The 58,000-sq-ft Intersand cat litter manufacturing facility was built on a 6.5-acre site in Windsor, Colo. The building features 42,000 sq ft of manufacturing and warehouse space, 3,200 sq ft of office space and another 13,000 sq ft of floor space in a six-story, 140-ft-high process tower with a 240-ft elevator overrun and six 50-ft-tall silos. The project encompassed several significant moving parts, including a complicated structural design for the process tower, which has a six-level stair configuration that needed to accommodate the irregular floor-to-floor heights. 

The Intersand team was designing the custom equipment in Canada while GTC was building the tower 1,800 miles away in Colorado. The project team juggled communication with various permitting authorities, the town of Windsor, the local land developer, the architect, the steel fabricator from Massachusetts, the structural engineer from Oregon, all the trade firms and the ownership team in Montreal. The different time zones and remote teams were managed with regular communication through early morning phone calls and weekly photos.

Photo by Terri Fotheringham

In addition to the challenges of coordinating the installation and delivery sequences, the contractor worked through permitting delays and change orders during an extremely snowy February. Although Windsor isn’t known for extreme weather, the Eastern Plains town sits on the edge of Tornado Alley. The breezy jobsite had regular wind gusts exceeding 50 mph, and three times during the project gusts exceeded 100 mph. The normal danger level increased as the height of the tower grew.

Photo by Terri Fotheringham

Construction of the project included 2,500 cu yd of concrete and 489 tons of steel. A deep rail pit was constructed adjacent to the process tower along with a rail spur and two lines. The plant’s processes and equipment are proprietary, so the entire team was sworn to secrecy during the project.