When a car has seen the end of its days or there is scrap metal left over from a demolition project, it’s often sent to Evraz Recycling for a variety of metal recycling services.

One of the company’s biggest resources is a car shredder, which is a 600,000-lb piece of equipment that can shred an entire car down into 1-in. to 2-in.-dia pieces. The shredder sits on top of a concrete foundation, which had begun to weaken due to the weight of the steel that had been fed into it over the years. Scope of work on this $1.75-million project included overhauling the car shredder before it caused a catastrophic event.

In 29 days, the project team demolished the shredder down to the foundation, then reinstalled new equipment in the exact sequence in which it had been removed. Each piece weighed anywhere from 50,000 to 175,000 lb. The weight and specificity of the parts forced ICM to double and triple check its calculations to ensure everything was taken apart correctly and placed in order so it could be easily recreated.

This painstaking effort was done using two cranes, with movements carefully tracked so that the pieces were removed in the right order.