Mega Builders

S03:E05 - Might Shovel

With gold prices at record highs, Barrick Gold wants to sell all the gold it can. So it orders the World's Biggest Gold Mining Shovel to replace a shovel half its size at its massive open pit mine in Nevada. Now the clock is ticking. First, Brenda Hanamann, the manager of the P&H weld factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin must weather one delaying crisis after another as her welders build the giant parts of the shovel. Then, in Nevada, twenty-four year old assembly foreman Landon Hendrix must steer his young crew through bad weather and dangerous crane lifts to fit the Mighty Shovel together from the thousands of parts shipped from Milwaukee. He has just eight weeks to do it. Now the pressure's really on. Will the shovel be finished on time? If it isn't, P&H must pay Barrick Gold rich penalties for every day the shovel misses its delivery deadline.