Intro to Demolition

Ever wonder how the demolition industry works? This peek inside several demolition projects shows how it recycles not only scrap, but also the land itself.

By Lynne Meredit Cohn

Lynne Meredith Cohn is a writer based in Ferndale, Mich. 

The old Rockwell Standard axle plant, located about six blocks from the Detroit River, has been abandoned for years. To most, it’s nothing but a barren, deserted industrial site. But to a demolition contractor, it’s a scrap goldmine.

Look closely and you can spot piles of ferrous scrap peeking out from under dirt and snow. There are a couple of pieces of rusted equipment—a hydraulic shear, an overhead crane—just waiting to be chopped up and recycled. Likewise, the structure’s steel columns—some of which jut straight upward, pointing to the white sky—will be sold for scrap.

At the moment, the site is silent, except for the rush of passing cars and drip drip of melting January icicles. But the site will soon be alive with the noise of excavators, front-end loaders, trucks, and workers when Homrich Wrecking Inc. (Detroit)—the site’s demolition contractor—arrives to begin its work of demolishing the structure and recycling not only the site’s scrap, but also the site itself.

Welcome to the wonderful world of demolition.

The Oldest Recycling Industry

The Rockwell Standard project is hardly unique. Similar demolition projects are being undertaken in virtually every major city in every state around the country. It’s the necessary step of clearing the old to make way for the new—and it’s the business of demolition contractors like Homrich Wrecking.

According to Roger Homrich, CEO, demolition is the oldest recycling industry in the nation. “What’s unique about the demolition business is we’re recycling land,” he says. “This country’s greatest natural resource is land. By demolishing and removing the old, demolition contractors enable developers to build something new.”

Demolition projects fall into three categories: residential, such as houses and small apartments, which yield little scrap; commercial, such as shopping centers and office buildings; and industrial, such as steel mills and the Rockwell Standard plant.

Industrial projects generate the most scrap “because most of those structures are steel, including the equipment and pipe,” says David Griffin Jr., vice president of D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. Inc. (Greensboro, N.C.). Multistory commercial buildings and shopping malls also often yield a fair amount of ferrous and nonferrous scrap, he says.

Though no precise figures exist, it’s fair to say that demolition projects recover tens of millions of tons of scrap annually, while also generating some 70 million tons of demolition debris that’s primarily discarded and about $2 billion in revenue. Demolition scrap runs the gamut from steel I-beams to copper plumbing pipe to insulated wire to aluminum siding and extrusions. “No one knows that we’re the largest supplier of scrap metal to the scrap industry,” says Mike Taylor, executive director of the National Association of Demolition Contractors (NADC) (Doylestown, Pa.). (For an inside look at this group, see “A Brief History of NADC” below.)

To be sure, the demolition and scrap processing businesses are closely related and quite dependent on each other. “When the demolition industry does well, the scrap industry does well,” Taylor says. “When things slow down and the real estate market slows down, the volume of demolition drops and the amount of scrap drops. The demolition industry is one of the greatest barometers of economic activity.”

The close relationship between demolition and scrap processing is understandable—one generates material the other needs. That also helps explain why it’s common for demolition contractors to wear several hats, many times doing not only demolition work but also scrap processing and other related activities. D.H. Griffin, for instance, wears three hats—demolition, scrap processing, and construction. Depending on the location of its demolition projects, the firm can choose to ship the scrap to its own processing operations, sell it to another processor, or ship it direct to a consuming mill. “Being in the scrap business, we understand the value of scrap and a lot of times can yield a higher end dollar by going direct to the steel mills,” says Griffin.

Wearing these different hats can be beneficial, of course, in that each can generate business for the other. D.H. Griffin, for instance, demolished Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, recycling more than 9,000 tons of steel and more than 80,000 tons of concrete, says Griffin. Then, the company’s construction business got started on a new project—building a 4,000-space parking lot on the site.

Demolition Details

According to Homrich, demolition companies determine how much to bid on a project based largely on how much scrap the site is expected to generate. “Scrap prices are a major consideration when calculating our bid,” he says. “When we get a project, people who want to buy the scrap come to us to negotiate. Prior to demolition, we get quotes based on delivery within the next three, six, or nine months, and then we lock in a price.”

Many demolition projects begin with an engineering survey that looks at the structure in-depth, determines what needs to be done, and identifies the site’s hazards and challenges, such as being next to buildings still in operation.

The biggest hazard during demolition projects is employee safety, notes Bill Baker, a demolition industry consultant and former NADC executive director. That’s not surprising given that demolition projects are machinery-intensive and involve the razing of structures, which can present falling or flying debris, collapsing roofs, and the like. As a result, “safety’s very important,” Baker asserts. “That’s why every demolition contractor has a safety program. You have tool box meetings where all your people must attend.”

A second major concern relates to potential environmental hazards at a site. “You have to know if there are any toxic materials that have to be removed, such as asbestos or PCBs,” Baker says.

When it comes to actually taking down a structure, demolition contractors can either use explosives to implode the structure, causing it to collapse inward, or demolish it mechanically. In the latter case, demolition contractors use four main tools: large hydraulic excavators with shear attachments, grapple attachments, concrete pulverizers, and front-end loaders. They also need trucks and tractor-trailers to haul both scrap and demolition debris from the site. Compared with the scrap processing industry, these equipment requirements are inexpensive.

“It’s more of a capital expenditure to get started in scrap processing than in demolition,” says Griffin. An automobile shredder, for instance, can cost $8 million to $10 million, while a demolition contractor can buy much of his equipment—excavators, shear and grapple attachments, front-end loaders, concrete crushers, and the like—for a fraction of that amount. Plus, most demolition contractors don’t have to bear the cost of owning and maintaining a physical processing plant.

Demolition jobs vary in the scope of work the contractor is hired to do. At the most basic level, the contractor is hired to simply tear down a structure, leaving the remnants for the owner or another contractor. For more comprehensive jobs, the contractor can be called on to provide environmental services such as asbestos abatement, raze the structure, clear all scrap and debris from the lot, and even remove all concrete foundations, including basements, leaving nothing but a virgin parcel of land.

Of course, the time it takes to do demolition projects depends on a host of factors, including the size and number of structures involved, the amount of preliminary work needed, including environmental abatement, whether the structure can be imploded or whether it must be mechanically dismantled, and so on.

Take the abandoned J.L. Hudson’s department store building in downtown Detroit, another Homrich Wrecking project. This job will take about 10 months to complete, half spent on asbestos abatement. A complicating factor is that the building sits a mere 11 feet from the city’s People Mover above-ground railway system.

The 25-story building contains 2.2 million square feet of space and nearly 40,000 tons of steel, three inches thick in some places. Homrich Wrecking will implode the building in June, destroying it inward and down so as to rotate the massive structure away from the People Mover. “This is one of the biggest buildings in the Midwest,” Homrich says. “Nothing of this magnitude has presented itself before. These buildings haven’t been demolished. They’re rare because of their massiveness and a lot of them haven’t outlived their usefulness yet.”

Homrich first bid on the Hudson’s project in 1985, again in 1989, and once again in the mid-1990s. The project became a reality in 1997. The building is being demolished as a step toward resurrecting a bustling life in Detroit’s center. Bring down the old to make room for the new, Homrich says.

And ironically, in some cases the old and the new come together. Hudson’s windows and iron frames, for instance, will be saved, possibly to use in one of the two new stadiums Detroit is planning to build.

Recycling Land

The land that once held an Anaconda Brass plant in Detroit is now a field of snow. The only remnant of the plant is its two-foot-high brick foundation, buried in the grass.

Across the street, demolition and cleanup work at the Revere Copper and Brass scrap facility is almost complete, says Homrich, whose company leveled the site’s building and is now finishing environmental cleanup. First, knock down and remove the building. Then, pull up the concrete, excavate contaminated soil and haul it to the landfill, then separate rebar from the concrete for recycling.

In the January cold, front-end loaders feed big chunks of concrete into a crusher that breaks apart the concrete, magnetically extracts the rebar, and produces an almost powder-like gravel that will be used to backfill voids left in the ground from the removal of contaminated soil from the 29-acre site. Homrich surveys the property. This will be “prime riverfront property, once we get done with it,” he says proudly.

A handful of employees are busy working to the rhythmic rumble of vacuum trucks and compactors. One vacuum truck sucks contaminated water out of a pit in the ground, runs it through a filter, then discharges the liquid back through the sewer system. A compactor packs stone tightly into the ground, making a spot ready for new construction. Where the old boat slip used to be, Homrich Wrecking plans to clean out the contaminated water and soil after closing it up with sheet piling.

The company has been at the Revere Copper site for about a month. Give it another week or two, and the 29 acres will be completely cleared and cleaned.

Then it will be on to the next job.

A Brief History of NADC

Today, the National Association of Demolition Contractors (NADC) is an international organization that’s celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Not bad for an organization founded in a living room and initially formed for the sole purpose of addressing federal environmental regulations.

In 1972, the U.S. government passed the Clean Air Act, which called for asbestos removal on demolition sites, recalls Bill Baker, NADC’s first executive director. “To my knowledge, nobody in the government had spoken to a demolition contractor before passing the bill,” Baker says. “Because of that, there was a need for an association.”

NADC began with about 60 members, including Baker’s used brick business. At the time, he obtained bricks from a demolition contractor in Chicago—Sheldon Mandell of National Wrecking Co. Mandell was elected the association’s ad hoc president and turned to Baker for help running the organization. “I didn’t have a clue about how to run an association,” Baker says. “The office was in my house and my two teenage kids, my wife, and I did the first mailing, trying to pick up members.”

Baker worked at NADC part time until the association had enough members to pay him full time. He then closed his brick business and rented a one-room office in Hillside, Ill. The group’s top priority was to represent the industry in Congress and ensure that politicians knew the facts of demolition before passing legislation.

Other major goals were improving the image of the demolition industry and creating an industrywide safety program. OSHA came out with its new directions grant program in the early 1980s, which supported industries seeking to develop safety programs. NADC received grants for three years and used the money to develop a safety manual that’s “still the bible of the industry,” Baker says. “We’ve upgraded that safety manual and kept it up-to-date since then.”

In 1992, after directing NADC for 20 years, Baker retired, and the association selected Mike Taylor, who came from an environmental engineering and asbestos abatement firm. Taylor had also been instrumental in helping NADC’s safety committee and Baker write the association’s safety manual.

Over the years, NADC has grown from a part-time ad hoc effort to a 625-member organization with an $800,000 budget. The majority of NADC’s members—about 400—are U.S. firms, 50 are international members, and 200 are associate members, primarily equipment manufacturers and service firms. “We probably represent about 85 percent of the gross sales of the demolition industry in the United States and Canada,” Taylor asserts. Thus far, only U.S. firms have been eligible for full membership in NADC, but the association is considering granting Canadian members full, as opposed to their current international, membership. Only regular members can serve on the board of directors and vote on association issues.

True to its origins, NADC is still heavily involved in government issues. Most recently, it was at work on the Superfund rules and hazardous waste regulations for the land use ban, Taylor says. 

The biggest concern of late has been what to do with the industry’s waste stream. Demolition debris is the second largest component of the nation’s waste stream—after municipal solid waste—totaling 70 million tons annually. That number is falling, though, as more demolition debris is recycled, Taylor asserts. “We’ve been very active in promoting the recycling of the industry’s waste stream,” he says. “It makes a lot more sense to find an economic value for these materials than to put them in a hole in the ground.”

Nowadays, NADC’s member services include training seminars around the country, a hazard communication program for the industry, a demolition safety summit every October, and an ongoing public relations campaign. This year, the group plans to expand its “very aggressive safety program,” thanks to a $75,000 grant from OSHA’s office of training. That effort will develop a lead-in-construction training program for the industry.

It’s a busy group. But you can bet NADC will take a breather to reflect on its accomplishments this March 29-April 1 when it celebrates its silver anniversary at the Westin Innisbrook in Tarpon Springs, Fla. Members can expect fireworks and great speakers, perhaps even a high-ranking politician or two, says Taylor, who boasts, “I think the association is maturing.” •