When a car has seen the end of its days or there is scrap metal leftover from a demolition project, it’s often sent to Evraz Recycling, the largest metal scrap recycler in western Canada and known in the U.S. through its three facilities—one in North Dakota and two in Colorado.
Evraz Recycling offers a variety of metal recycling and auto wrecking yards, providing communities with a more sustainable way to recycle and reuse metal materials.
One of Evraz Recycling’s biggest resources is the car shredder at their Denver location, which is 600,000 lbs. of equipment that can shred an entire car down into 1-in. diameter pieces. The shredder sits on top of a concrete foundation, which had started to weaken due to the weight and force of all the steel that had been fed into it over the years. This caused Evraz to hire Industrial Constructors/Managers, Inc. (ICM) to overhaul the car shredder before it caused a catastrophic event.
The ensuing 29 days of work put ICM to the test. It had a very short window of time to demo the equipment and the foundation and reinstall the new equipment in the exact sequence it had been removed in. Since the plant was losing revenue every minute it was offline, ICM had to tightly coordinate and sequence its work. The speed and precision of the project presented notable challenges the company had to overcome to deliver the project on time and on budget.
DELICATE DEMOLITION
As the general contractor of the project, ICM was responsible for the demolition of equipment that was not going to be reused, along with removing equipment that could be reused. The car shredder had to be disassembled in various parts and pieces, which each weighed anywhere from 50,000 to 175,000 lbs.
The demolition and re-installation required careful coordination because the components had to be removed and reinstalled in a very specific order. This included the conveyor belt that fed steel to the shredder, which was 180 feet long and weighed 170,000 lbs.
“The sheer length and weight of the equipment made us double and triple check our calculations to ensure we were taking everything apart correctly and placing it in an order that could be easily recreated,” says Greg Baladez, junior project manager at ICM.
Every day of the project, two cranes did a tandem pick, rotating each piece of equipment over 80 feet before setting it down. Everything was carefully tracked so the pieces were removed in the right order and to ensure they didn’t impact other recycling operations that remained in place.
REBUILDING FROM THE GROUND UP
With demolition complete, ICM drilled new helical piers into the bedrock, installed a new concrete foundation, prepped and compacted the subgrade, and fabricated and erected new structural steel to support the equipment. Because of the tight timing, ICM used a fast-setting concrete that’s capable of reaching design strength in 12 to 24 hours instead of the standard 25 to 28 days.
“Given the timeline, we had to go with ‘high early’ concrete so we could successfully complete the concrete foundation and move on to other aspects of the project,” says Dan Baker, superintendent at ICM. “This was a crucial decision that was made early in the project and impacted everything that followed.”
With the new foundation in place, ICM reinstalled the equipment back in order, which included new shredder equipment, hydraulic pipelines, and electrical system.
During reassembly, ICM realized the new equipment was designed and engineered off the existing drawings, which were never correlated with other parts of the shredder. Since some parts weren’t to the exact specifications they needed to be, ICM had to adapt by modifying various parts of equipment to eliminate any timing delays.
ICM also assisted with the startup and commissioning of the new equipment, adjusting and torquing down the bolts to make sure everything ran per industry and Evraz specifications. “The bolts had extremely high torque values,” says Baladez. “It wasn’t just finger range, but extreme psi.”
KEYS TO SUCCESS
Because ICM had to minimize the recycling plant’s downtime to just 29 days, the company strategically phased the project so that various trades overlapped, with swing shifts enabling work to happen around the clock.
Despite the quick pace, ICM cut no corners on quality or safety, particularly given the extreme weight involved in dismantling and reassembling the equipment. ICM averaged 14 workers on site during the day, along with six workers at night. The project involved millwrights, ironworkers, carpenters, electricians, and pipefitters all working together to ensure that everyone was aware of who was always doing what, so that no one got hurt.
“The safety and quality-control teams were heavily involved to support the guys in the field,” says Baladez. “Everything was verified and measured twice at the beginning of each phase and often before phases were even reached to ensure that all aspects of the project stayed on track.”
Concrete and grouting quality control was also important, as schedules and durations had to be 100-percent accurate, otherwise it would delay the next phase. Both had to be timed perfectly and achieve the right strength to meet the expedited schedule.
“Setting 600,000 lbs. of steel and concrete is not only a QC issue, but it can lead to life and safety issues, so we had to make sure that everything was on point,” says Baker. “In addition to ICM’s normal pre-planning that involved developing extensive safety and quality plans for all phases of work, management and field also met daily to capture and plan for any unknowns, helping to ensure that the project was safe, met quality controls, and stayed on schedule.”
Thanks to ICM’s meticulous planning, the project was successfully completed at the 29-day mark, allowing Evraz to resume normal operations. While the project was completed quickly, everyone also went home safely while delivering a project that is sure to stand the test of time.
about the author
Clint Thurston is a project manager at Industrial Contractors/Managers, Inc (ICM), a Colorado-based industrial contractor specializing in steel and concrete structures, heavy moving and rigging, machinery installation, modification and maintenance, and more. For more, visit www.icminc.net.