Material Recycling Facilities: A building to save landfills

Proper disposal of construction materials is a critical part of all projects; 70% is a typical target. Where does all that material go? Well, increasingly it goes to large Material Recycling Facilities (MRF) to reclaim the recyclables and save landfills. What kind of building is a MRF? We recently built a 26,000 s/f, 47-foot high facility in Sparta, NJ, designed to handle 400 tons of construction waste daily. While the design was deceptively simple, this is a heavy duty building designed and built to take a beating from 36-ton trucks—as many as 15 at a time. Waste can also arrive or leave by rail.

It required mammoth amounts of concrete, steel, and larger crews and more equipment than is typical for a construction project in this suburban community:

• 11-million pounds or 2800 cubic yards of concrete and tractor trailers to bring in 85 pre-fabricated tilt-up concrete panels weighing 60,000 pounds each
• 358 tons of steel, including 115 foot steel trusses, each weighing 15-tons
• 24,000 s/f insulated metal roof
• Doors weighing as much as 3500 pounds and 28 feet high
• Hardened fl oor in two layers: the first is 12-inch slab with embedded rebar grid and the second layer is 3-inches so it is easier to replace because of wear
• Push walls and crash walls to protect the outside walls and catwalk from trucks and front loaders

While not a typical construction job or building, the success comes down to the same three factors common to other large construction projects:

1) investing the right time, talent and focus to plan the job in detail;
2) having the right people on site to lead and control performance;
3) flexibility and good problem solving as unexpected takes place quite naturally.

Ted Brennan is vice president of T. M. Brennan Contractors, Inc.