MCM Demolishes GM Engine Plant
February 26, 2025
This article originally appeared in the Nov/Dec 2000 issue of DEMOLITION magazine.
It was a big company’s big plant. The big company is General Motors … the big plant manufactured large V-8 engines. Now it’s a big job to demolish the building, and the demolition contractor doing it is using an excavator with a big reach to do it, one of the first such machines out in the demolition field in North America.
About 2.1 million square feet of a mostly two-story-tall industrial building is being dismantled in Flint, Michigan, by NDA members MCM Management of Detroit and the environmental division of Bierlein Companies of Midland, Michigan.
David Mardigian, MCM’s president, said the roughly 50-year-old site had about 45,000 tons of recyclable building material, 40,000 tons of ferrous scrap, and between 5,000 to 8,000 tons of waste to be landfilled. It is composed of structural steel with masonry walls, with a small amount of concrete gypsum, wood and material from the built-up roof.
In addition, the building contained several regulated materials that had to be removed. That portion of the project was handled by Bierlein. It should be noted that while Bierlein and MCM often compete on bids on the demolition side of the business, once these two companies were selected to handle demolition and remediation of this building, cooperation reigned.
Both sides said they pulled together with the customer and its environmental consultant, EMCON, to work as a team to get the job done as efficiently as possible.
MCM Management’s philosophy is to operate professionally, safely and with a high level of environmental consciousness. Mardigian is proud of MCM’s overall safety record, replacing unsafe manual labor operations with machine applications when possible. Similarly, MCM’s goal is to recycle 95% of any dismantling project, again with the assistance of his company’s very specialized equipment. Mardigian said, “This project was a pretty straightforward demolition job. The customer wanted the site brought back to grade, with the current concrete pad left in place. But like any large demolition project, there were certain unique situations.”
First, GM used its own crews to remove several lines of reusable production equipment, leaving about 12,000 tons of machinery that was later removed and scrapped by MCM. Then Bierlein started its work at the site. According to Ray Passeno, vice president of Bierlein, the material handled and properly disposed of by Bierlein included oils, flammable mineral seal, small amounts of flammable material in tanks, CFC refrigerants, mercury-containing devices, fluorescent tubes and asbestos. In addition, ceramic and wood floor block was removed.
“The mineral seal and oils were in the leftover equipment,” Passeno said. “That’s what made this job different. Often the environmental contractor would also remove the equipment. But in this case, we cleaned it and the demolition contractor removed it, making coordination with MCM vital. The asbestos was carefully removed in containments and glove bags. The pits, sumps, ductwork and equipment were all water-blasted. There were hundreds of sumps there.”
Four months later, MCM began structural demolition on the main factory building following the abated path that Bierlein had blazed. The relatively small administration building was first to go. While that opened a small opening in the street, MCM moved to the back of the building for the heavy work.
Mardigian said that was done for a couple of reasons. First, MCM wanted to leave a façade facing the street in order to help stop fugitive dust emissions.
“Anybody who says they can wreck buildings and not raise dust is a liar,” Mardigian said. “We look at dust as something that has to be contained at the very point it was generated.”
“Next is the ‘tourist’ problem. The factory was located on a busy street, and if the front was open, then curious passersby would stand around and watch, which could present safety problems,” Mardigian said. “The later that front wall is on the ground, exposing the site, the better.”
What was distinctive about this job and MCM is that the company relied largely on excavator-type machinery to dismantle the building. There were 14 excavators on the Flint job site and no cranes.
“We are not the biggest wrecking company in America, but we are the biggest that does not own a crane, and that is on purpose,” Mardigian said. “Cranes with wrecking balls create vibration, dust, incur safety problems and, most of all, leave a pile of rubble which makes it much more difficult to separate recyclable materials. However, while cranes are not an option for us, we still need the reach.”
Reaching High
The way MCM has acquired the reach needed for the job in Flint is with an excavator relatively new to the U.S. demolition market: a high reach 345B L Ultra High Demolition (UHD) machine from Caterpillar.
The 115,200-pound, 290-hp machine has an advertised 74 foot, 9 inch reach and was developed specifically for the demolition industry. Mardigian has been encouraging Caterpillar to provide Ultra High Demolition machines, which have been available in Europe, for the North American market. According to Mardigian, the 345B L UHD is just what the market needs.
“We now have the ability to stand flat-footed on the ground and cut a steel or concrete beam 82 feet in the air. The operator is still a safe distance from falling material, with excellent visibility and with control you don’t have with a speeding ball.”
The main difference between a standard 345L and a UHD is a short center bracket that gives the longer boom two pivot points.
“It is different to control than a standard excavator, but the main operator of MCM’s 345B L UHD,” Hugh Glime, said it wasn’t a problem to learn. “I just keep the center bracket steady unless I am doing work high up or close to the ground,” the longtime equipment operator said. “Anybody who has operated a third-member excavator can easily learn to operate this. Knowing how to dismantle the building safely and efficiently is another skill, which only comes with demolition experience.”
The reason MCM is getting a longer reach than the advertised 74-plus feet is the Cat MP 20 Multi-Processor attachment it came equipped with. The unit extends the reach to at least 82 feet, said Mardigian.
The Multi-Processor can be equipped with a wide selection of interchangeable jaws. The jaws are attached to the universal housing incorporating the hydraulic cylinder and the 360-degree rotation system. But what Mardigian likes “is the way the cylinder is mounted, kind of horizontal to the work being performed. That keeps the attachment short with no dead weight.”
MCM’s field work has shown the MP to be at least twice as fast as the previous processor attachment it used. “We used to be thrilled to get 13-14-second cycle times. Now it is only six seconds.” And despite the long way the hydraulic fluid must travel in the ultra-high, plumbing has been no problem, he added.
“When you push the button, you look at how long the line is and think the oil is not going from here to there. In fact, the oil is waiting right there at the tool for you to say ‘bite.’”
The 345B L UHD is equipped with an auxiliary hydraulic flow control system with four programmable flow presets to match hydraulic tool requirements. Mardigian admitted that the 345B L UHD is not able to withstand a large side load. “But we do not need a side load,” he said. “The whole side load mentality comes from swinging a wrecking ball.”
The Process
The primary dismantling is done by either the 345B L UHD or a 187,858-pound Cat 375, equipped with the 13,000-pound MP 40, the largest in the MP range. The operators then separate the metals from the other building material. The metals are further separated into nonferrous and ferrous piles. The nonferrous metals, such as copper, are often stored on-site until enough is accumulated to warrant loading on a truck.
The large pieces of ferrous metals are dragged or carried to processing piles where they are cut to length by operators in Cat excavators equipped with shears or Multi-Processors and loaded onto trucks for immediate removal. A Cat W330B wheeled material handler is used to load the trucks.
Mardigian said, “The material handler is highly mobile because it is wheeled. This means we can be loading prepared steel in one area, and the minute that truck is loaded properly and leaves, that machine can be 800 feet away pulling steel out of the debris pile within 45 seconds. We love that machine and are interested in seeing what else comes out on rubber in the next five to 10 years.”
The site had a number of assembly lines on it, and several pits on site were part of those lines. All the pits were emptied and decontaminated by Bierlein. But since they were anywhere from 18 inches to 3 feet deep, they still presented a safety problem: an equipment operator could accidentally drive into an open pit, and if the building material would fall into the pit, it would be considered contaminated again and bring added cleaning cost to the project.
MCM Management was asked by the customer to process the masonry, concrete and other inert materials to a 1 1/2 minus backfill product to be used in the pits. This processing is done by a two-stage (primary jaw and secondary cone) Telsmith crushing system. The crushing system is MCM’s and is only used on its demolition jobs, not for contract crushing. According to Mardigian, “It’s part of our service package to have the crusher system available.”
Quality and Service
The 345B L UHD is only one of MCM’s all-Caterpillar mobile fleet used at the Flint engine plant job.
Also in use are 13 other excavators, two articulated trucks, two wheel loaders, one material handler and a water truck.
Why all Caterpillar? Mardigian cites three reasons. “First, it’s the product. Demolition is a specialty, and there are not a lot of companies that have the resources Caterpillar does to purposely build equipment for demolition,” he said.
Second was the high quality of Cat’s dealers and the support they give to help keep the machines running.
Last, he said, “We evaluate the real cost of our machinery, which takes into account not only the purchase price, but also the operating costs, productivity and selling price. When we analyze all that, Caterpillar is the best value.”
Service is what Mardigian has learned from a lifetime in the demolition industry. He is a second-generation demolition contractor, following in the steps of his late father, Henry. But Mardigian isn’t the only second-generation industry member with MCM Management.
“I must be getting old,” he said, “because when I look around here at the guys working for us today, I remember working with their dads.”
Continuity and experience are important in order to do the job correctly, and if MCM maintains its focus on service and relying on quality equipment, chances are there will be yet another generation to come in the demolition business.