July/August 1996
Ready for a new baler, shear, or automobile shredder? Then it’s time to begin planning the installation—even before you start shopping for the equipment. Here’s some expert advice to help you parry the potential pitfalls of the installation process.
By Jeff Borsecnik
Jeff Borsecnik, a former associate editor of Scrap, is a writer based in Seattle.
The contractor was ready to begin the big job—installing a new automobile shredder—but there was one little holdup: The foundation didn’t meet requirements. “They missed by 12 inches,” recalls Jerry McAdoo, field service manager for Femco Machine Co. (Punxsutawney, Pa.), a specialized contractor often called in to fix such blunders. “You can imagine what that means for the driveshaft!”
While some problems may be inevitable during major equipment installations, it is possible to anticipate and prevent many of the predicaments that can add cost to a project, delay its completion, or worse. The trick, according to installation veterans, is thorough advance planning backed by vigorous communication.
The All-Important Preliminaries
The seeds for a trouble-free installation need to be planted even before you begin shopping for that new piece of equipment. At this preliminary stage, it’s essential to know exactly what you want in terms of the installation, which means not only pinpointing the best location for the new machine, but also details like where scrap will be stored and where conveyors will need to cross the proposed operation, suggests Leo Johnston Jr., sales manager for Femco. “Otherwise, you get to the installation stage and you say, ‘Boy, we didn’t think about this; we want this … ’ It gets horribly expensive.”
Since it can be difficult to know precisely the best way to approach your new installation, you may want to check out how your scrap colleagues have handled their installations. “Knowing what you want entails getting out and seeing what others are doing, learning from their mistakes, and picking up the good things,” offers Frank Cozzi, secretary/treasurer of Cozzi Iron & Metal Inc. (Chicago), which is currently in the process of installing two new auto shredders and an eddy current system.
Once you’ve formulated some ideas about the installation, you’ll want to evaluate them against such factors as these offered by the experts:
- Site “constructability.” Before settling on an installation plan, consider just how appropriate the spot you have in mind is, advises Todd Grunewald, project manager for C.R. Meyer and Sons Co. (Oshkosh, Wis.), a specialty contractor that has worked on a number of processing equipment installations. For instance, will the swamp out back support that new shredder? Or, more to the point, what will it cost to install the pilings necessary to support the machine’s foundation?
While you can perform the constructability analysis if you’ve got the time and manpower, don’t rule out turning to a contractor. As Grunewald says, “If you have any question at all about the constructability, get a contractor involved right away, even if you have to pay for a constructability study, because it will save you money in the long run.”
- Utilities. There are two points you’ll want to think through regarding utilities and your preliminary installation plan. First, you need to determine which utilities cross the installation site and where, as “they may all have to be rerouted—something that should be done prior to major construction,” says Grunewald.
Second, compare the energy requirements of the new piece of equipment to your plant’s existing power capabilities to get an idea of service upgrades and changes that might need to be made. When planning the installation of electrical-powered equipment, for instance, examine the site’s input voltage and how it’s transformed, advises Rick McCourt, general manager of logistics for Hiuka America Corp. (Long Beach, Calif.), who has managed the installation of various large processing equipment, as well as construction of a port facility.
- Maintenance accessibility. Don’t wait until the equipment is up to figure your maintenance needs, says McCourt, suggesting that you incorporate maintenance stands, catwalks, and/or dedicated cranes into your foundation design. “A lot of people will crowd themselves too much, such as building control houses very close to key components,” he notes. “When the components wear out and you can’t get someone in there or you can’t get equipment in to lift it out, you’ve painted yourself into a corner.”
- Soil quality. This is one item that’s almost always overlooked by recyclers planning an installation, yet it must be done before a job is bid out because soil characteristics will help determine the cost of the foundation, Grunewald says, noting, “Anytime you put equipment on a foundation, you’ve got to know about the soil.”
- Permit requirements. Simply figuring out what permits you need can be as complicated as getting approvals. To identify the hoops you might have to leap through, it’s a good idea to take your preliminary installation plans to your local government’s building code department and ask about permits, McCourt offers. You might get some surprises. Hiuka, for example, discovered it had to satisfy an electrical testing and listing procedure to meet local codes.
The equipment manufacturer, engineering and design contractors, and other local processors may also lend helpful information on permitting requirements.
Creating a Master Plan
After taking care of these preliminaries, you place the order for that new piece of equipment. Now what?
Developing a master installation plan, that’s what.
One part of your master plan should pin down the exact configuration of the new installation, noting where and how all the pieces will fit together. “Although we have autocad, we still like to build a model of what we’re building, a model of the yard,” Cozzi notes, explaining, “We look at it for a long time and move the pieces of the puzzle around until it all fits.”
Your master plan should also include “a list of things you need to do, with things that can be done prior to the arrival of the equipment highlighted,” suggests Richard Robertson, plant engineer for Annaco Inc. (Akron, Ohio), who designed and supervised the installation of the company’s motor block-breaking operation, among other projects. These can range from tasks as obvious as the removal of old equipment at the installation site to less apparent but no less vital requirements like arranging for higher-rate electric switchgear if it’s needed. “This is something that’s under your control and can be scheduled for weekends,” asserts Robertson of this latter task. “It’s really a mistake to push it off until the equipment arrives.”
With this master task list in hand, you can begin to estimate manpower and skills needed for each job, which should help you figure which parts of the installation you want to do and which you want to contract out. (For tips on hiring contractors, see the sidebar at left.)
The important questions to ask in this regard are: Are my employees capable of doing the work? And can I spare them for the project without their other obligations suffering? “If the answer to both is yes, you’d be foolish not to tap that resource,” Grunewald says.
Not that your employees should take on everything within their technical abilities. Take building erection, for instance. “It’s one of the things they can do, but they don’t do it day in and day out,” Robertson says, noting, “It’s going to take them longer and isn’t going to be as good when they’re done. You have to be very aware of what I call the pride factor when looking at what should be done by outsiders vs. by your own men.” Thus, foundations, electrical work, and hydraulics are generally farmed out to specialists, he says.
Your real labor costs also need to be taken into consideration when divvying up duties, Robertson says, offering the following example: Say you have five mechanics who are 85-percent efficient in their regular duties. They’re pretty booked up, so their time on the project would be mainly overtime. Estimate the cost of having them work on the new installation and compare this cost to what a contractor would charge. And, as part of this calculation, keep in mind that your mechanics will likely become less efficient in their regular duties as a result of the overtime. “It’s all dollars and cents,” Robertson states.
One of the best roles for your employees—no matter how much of the work they actually do—is to ensure that your installation plan fits your firm’s particular needs and preferences, which can help prevent extensive tinkering and modifications after the fact. “That’s where your men are most valuable,” Robertson says. “They know the way you work.”
Likewise, your staff can serve as fresh eyes to see if you’ve missed anything. “We planned our shredder installation for a year,” says Bill Bukevicz, executive vice president of Davis Industries Inc. (Lorton, Va.). “Then we got everybody involved, and everyone came up with something somebody forgot.”
Once you’ve got a good idea of who will be doing what, it’s time to focus on equipment demands. “In many cases, the equipment required is equipment your facility has, but it probably won’t be available to the project on a 100-percent basis,” Robertson says. As a result, it’s imperative to “do a good job estimating when and how long each piece of equipment will be required.” You’ll then have a better idea of how much you’ll be able to take advantage of your own machinery and how much you’ll need to rent, which is critical since rented equipment, especially cranes, should be booked long in advance.
Plotting a Timeline
The key to being able to do this kind of planning, of course, is to establish a timeline for what’s supposed to happen when.
This is frequently easier said than done. One common problem, Cozzi notes, is that “people can become too aggressive with the timeline, setting themselves up for disappointment and a whole lot of stress.” The wisest modus operandi, therefore, McCourt counsels, is to “give yourself as much time as you feel you can take,” including building in extra time to resolve problems. And, in instances where a new machine will replace an existing one, don’t forget to maintain the old machine in peak operating order prior to the installation, as this can take a lot of time pressure off the project, notes Femco’s Johnston.
One way to determine your timeline is to decide how much downtime you can afford, says Bukevicz. After taking a hard look at the space it had available for storing prepared scrap and handling incoming scrap during installation of its shredder, as well as its tolerance for lost production time, he says, Davis Industries figured it could afford to be down for two months.
But was that enough time to install a shredder? “We decided we couldn’t do it on 40-hour weeks,” Bukevicz recalls, “so for the first phase, we worked two 12-hour shifts—and we gained a month or more in three weeks.” Thus, as the project progressed, the company was able to back off to a one-shift schedule, though it remained prepared to re-accelerate if necessary to meet its timeline. And, in the end, the installation was completed in only nine weeks, he reports.
Tracking the Delivery Date. Above everything else, your installation timeline will hinge upon the equipment delivery date. This can be problematic since manufacturing factors often conspire to throw delivery schedules off by days, weeks, or even months.
To protect yourself against such delays, request a guaranteed delivery date from the manufacturer, Grunewald suggests. And once you do secure a firm delivery date, don’t become complacent about it, Robertson says, advising that you “follow the date very closely and make sure that it’s going to happen when the manufacturer says it’s going to happen.”
As part of your watchdog activities, Grunewald recommends visiting the manufacturer’s plant “to review the schedule and any problems and see where the equipment is actually at in the assembly process.” And don’t limit your attention to the machine’s big pieces, he says, noting that electrical transformers and switchgear, for example, can have lead times of four to six months.
Despite the obvious benefits of such factory visits, few buyers make the effort to do them, Grunewald says, observing, “If I bought a multi-million-dollar piece of equipment, I’d be there on a monthly basis once it started assembly.”
This can be a more-difficult assignment when it comes to equipment ordered from manufacturers abroad, but is likely to be worth the effort if you can swing it. In fact, McCourt notes, foreign-made machinery usually requires even closer attention than its domestic counterparts, given longer lead times, language barriers, and potential obstacles between U.S. and foreign standards, such as in electrical setups.
Building Communication Lines
As a final step before installation begins, it’s a good idea to gather together all the participants in the process—the contractors, the equipment rep, and key staff—for a “supermeeting” to clarify responsibilities and establish a pattern of communication and accountability, Grunewald suggests. He also advises subsequent meetings at least weekly of the active players—by teleconference, if necessary—prior to and throughout installation to keep everyone up to speed and track promises. In conducting these meetings, and as a general communication strategy, “assume no one has told anyone anything,” Robertson recommends. “Just keep asking, ‘Did you know this? Did you tell so-and-so that?’”
It takes a “ramrod sort” of manager, imbued with the authority of the owner, to make sure such communication works throughout the project—and that it works through him—says Robertson. Johnston agrees, noting, “That man is responsible for the job. Everything must go through him. If you have other people taking charge or you have subcontractors not dealing directly with the project engineer, then you’re asking for disaster.” To ensure close communication, the project engineer may find it useful to equip the leader of each subcontractor with a mobile phone or radio so everyone is always within reach, Johnston adds.
For keeping everyone abreast of developments, it can also be helpful to post Gantt charts, which outline in spreadsheet fashion the various tasks required in the installation, which party is responsible for each task, and the day(s) each task is scheduled to be executed, notes Robertson. Rather than being a precise, set-in-stone document, however, a Gantt chart is “strictly an estimate” that must be “updated every time it gets out of whack,” he says, noting, “If you don’t update it, people will ignore it." For lesser details, Robertson regularly compiles a written checklist, which he distributes to everyone involved. Then he meets informally with the group, acting as a mediator, to make sure everything’s covered.
On his projects, McCourt has found it helpful to hold daily update meetings “with those in the working window and those on either side that have some overlapping impact” so everyone has a current picture of how their role fits in with current progress on the installation.
Seeing the Project Through
Despite the best planning, problems can arise due to horrendous weather, broken parts, equipment delays, a contractor’s strike, or any other of a host of possibilities. If a problem does arise, “don’t panic,” advises Bukevicz. “That throws everyone off. Just figure out how to solve it.” On its shredder installation, for example, Davis Industries discovered that its prefab control house was too small for the control panels. The solution: “We got a carpenter who built one from scratch—framed it out in two days.” Experienced contractors may also be able to solve problems in the field, saving you from having to resort to more drastic measures.
As for problems related to contractors and subcontractors, you can protect yourself by inserting a clause in contracts that allows you to withhold a certain percentage of payment until job completion. But while this may motivate some contractors to see jobs through, penalties don’t guarantee that the job will get done, and they can, in fact, backfire on you. As McCourt says, “You don’t want to hit them with penalties because that just puts a bad taste in everybody’s mouth, and they could take what they’ve been paid so far and walk off.” The best way to avoid problems with your contractors, the experts agree, is to not wait until they are weeks behind, but rather to keep day-to-day tabs on their progress.
Then again, the most ironic and perturbing problem you may encounter may come at the very end of your project, just when the job seems to be all but done. “When people can see the end of the tunnel, they slow down,” Robertson observes. “You can be going on all eight cylinders, then the last day can take a week. I haven’t met a group of people yet that doesn’t do that. It’s just amazing, and it can throw you for a real bad loop.”
As with all aspects of major equipment installations, however, this problem can be averted or at least dealt with more effectively if you anticipate and talk about it.
Contractor How-Tos
If you decide to farm some of your installation work out, the most important advice is to “hire reputable suppliers and contractors or architects all the way across the board,” Todd Grunewald says. “They’re not going to leave you hanging. Their reputations depend on the 10 jobs that are going to come after yours.”
Most major equipment installations are jobbed out through competitive bidding. If you can pin down the details of your installation project, go ahead and bid it out, suggests Grunewald. When reviewing bids, however, keep in mind that “most jobs are bid very vaguely,” he notes. Femco, in fact, reports that its jobs turn out to be bigger than bid “99 percent” of the time. Also, though you’ll undoubtedly be tempted to go with the lowest bidder, beware because low bids can mask the contractor’s intent to “get you on the backside with change orders,” says Rick McCourt, referring to midstream project alterations.
If you can’t define your installation project, “find someone reputable and negotiate a time-and-materials contract with them, perhaps with a cap,” Grunewald advises, noting that such a contract protects both parties.
If, on the other hand, you seek a fixed-price contract, “you will probably pay more than on a time-and-materials basis” since the contractor has to allow for all possible problems, says Leo Johnston Jr.
One other point to keep in mind when selecting contractors, notes McCourt: If your firm is unionized, using non-union contractors might require consultation with the union. •
Ready for a new baler, shear, or automobile shredder? Then it’s time to begin planning the installation—even before you start shopping for the equipment. Here’s some expert advice to help you parry the potential pitfalls of the installation process.