With one visit to Sabre Demolition Corp.’s website, you are immediately greeted by a large graphic and quote by its president, Matt Dixon, that reads “Our commitment is safety.” Our mindset at Sabre is nobody gets hurt.

Sabre, based in Warners, New York, is a demolition and environmental contractor that performs some of the most complex and hazardous activities for its clients throughout North America, Puerto Rico and select international locations. Matt Dixon says, “Most companies talk about working safely and some do, but one truly needs to look at how well defined and robust his or her safety system is.”

In 2008, Sabre began using a behavior-based safety system called the Loss Prevention System (LPS). LPS is a comprehensive management system designed to prevent or reduce losses using behavior-based tools and proven management techniques. It was developed by Dr. Jim Bennett, Ph.D., president and owner of LPS Inc. He has worked with hundreds of organizations over the past 38 years in loss prevention and safety management.

“We were introduced to LPS while working for a specific client. The client trained our field teams and we understood the basic concept. While we felt we had a good safety program and were focused on safety, use of LPS was not utilized on other projects which did not involve this client” says Matt Dixon.

PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING

In 2013, Sabre worked with Bennett and LPS Inc. to become full users of LPS. “We liked the concept of LPS, how it blended with our current safety program, and the positive effect it was having on the implementation of some of our projects,” says Steve Dixon, Sabre vice president. “We really liked that we were being proactive versus reactive as it pertained to employee safety so we decided it was time to take LPS company wide and go all in.”

LPS Inc. met with Sabre to discuss goals, schedule and milestones. An up-front investment as well as annual payments is required to utilize the system and the proprietary tools developed by LPS Inc. Once the system is rolled out, LPS Inc. performs routine and scheduled audits to validate that the system is being maintained and utilized as intended.

“We knew this was going to be a big investment for Sabre both monetarily and time wise, but we saw LPS to make our safety culture more vigorous and mature. It also is a differentiator between Sabre and our competitors,” Matt Dixon says. Sabre is the only demolition company in the world with a LPS license.

Sabre utilizes LPS on all of its projects. Field teams generate items such as near loss reports and loss observations. Loss observations are a tool to observe a task while it is being performed and then score how safe the task was completed, the observations are then used to improve or change how the task is completed in the future. These tools are examples of LPS being a proactive tool. But it does not end there.

The forms generated from Sabre field projects are sent back to its corporate office where they are reviewed by not only the corporate safety team, but also the owners for quality and lessons learned.

Significant lessons learned or near losses (where someone could have been injured) are used to generate safety alerts. These alerts typically tell what happened and what could have happened as a result of the work activity. The alerts are then distributed internally to all Sabre employees, subcontractors and Sabre clients.

“We believe in generating quality tools and not just ‘pencil whipping up a form just to get it done,’ and we feel that every injury is preventable, which is why we pass these lessons learned along so that subcontractors or clients that may have similar-type work activities going on can prevent something similar from happening on one of their jobs” says Pete Mietus, senior corporate health and safety director.

EXPANDING ITS USE

A key focus and reason for LPS being more of a proactive system is it aims at analyzing leading indicators. Sabre took the use of LPS one step further as it pertains to technology. In 2014, Sabre worked with a web development company to design a web-based platform in which could work with the LPS process.

“We were using the forms on our field projects in a hard copy form and then faxing them back to the office,” Brian Hornyak, vice president of major projects, says. “We generated a lot of paper and were constantly following up with people to try and decipher what word or words they were using.”

From there, Sabre created the name SHIELD, Sabre’s Home Information Equipment & LPS Database.

“We really tried to have fun with coming up with a name,” says Hornyak. “There were a lot of good suggestions from employees, but in the end, we felt SHIELD nailed it with the acronym and the metaphor of a shield with a sabre sword.”

SHIELD is now used on all Sabre projects, and the company employs a full-time staff member to manage it and the data generated.

Employees can enter their LPS tools via laptop, tablet or smartphone. The form is available for the corporate safety team to review remotely. The corporate safety team can generate a multitude of safety metrics as a result of the LPS tools being entered electronically.

“We are able to see where we need to focus,” says Mietus. “Are we performing a lot of tasks involving ergonomics? Are we having near losses associated with the use of fall protection? If so, we will bring that up at our weekly operations calls.”

Field employees can download the library of job loss analyses (JLA) for work tasks they will be performing. SHIELD makes them readily available for downloading and editing. In 2017, Sabre plans to roll out the equipment module of SHIELD in which maintenance activities associated with heavy equipment will be documented and tracked.

Sabre also plans to automate its training library by using SHIELD to alert the supervisor when one of its employees has a training certificate or medical surveillance item about to expire.

RESULTS

Since 2013, Sabre has not had a recordable injury, including subcontractors and vendors. Employees are more engaged in safety and have really bought in to the LPS system.

The culture has changed from safety only being the safety officer’s job mentality to safety being everyone’s responsibility. Every employee is empowered now—from the guy with a shovel to the guy inside one of the pieces of equipment.

The company is more proactive with regards to safety and identifying potential losses before they turn in to a loss capturing near losses and analyzing them. And reporting of losses and near losses is not punitive as with some safety cultures, instead the reports are encouraged.

In an industry surrounded by safety risks and work place hazards, “A successful project is when we can send all our employees, subcontractors and vendors home safely,” says Matt Dixon.

The author is the vice president of major projects for Sabre Demolition, Warners, New York, www.sabredemolition.com.

Cheap landfills and medium-sized markets do not make for the most attractive business conditions for a construction and demolition (C&D) recycler, but that hasn’t stopped Landfill Reduction & Recycling (LR&R). The Appleton, Wisconsin-based recycling firm has secured its position in two Wisconsin markets as a viable option for C&D debris.

Jason Salisbury formed the company in 2011. “Before we were came on, there was limited recycling of construction material in Wisconsin in general,” says Salisbury. “Wisconsin is a particularly challenging market because of tip fees as well as a low concentration of construction material outside of the Milwaukee area. There is not a high density of waste in one specific area, so there are a lot of geographic challenges.”

Where some might have been scared off from even attempting a recycling business under those circumstances, LR&R viewed things differently. It saw a C&D recycling industry developing in other parts of the country and thought it could get a head start in Wisconsin.

“We saw it as an opportunity to get out ahead of it and kind of be at the forefront of starting construction and demolition recycling in the state,” Salisbury says.

GETTING STARTED

Salisbury looked at several potential sites for the facility and ended up finding an old pulp and paper recycling facility in Appleton. It was a quarter of a mile away from the regional landfill.

He purchased the property, put the equipment together and worked with haulers to verify tonnages. In January 2012, the facility opened for business. The operation started processing at a rate of between 80 and 120 tons per day. Salisbury says he learned quickly that would not be enough to be profitable.

“We needed to do a lot more than that based on disposal rates in our area, so we quickly expanded,” he says.

In that first year of operation, LR&R processed 18,000 tons. The following year, the company tripled its volume.

“A lot of our success has been partnering with lots of municipal organizations,” Salisbury says. “We do all the construction material for four of the largest county-run waste organizations in the state. Part of the ways we grew to this tonnage was securing the construction waste coming out of the Madison-Dane County area.”

For about two-and-a-half years, the county trucked between six and eight semi-loads per day on the two-hour trip each way to and from Appleton.

“That didn’t look very sustainable long-term,” notes Salisbury.

Salisbury met with officials from the county about modifying its existing transfer station into a C&D processing facility. They liked the idea. “From the time of the original idea to the time we were processing was 18 months,” recalls Salisbury.

The Dane County recycling facility opened in early 2016. It is owned by the county and operated by LR&R, which is under a 10-year contract. Under the agreement, the county is paid for inbound tonnage. A portion of the fee goes to LR&R. Whatever LR&R does not recycle goes to the landfill, and the company pays a fee to the landfill. “We are incentivized [to recycle] financially and environmentally,” says Salisbury.

In Appleton, in addition to local haulers, LR&R also partners with Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago counties for their C&D debris.

LR&R employs 50 people at the two facilities. That number has remained stagnant as LR&R increases its efficiency, explains Salisbury. The Dane County facility has 20 employees, while the Appleton facility has 30 employees.

MANAGING MATERIALS

The materials LR&R recycles are placed into two categories: primary and secondary. Its primary materials include wood, concrete, aggregate, metal and cardboard.

“Those are always our main focus,” says Salisbury. “Wood is our highest priority because of the concentration of wood in our waste stream. That can be anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of our waste stream of what we can actually sort out.”

Secondary materials include lead batteries, drywall, vinyl siding, rigid plastics, books, electronics, tires, carpet, carpet pad and ceiling tiles.

“The reason we call them secondary materials is they are not a primary concentration for us, but we try to pull out as much as we can that has value,” explains Salisbury. The company will evaluate the materials, and depending on the market price or the efficiency of sorting or shipping a particular material, the company will recycle when it makes sense.

“It if works, we continue it. If it doesn’t work, we put it on hold until we are ready to try it again,” Salisbury says.

LR&R usually does not process asphalt shingles because, according to Salisbury, Wisconsin has a fairly well developed market for asphalt shingles. Instead, LR&R will direct customers to two facilities in Appleton that handle that material and are located next to quarries.

“Our niche is mixed [C&D] processing. If the shingles are presorted, that is a better outlet,” he says of the dedicated shingles facilities.

The C&D processing systems in Appleton and Madison vary in design. Salisbury says the Appleton facility was pieced together as a single-line system with a wood conveyor underneath. It uses screening equipment from General Kinematics (GK), Crystal Lake, Illinois, and processes around 30 tons per hour.

“It saved us some money on the front end,” Salisbury says of the way the system was built, “but it has cost us money over time because it wasn’t a turnkey system.”

The system in Madison is a full turnkey system from Sparta Manufacturing, Notre Dame, New Brunswick. The dual-line system processes up to 350 tons per day of C&D debris.

Sorters on the A line pick the desired commodities, while the B line mechanically processes the middles fraction (6 inches in size), through a combination of mechanical processes, including an in-line magnet to remove ferrous metals; GK Finger-Screen to remove fines; and a GK De-stoner air classifier to help capture mixed aggregates.

LR&R processed 150,000 tons in 2016, and Salisbury says the company hopes to grow that yet again in 2017, particularly in Madison since it is newer and has more growth potential. With a year of operations under its belt in Madison, the company can now shift its efforts towards growth in that market. “Now that the facility is running well, we are looking to expand that and increase the amount of recycling,” Salisbury says.

BIG COMPETITION

LR&R doesn’t have much competition in the way of other recyclers, it’s the landfills that keeps the company on its toes. Prior to the Dane County facility, local recycling ordinances were not being complied with because they weren’t feasible. It was easier and cheaper to landfill the material. That is why staying inexpensive and convenient has been crucial to being successful in Wisconsin, according to Salisbury.

“In other parts of the country, construction materials recycling is really prevalent whereas in Wisconsin, we don’t compete with other recyclers as much as we compete with landfills,” Salisbury says.

What’s been LR&R’s solution? “The way we have been innovative is by partnering with the waste community, both with private haulers and municipal-run organizations, and being able to leverage the conglomeration of all the material together to reduce our processing costs to remain competitive for entities that want to recycle,” says Salisbury.

Another way LR&R has been able to keep its rates low is in the way it has developed its end markets “so we don’t need to get the highest rates on our tip fees.” LR&R has found some unique end markets thanks to Wisconsin’s heavy agricultural and paper manufacturing bases.

Drywall from the facilities are made into a soil amendment product and the paper sector consumes much of the wood for boiler fuel, though Salisbury says the boiler fuel market has taken a dive.

Even before the boiler fuel market dropping, Salisbury says LR&R knew it had to diversity its markets. “It was challenging because those markets were so strong, it was hard to pull material away from such a viable market and put it into something we were new to,” he says.

Now, in addition to boiler fuel, LR&R’s end markets include animal bedding, landscape mulch and an erosion control product. Aggregate is not a major end market for LR&R. According to Salisbury, a number of virgin quarries in the area sell their materials for competitive prices. LR&R also does not have the ability to crush aggregate on-site, so it is typically used for fill.

“It is better to use it for clean fill than to sort out a smaller percentage and landfill the rest,” he says.

The volatility of metals markets over the last 12 to 18 months is a reminder for Salisbury that the company needs to focus on the costs it does have control over as well as on diversifying.

“Anything can be solved with money and time,” Salisbury says. He advises working through problems and developing solutions. “As long as you put that effort in, and you set yourself up financially, you can solve it and succeed.”

Salisbury says the year ahead will be all about optimizing LR&R. The company’s massive growth in five years has been a bit of a whirlwind, according to Salisbury. Now the company is in a position where it can focus on strengthening its customer base and diversifying its end markets with a core group of people who can accomplish those goals.

“There are a lot of things we have learned but have not fine-tuned yet, and that is what 2017 is going to be for us,” Salisbury says.

The author is editor of Construction & Demolition Recycling and can be reached at ksmith@gie.net.

EPA helps two New England communities plan new uses for former Brownfield sites

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has selected the city of Providence, Rhode Island, and the Eastern Maine Development Corp. to receive funding to assist with planning for cleanup and reuse of Brownfield sites as part of the Brownfields Area-Wide Planning (AWP) program. Each recipient will receive $200,000 to engage its community and conduct planning activities for Brownfield site reuse.

The grants will help these New England communities plan improvements such as housing, transportation options, recreation and open space, education and health facilities, social services, renewed infrastructure, increased commerce and employment opportunities, says EPA.

The Eastern Maine Development Corp. will work with the community and other stakeholders to develop an area-wide plan and implementation strategy for the former Verso Paper Mill project area. The 117-acre area, located on the Penobscot River, abuts the Town of Bucksport’s residential and commercial center. The paper mill closed in 2014 and is currently vacant, and the project area also contains vacant buildings that once housed a tannery and a steel mill. The area-wide grant will be used to supplement ongoing planning efforts in the project area.

The city of Providence will work with the community to develop an area-wide plan and implementation strategy for the Woonasquatucket River Industrial Corridor, as well as support site design and redevelopment options for the former General Electric Baseworks site. This site, the project’s catalyst, high-priority site, is a former manufacturing facility that currently is vacant and contaminated. The city will use the area-wide planning process to convene stakeholders who are currently engaged in the project area to develop a cohesive vision that ties together numerous ongoing initiatives and redevelopment efforts.

Lakeshore Recycling acquires Chicago-area recycler

Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS), a recycling and waste management firm located in the Chicago area, has acquired K. Hoving Cos., a full-service waste management, recycling and dumpster rental company that is based in West Chicago, Illinois. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the acquisition is effective immediately.

According to LRS, with the acquisition, it is now Illinois’ largest private waste company, and its services have expanded to include street sweeping and portable restrooms. The new businesses will be included in the newly created Temporary Services Division.

K. Hoving Cos. provides services in dumpster rental, roll-off, commercial, construction recycling, portable restrooms and street sweeping in both DuPage County and throughout greater Chicagoland. Additionally, LRS says that K. Hoving Cos. operates the only recycling facility in Chicago that is nationally certified by the Recycling Certification Institute, Sacramento, California. In addition, the two companies have a zero-landfill policy.

Ken Hoving and K.J. Loerop, K. Hoving Cos.’ founding executives, will lead the LRS Temporary Services Division, with Loerop serving as the division’s new vice president. The Temporary Services Division will serve individuals and companies seeking roll-off services, portable toilets, on-site storage and street or job-site sweeping.

With the addition of K. Hoving Cos., LRS now operates seven material recovery facilities (MRFs) throughout the Midwest. The acquisition also increases the company’s annual revenues to nearly $170 million and its workforce to more than 720 full-time employees.

Armstrong Flooring recycles 50 million pounds of postconsumer flooring

Armstrong Flooring, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has announced it has reached a milestone of recycling more than 50 million pounds of postconsumer flooring materials. The On&On Recycling Program kept 25,000 tons of materials out of landfills and has eliminated the generation of over 16,000 tons of greenhouse gases, according to the company.

“The success of our On&On Recycling Program is an affirmation that traditional linear thinking—where we use a product and throw it away—is evolving to a circular approach where waste is valued as a resource. It’s about more than diverting materials from a landfill, it is about using resources wisely from product design to the end of a product’s life cycle,” says Amy Costello, sustainability manager, Armstrong Flooring.

Since 2009, the On&On Floor Recycling Program has offered commercial building owners and contractors an alternative to traditional disposal and a flexible, end-of-life recycling solution for flooring products. What began as a recycling program for vinyl composition tile (VCT) has expanded into a comprehensive program that includes luxury vinyl tile (LVT) and biobased tile (BBT). As LVT experiences continued growth in North America, this product’s life cycle becomes increasingly important, and Armstrong says it has committed to creating and perpetuating a simple, rewarding recycling option.

Eligible flooring is recycled in a closed-loop, postconsumer stream with reclaimed material incorporated into new flooring products. Regional recycling facilities in California, Illinois, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania handle the reclamation process, which includes both Armstrong products and qualifying competitive flooring products from demolition and renovation projects.