Alco Tourmaline 3600 BBQ Interviews

Next Compression recently completed the Alco Tourmaline 3600 BBQ package, a project that pushed the company beyond its established reputation in the small screw compressor space. According to multiple team members interviewed on the shop floor, this build stands out not only for its physical scale but for what it signals about Next Compression's capabilities going forward.

The package centers on a 3,600 series engine configuration paired with large-bore compression equipment spread across multiple skids. Several factors made it unusual: the engine size, the compressor size, and what one team member described as the "engine utility complexity." For Next Compression, it was also the first time the company had built this style of 3P skid using 3,600 series engines, and the vessels fabricated in-house rank among the largest the company has ever produced.

Engineering and integration at scale

The integration challenge was substantial. Aligning massive compressors and engines across multiple skids while simultaneously satisfying vibration control standards, piping discipline, and alignment tolerances required close coordination across design, engineering, and manufacturing. One team member noted the amount of large-bore pipe running overhead as a particular point of complexity, adding that the final result was a clean, serviceability-conscious layout despite the density of equipment involved.

Operator access and long-term usability were built into the design from the start. Team members emphasized that the package's layout is deliberately operator friendly, a practical consideration that often gets compressed out of dense, high-complexity builds. The fact that serviceability was preserved given the number of new components involved was cited repeatedly as a mark of the engineering team's discipline.

A cross-functional effort from sales to shop floor

Contributors across the organization pointed to the project as a model for internal collaboration. Design produced buildable drawings, purchasing kept materials moving, quality held the team to specification, project management maintained alignment across groups, and manufacturing executed on the shop floor. No single department carried the project on its own.

For Next Compression, the Alco Tourmaline 3600 BBQ package is expected to serve as a reference point, both internally and externally, for what the company can deliver on large-scale compression projects. The lessons absorbed across departments during this build, drawn from internal expertise and outside sources, are expected to carry forward into future work regardless of project size. As one team member put it, this package is "a flagship for us as what we can accomplish for the industry to see, also internally what we can accomplish as a group when we put our minds to it."