customer.”

For projects that last only a few months or a year, single rooms may be impractical or too costly, Church says. But because companies want to attract and retain a workforce, they may strike a balance and provide single-status Jack and Jill accommodations, with a bathroom sandwiched between two, two-person bedrooms.

Adding creature comforts helps boost the comfort level. Towels, bed linens, and pillows are provided, and every room typically has a television, small desk, and cabinets. Loken says Olson Creek tries to have a game room and a large TV room stocked with DVDs at every camp. Olgoonik Oilfield rents its camps out at a day rate, so Nunley says recreation cars aren’t typical; but for companies that want it, their recreation cars are set up movie-theater style, with couches arranged in a stadium-seating format.

If comfortable accommodations are priority number one, then a plentiful supply of good, hearty food is a close second when it comes to keeping workers happy and morale high.

“What the camps do well is have really good food,” Church says.

Every camp has chefs, provided either in-house or through a contract catering company, who prepare three hot meals a day. Spike rooms are stocked with cold drinks, coffee, grab-and-go snacks, sandwiches, and repurposed leftovers, so workers can grab a bite when the kitchen is closed or pack an on-the-go meal for days they won’t be able to return to the main camp for meals.

“The food is the key to [workers’] happiness, and the cooks are special,” Nunley says. “They’re very good at taking leftovers and making stuff for people’s lunches. Every three days, we have a ski plane come in that has a 2,200-pound capacity filled with perishables and stuff like that.”

Staying connected to family and friends back home is also helpful to keeping workers happy, Nunley says. That’s become easier in recent years, thanks to the increased reliability and reach of the internet.

“Back in the day when the internet had less technology, I had to shut everybody off [it] for business reasons,” Nunley explains. “I couldn’t even send a daily report if a guy was over there playing Minecraft. But today, it’s very economical to put together, and the crew and the business side have their own isolated internet.”

Building the camp is only one piece of the puzzle. Ensuring it runs smoothly, efficiently, and safely for the duration of the project, particularly during Alaska’s cold, harsh winters, is the other. Both building and operating have their challenges.

“There’s just a pile of logistics,” Loken says. West Cook Inlet’s proximity to Anchorage does give Olson Creek the ability to make a same-day flight in and out of Anchorage’s Merrill Field Airport to pick up a needed item. But that depends partly on the weather and partly on the items they need.

“There are some products you can fly over, like pillows, but 2x4s and sheets of plywood aren’t really flyable in an economic fashion,” Loken says. “So we barge materials over to do a project, but the barge only runs spring through fall; they don’t run all winter. It’s just a lot of logistics and planning.”

The ability to quickly adapt can help when the inevitable snafu arises. The nature of the project helps with that.

“We’re not building the Taj Mahal over here,” Loken says. “It’s not an architectural dream house we’re building, so we have more options to adapt and switch if we need to.”

That could mean repurposing materials on hand or altering the initial design to build something different than originally planned, he adds.

“Instead of all matching screws on a roof, there’s a line of off-color, or instead of a 14-foot laundry room build out, there was 10-feet of material previously stored for a different project [that] will still work,” Loken says as examples of the type of adaptations he’s had to make on site. “This doesn’t work in every situation, but adapting gives you chances to be creative and useful.”

The weather, unsurprisingly, poses numerous challenges in both building the camp and keeping it running.

“One of the biggest challenges in Alaska is the weather,” Church says. “You have short windows, so you have to get your camps put together before winter. You’ve got to have the design [done] and get it contracted. Then you’ve got to get the camps up here, so all the dirt work and gravel hauling has to be done. You have to have the pads and the infrastructure ready so [the units] can sit where they need to sit. To do all that in a safe manner when you’re working in some of the most remote places on earth is an extreme challenge.”

Keeping Camps Running

The challenges don’t end once the camp is completed; they simply change. Maintenance may need to level out buildings that shift with the freeze-thaw cycle, and they must adhere to best practices to prevent equipment from freezing. They also take proactive measures to prevent equipment breakdowns.

“Mechanics have to monitor the equipment,” Nunley says. “Air filters will get clogged, choke the engine, and kill [the machine]. Power generators have to be monitored and kept going. They have to make sure the snow is not blocking any ventilation.”

Other weather challenges are unique to the type of camp. For Olgoonik Oilfield’s cat train camps, weather dictates the camp’s position and how frequently it moves during a season.

“If you’re mobile and get hit with a storm, you can be in trouble,” Nunley says. “Wherever your camp is, you have to park the nose of the buildings into the predominant wind. You have to make it so that the snowdrifts will not bury all the stairs. A three-to-four-day storm will bury your camp up to the roof.”

Camp managers ensure rooms are cleaned and linens laundered; they’re also “trained to pay attention to the weather and forecast at least 48 hours in advance” and ensure that protocols to protect against wildlife encounters are followed, Nunley says. Mobile camps like Olgoonik Oilfield’s must also adhere to stringent stipulations dictated in their operating permits and take measures to protect the wildlife, environment, and subsistence activities of local communities.

Though born of necessity, Alaska’s mancamps are the foundation of every project—without a safe, comfortable place for workers to hang their gear after a day-long shift in beyond-bitter cold, the job would never get done.

“Alaska is one of the harshest environments in the world,” Church says. “Dying out there is easy if you don’t have the proper housing conditions.”