NDA Phoenix: Top demolition projects honored at awards banquet

The National Demolition Association (NDA) honored companies for safety and complex demolition projects while inducting two into its hall of fame and bestowing another with a lifetime achievement award at the closing banquet of its Phoenix convention on Feb. 8.

Brandenburg Industrial Service Co., North American Dismantling Corp. (NADC) and Lindamood Inc. each won an excellence in demolition award, given to a complex project that raised the bar for safety, innovation and leadership.

In addition to the excellence in demolition awards, NDA honored Rachel Contracting, NADC and Brandenburg with safety awards in their respective categories. The association inducted Jeffery Carpenter of Homrich and Neil R. LeBlanc of Caterpillar Inc. into its hall of fame and presented David H. Griffin Sr. of D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. Inc. with its lifetime achievement award.

Excellent in demolition awards were given based on the project’s budget. Brandenburg, based in Elmhurst, Illinois, won Category 1 (up to $1 million) for completing the environmental remediation and demolition of the retired Buffalo Mountain Wind Farm in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Brandenburg says the project included a combination of pulling and mechanical assistance to fell the towers. A total of 15 steel towers and blades were removed using Brandenburg’s specialized felling procedure. Once the felling of the towers was completed, a hydraulic excavator with a shear attachment was used for processing and recycling the material.

The firm prepared and segregated materials for off-site recycling, minimizing the amount of materials that needed to be landfilled. Brandenburg says 100 percent of all the scrap material was recycled, including 1,500 tons of steel and 190,000 pounds of non-ferrous scrap.

In Category 2 (greater than $1 million up to $5 million), Lapeer, Michigan-based NADC was honored for demolishing the continuous ship unloader (CSU) at Kalaeloa Barber’s Point Harber located on O’ahu, Hawaii. The project was completed in four weeks, two weeks ahead of schedule, with 99 percent of eligible materials recycled and 25 percent under budget.

The CSU was a rail-mounted, hydraulic, counterbalancing ship unloaded that was equipped with a bucket elevator to remove coal from a ship’s load. North American Dismantling Corp. says multiple ships were in close proximity to the work area. The CSU also was an extremely unbalanced structure being just 4-ft. from Pacific waters. The company used a crane with 700 metric tons of lifting capacity to pick down and disassemble the structure.

Finally, in Category 3 (projects greater than $5 million), Irving, Texas-based Lindamood won for dismantling the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas. The company says the campus spanned more than 500,000 sq. ft., but implosion wasn’t an option because it resided in the shadow of live hospitals, Interstate 35 and the University of Texas at Austin’s campus.

Lindamood says it had to reverse engineer every move, designing and executing one of the largest mechanical trippings on record. The project had zero incidents and 86 percent material diversion without disruption to hospital, campus or city infrastructure across seven months of work.