Oliver recycles on a grand scale

Maybe it’s the railroad spur.

Oliver Construction’s team is removing horizontal wall panels to make room for overhead doors in the structure. Photos courtesy of Oliver Construction Co.

Oliver Construction is planning for placement of a railroad spur next to Waste Management’s new processing center.

Or it could be cutting 18 openings for overhead doors into a horizontally stacked, precast-concrete, wall panel structure. Then again, it could be designing a second-level mezzanine that creates the most cost-effective use for the custom-made sorting equipment.

Either way, it’s difficult for Jim Bestor, the senior project manager for Oliver Construction Co., to pick the most challenging aspect of his company’s conversion of an old prosthetics manufacturing building in Germantown into a 214,000-square-foot recycling facility and regional office for Waste Management.

“When you think about all those elements, you’ve got a lot of balls flying at you,” he said. “The railroad, Waste Management, the equipment vendors and Germantown were all involved in working through the preplanning and predesign to get to construction.”

All of that preplanning started in January when Waste Management asked Oliver’s team to check the building’s feasibility for a conversion into a single-stream recycling center.

“It’s one of a kind and a first for Waste Management,” Bestor said. “When people put their recycling in a bin, they have to sort it. This lets everything go together to get sorted at the center. Waste Management has seen a 20 percent increase in recycling volume with this because it makes recycling easier.”

Easy wouldn’t be the word Bestor would choose to describe the project. Running a railroad spur, for instance, from a nearby main line to the west side of the building’s processing center meant working with railroad entities, which bring very strict guidelines to a project.

“They require a three-month review period for drawing approval,” he said. “There are requirements on how close a railway car can be to the building and requirements on utilities.

“In order to complete any work within 25 feet of the center line of the main railway line, we have to have a representative from the railway supervising construction.”

Converting 149,000 square feet of the building into the processing center isn’t particularly simple either. Beyond cutting the spaces for the overhead doors, Oliver’s team also had to prepare that portion of the structure to switch from a heated to a nonheated space, which meant clearing away 4 feet of earth on the sides of the building and preparing the footings for frost upheaval.

But as the project heads into August, Oliver is on course with the 66,000 square feet of office space around 90 percent complete, the processing center between 30 percent and 40 percent, the railroad work under way and the site work at 80 percent.

And as difficult as the project might be, Bestor said, it fits the profile of both Oliver and Waste Management.

“I like doing things when we’re taking real estate that sat vacant and putting it to use again,” he said. “In the true nature of recycling, they’re recycling a building.”

— Chris Thompson