Takedown in Motown

November 12, 2024
By: Larry Trojak

At the risk of belaboring a point, a demolition company, in order to remain viable and productive, must have the proverbial “right tools for the right job” at its disposal. That adaptability allows a company to tackle a broader range of projects, answering the call even when the challenges are great.

Demo specialist and NDA member Homrich Inc. realized it early on in its 60-year history and continues to espouse that belief today as one of the Midwest’s preeminent demolition contractors. It’s no surprise then, that, on one of the grandest stages in the Detroit area — near the Ford Motor Company’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan — Homrich would be showcasing its strengths and innovative techniques to bring down an iconic structure that was once a big part of the Ford building portfolio.

Utilizing a massive, custom-designed excavator and some of the largest mobile shears in Genesis Attachments’ product line, the company is systematically leveling the 165-foot-tall structure to make way for subsequent development. Plenty of order in this court.  

Change of Plans

The demise of Regent Court, as the structure mentioned above is known, is due largely to the impact of COVID-19 and the move to remote work arrangements. Once a bustling center and home to hundreds of Ford administrative, marketing and R&D staff, Regent Court became a financial liability when workers were reassigned to different sites or urged to utilize collaboration sites, making upkeep of the nearly 700,000-square-foot office space impractical.

Though initial plans called for the structure to be razed and replaced by a state-of-the-art sprawling Ford campus, it was eventually sold to a local developer who planned to repurpose it as a residential structure. However, when costs to do so came in at $100 million, the decision was made to level the structure, making the site available for future mixed-use development. Enter Homrich.

Spanning Generations

Celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2024, Homrich is a third-generation demolition contractor with an impressive list of specialties ranging from hazardous material abatement to environmental remediation to asset recovery to the full range of demolition.

“My grandparents started the business in 1964,” says company president, Tim Homrich, “Then, later, my uncle (Ranadall Homrich) and my dad (Roger Homrich) came on board and headed up the company until their retirements in 2003 and 2016, respectively. We currently have about 150 employees and, with the exception of specialty projects, operate within a four-hour radius of our Detroit-area corporate headquarters.”

Homrich says the company’s facet of the Regent Court project started in June of 2023, with asbestos abatement and universal waste removal, oils, regulated waste, etc. “That was phase one, which went well,” he says. “Immediately after that, however, we were hit with a pretty significant four-month delay when DTE, the area utility, came to do the power reroute. Apparently Regent Court acted as a substation for downstream customers, which meant cutting power to the building would have also cut power to that community. So, they had to re-engineer and reconfigure the reroute, which pushed things back.”

Going Up

With the temporary setback behind them, Homrich’s crew moved into a systematic demolition of the 12-story structure. Using the Liebherr’s 140 feet of reach — with a Genesis GXT 995R mounted third member — the operator was able to access everything up to and including the ninth floor. For the remaining higher areas of the building, a fourth boom section was added and a slightly smaller GXT 555R shear was used, affording them 165 feet of reach.

“There is nothing in this building that is a real test for that machine/shear combo,” Homrich says. “And that’s not to say there’s not some substantial material in there. The I-beams we’re encountering are anywhere from 14 inches up to 20 inches with flanges of about 1 inch. But the GXT 995R was perfect for that height, that material and that level of production. To minimize the risk of material deflection, our operator is taking each bay from the ninth floor all the way down to the ground.”

Homrich is hardly overstating the production aspect of his tools. He says a typical daily demo cycle involves getting roughly 30,000 square feet of building on the ground in three to four hours. “Once that material is down, it will take roughly four or five days for the crews to get it cleaned and sorted,” he says. “That includes pulling out all the I-beams, the shreddable ferrous, the aluminum and finally all the miscellaneous material. There’s no possible way our ground crews can come close to keeping up with what that shear will bring down.”

Dream Machine

Though Homrich has a veritable arsenal of equipment at the Regent Court site — everything from magnets, material sorting grapples, buckets, hydraulic breakers, etc. — there’s little denying that the Liebherr super high reach excavator (SHR) and its payload du jour are the true workhorses of the project. The versatility afforded by the machine is by design, according to Homrich.

“We bought the machine, a custom Model R9150 HRD, directly from Liebherr in France,” he says. “They, in turn, shipped it to Kocurek Excavators Ltd, a U.K. company, who modified it specifically for us to work with a range of Genesis tools at specified heights. So, that 660,000-pound machine (with attachment) is designed to carry a GXT 555R at 165 feet, the 995R at 140 feet and a GXT 1555R at 100 feet.”

He added that they actually did use the SHR machine with the 1555R shear on a recent power plant job. “Those two together made an amazing demolition tool,” Homrich says. “In fact, our crew nicknamed it ‘Big Rog’ to honor my late father, Roger — and it was ideal for dealing with the scale of material a facility like that holds. Here, however, the bulk of the work will fall to the 995R and the 555R shears mounted fourth- and fifth-member, respectively.”

Sorting Things Out

After the intricate material segregation process, the ferrous steel, some 4,000 tons of it, is getting split between two local scrap recycling entities: Ferrous Processing and Trading and GLE Scrap, which is also taking a decent tonnage of the extruded aluminum being pulled from the site.

Although the scrap does not have to be processed to prepared sizes, there is still a fair amount of cutting and sorting needed prior to transport, according to Drew Mandell, one of Homrich’s field superintendents.

“We first use a demo grapple to pick the beams from the pile, which immediately removes much of the bulk,” he says. “Then, we are cutting those beams down to a manageable size using a ‘smaller’ shear — anything from a Genesis GXT 775R down to a GXT 225R. From there, we’ll pick and move piles, downsize any concrete to pull out rebar, then come at it with a sorting grapple to pull out all the shreddables. Even after all that, when it gets to RRR, we will spread it out and take a magnet to it in an effort to pick every possible bit of material with any scrap value.”

Shear Tryouts

Homrich’s affinity for Genesis shears is not based on the attachment company’s reputation or a recommendation from colleagues in the business. Instead, nearly a quarter century ago, he made his choice in a most unusual — but very effective — manner.

“I drove to different scrap yards in the area with a huge piece of steel on the back of a truck,” he says. “The facilities I went to all had different types and brands of processing tools, and I asked them to cut that piece of steel. In this apples-to-apples comparison, the Genesis shears outperformed everything else we encountered. That was all the proof we needed; we essentially partnered up with Genesis from that point on.”

He adds that a solid level of support for all of his equipment is paramount, and Genesis has never disappointed in that area either. He cites both the exceptional reliability of the tools and the accessibility of experts when an issue does arise.

“Historically, that support is a big part of what has driven our belief in the Genesis brand,” he says. “I have a direct line to pretty much anyone in their organization. On those occasions when someone from our field staff has a problem, Genesis will offer solutions and see it all the way through to the end. We recently were experiencing an issue with the rotation circuit on our 995 and, after doing what they could by phone, Genesis flew people out to resolve it — and they did. That’s why their shears and other demolition tools populate our inventory; they keep us productive.”

What Lies Below

Once all 12 floors of the Regent Court structure have been brought down, processed and hauled off site, Homrich’s team will attack the foundation.

“Our contract calls for us to remove the foundations to 6 feet below grade,” he says. “For that facet of the job, we will use hydraulic hammers and buckets for the initial concrete removal, then hydraulic processors to downsize the concrete for recycling. Projections show that we will recover more than 10,000 tons of concrete, most of which will be transported to a local crushing facility for recycling.”

“This has been an outstanding project for us, largely made so by our team members, the equipment — both specialized and standard — that we rely upon on a daily basis, and the excellent support for that equipment. With all that in place, it’s easy to look good.”