(note: this article originally appeared in the special advertising section of ENRMidwest.com)
Demolition contractors fill the needs of all classes of property owners, helping these owners to ready their properties for reuse. Demolition contractors work with governmental clients to clear obsolete infrastructure, institutions to ready their campuses for new facilities, and commercial enterprises to reposition and redevelop their properties.
SPIRTAS WRECKING CO. of St. Louis, MO, has met client needs for all of these kinds of projects. Working with the DOD-sponsored team led by AECOM, SPIRTAS has completed removal of obsolete governmental infrastructure with its demolition of the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. Via its numerous system infrastructure projects completed for Missouri/Illinois public utility AMEREN, Spirtas has played a role in utility grid upgrade projects. With its recent land clearing for St. Louis University, Spirtas has offered its services to ready land for the construction of the much-anticipated SSM Health St. Louis University Hospital project.
In the industrial property sector, the business of the transfer of industrial property with concurrent transfer of environmental liability has developed in response for the need for industrial properties to be remediated and repositioned for other use. The firm of Commercial Liability Partners (CLP), based in the St. Louis region has developed a program offering industrial property owners a method to divest themselves of obsolete and/or otherwise environmentally-distressed assets to meet their regulatory and asset management goals. This program offers industrial sector property owners, including manufacturers and power generating entities, a method of both controlling and expediting environmental remediation.
Although an effective and efficient tool for industrial property owners, these property transfers are complex arrangements. Complexity arises in part due to the former property owner, the transferee and other parties such as adjacent businesses and regulatory agencies, each having differing priorities, being stakeholders in the success of the transfer.
How Demolition Fits In
Most often, the steps necessary for a firm like CLP to fulfill its responsibilities as part of an industrial property transfer will involve the demolition of industrial structures. Power generation stations and refining/processing units that have become obsolete need removal as a step in the environmental remediation process and for future property redevelopment. After acquiring the former KOPPERS CLAIRTON crude coke over tar processing plant south of Pittsburgh, CLP retained SPIRTAS as part of its project team to remove the former processing plant structures at the plant.
Now underway, the project includes a carefully phased sequence of demolition and dismantling conducted in concert with industrial residue cleaning and regulated material abatement. Because the Koppers Clairton site serviced the adjacent U.S. Steel Coke Plant, the Koppers site shares physical footprint as well as utility and process line interconnects with the USX plant. Demolition work is being coordinated with utility modifications conducted by both CLP and USX. Spirtas managerial personnel have worked to define and schedule these logistical requirements in a way to best satisfy the demands of the project stakeholders. Spirtas staff and industrial cleaning staff are organizing their tasks to assist each other in achieving production better than would be achieved by their working separately.
Teamwork & Stakeholder Satisfaction
Teamwork is the solution to project complexity. SPIRTAS has contributed to the success underway at this project by working with CLP to optimize its own scope of work relative to the work scope undertake by other parties retained by CLP for the project, collaboratively developing a project sequence that provides opportunity for each contractor involved to complete its work in a safe and cost effective manner.
To learn more about Spirtas Wrecking Company, contact Stanley Lewandowski, CIH at (314) 290-2517.
