Turner Construction Co., New York City, has announced it has implemented TurnerTracker, a new, cloud-based tool for tracking construction debris diverted from landfills.
Turner says it formalized its commitment to sustainability in 2004, including establishing companywide goals for diverting construction debris from landfills. Since then, the company has kept from landfills a total of more than 2 million tons of construction material, or four times the weight of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. In 2014 alone, Turner says its projects reported a diversion rate of 91 percent, a total of more than 446,000 tons of recycled, reused or salvaged material.
The company explains that diverted material is sorted by type and prepared for its new life; concrete is crushed to become aggregate or fill and rebar is melted down and reformed. In some cases, debris material is diverted for reuse on the same project. For example, at the Sacramento Entertainment and Sports Center project, future home of the NBA Sacramento Kings, the project team is recycling more than 90 percent of its construction debris (total waste during the demolition phase was estimated at 96,000 tons), including crushing demolished concrete to serve as part of the new arena’s foundation.
“We recognize that our responsibility includes not just what we build, but how we build it,” says Michael Deane, Turner’s chief sustainability officer and the Construction & Demolition Recycling Association’s (CDRA’s) Recycler of the Year in 2012.
He continues, “We are aware of the effect our operations—including job site energy and water efficiency and waste diversion. TurnerTracker is a tool that will help us monitor and report on our construction waste recycling in a much more streamlined and detailed way. We are measuring construction waste diversion as one piece of our broader effort to achieve our sustainable goals.”
TurnerTracker is integrated with the company’s enterprise software and project management system. With real-time, mobile access, the company says TurnerTracker has the capacity to store salvaged and reused material data, auto-populate LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) submittal forms, create waste management plans, which are required on all Turner jobs, and generate recycling trend reports from stored data. It also includes detailed tracking of diverted material types, including categories for metal, wood, paper, gypsum and concrete.
Turner says it formalized its commitment to sustainability in 2004, including establishing companywide goals for diverting construction debris from landfills. Since then, the company has kept from landfills a total of more than 2 million tons of construction material, or four times the weight of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. In 2014 alone, Turner says its projects reported a diversion rate of 91 percent, a total of more than 446,000 tons of recycled, reused or salvaged material.
The company explains that diverted material is sorted by type and prepared for its new life; concrete is crushed to become aggregate or fill and rebar is melted down and reformed. In some cases, debris material is diverted for reuse on the same project. For example, at the Sacramento Entertainment and Sports Center project, future home of the NBA Sacramento Kings, the project team is recycling more than 90 percent of its construction debris (total waste during the demolition phase was estimated at 96,000 tons), including crushing demolished concrete to serve as part of the new arena’s foundation.
“We recognize that our responsibility includes not just what we build, but how we build it,” says Michael Deane, Turner’s chief sustainability officer and the Construction & Demolition Recycling Association’s (CDRA’s) Recycler of the Year in 2012.
He continues, “We are aware of the effect our operations—including job site energy and water efficiency and waste diversion. TurnerTracker is a tool that will help us monitor and report on our construction waste recycling in a much more streamlined and detailed way. We are measuring construction waste diversion as one piece of our broader effort to achieve our sustainable goals.”
TurnerTracker is integrated with the company’s enterprise software and project management system. With real-time, mobile access, the company says TurnerTracker has the capacity to store salvaged and reused material data, auto-populate LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) submittal forms, create waste management plans, which are required on all Turner jobs, and generate recycling trend reports from stored data. It also includes detailed tracking of diverted material types, including categories for metal, wood, paper, gypsum and concrete.