D.H. Griffin Companies by North American Constructors Journal

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D.H Griffin Wrecking:

Shaping Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Skyline D.H. Griffin Wrecking of Greensboro, NC provides contract demolition, machinery installation, environmental and site development services throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Written by Kevin Doyle Produced by Stephen Marino

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stablished in 1959, D.H. Griffin Wrecking Company, Inc. (DHG Wrecking) of Greensboro, NC is the cornerstone of the expansive network of D.H. Griffin Companies providing contract demolition, machinery installation, environmental and site development services throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. “North Carolina is our home and we’re proud of the strong footprint here with several different offices in North Carolina. We’re also very fortunate and happy to have a long history of working in cities like Charleston, Atlanta, Birmingham, Houston and Louisiana. Our footprint is from the East Coast over to Texas and up to Ohio. That’s where the majority of our work is,” says John Cavanaugh, Corporate Project Manager. All told, the D. H. Griffin umbrella encompasses several companies servicing an array of markets in both the public and private sectors. The collective group employs more than 1,000 people, generates more than $400 million in annual revenue, and owns a fleet of more than 600 pieces of equipment. Impressively, D.H. Griffin Wrecking has been ranked in the Top Five industrial contractors in the country by Engineering News and Record magazine since 2007. In the last published rankings, DHG Wrecking

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D.H Griffin Wrecking | 4 ranked fourth with its singular revenue in excess of $170 million. As a preferred contractor, Cavanaugh says the company sets itself apart from the competition in a number of ways. “I’d say it’s our employees and our reputation, first and foremost – we’ve got a 60-year legacy in the industry and our clients have always had the confidence that our team has the experience required to complete complex projects safely, on budget and on schedule. That’s our deal.” Cavanaugh explains. “Beyond that, investing in education and technology the way we do year in and year out has always allowed us to stay competitive as our industry evolves. That’s kind of where I see it.”

D.H Griffin Wrecking | 5 Some Notable Projects LG&E Cane Run Generating Station: DHG contracted by LG&E and KU Company for the abatement and demolition of the Cane Run Generating Station. Work includes Cane Run Power Station, Steam Units, Generating Units, Electrostatic Precipitators, stacks, tunnels and associated structures. Scope of work includes asbestos abatement, removal of regulated and special waste and demolition of all structures utilizing a combination of mechanical, selective and specialized demolition. Located in Louisville, KY, the Cane Run facility Units 1-6 had a generating capacity of 943 megawatts. The powerhouse and six associated stacks were successfully imploded on June 8, 2019.

I-85 Bridge Collapse Emergency Response Demolition: In March of 2017, D.H. Griffin Wrecking was subcontracted by C.W. Matthews Contracting Co. for the expedited demolition of a collapsed bridge on I-85 in Atlanta. Within 24 hours of the fire, the D.H. Griffin Emergency Demolition team mobilized and began coordination with the contractor and the Georgia Department of Transportation. Immediately following the arson investigation, D.H. Griffin began the demolition and removal of the damaged spans to make way for reconstruction. With a daily traffic count of more than 250,000 vehicles a day, it was imperative that the interstate be opened as soon as possible. Working two shifts 24/7, D.H. Griffin Wrecking completed the

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D.H Griffin Wrecking | 6 project safely and ahead of schedule. In total, DHGW removed five 140-foot spans of bridge and columns to make way for C.W. Matthews Contracting Co to rebuild this vital transportation corridor. Project Riverboat - Charlotte Observer Complex: Environmental abatement and demolition of the Charlotte Observer existing office and production buildings in downtown Charlotte. The Observer buildings totaling 450,000sf and includes a fivestory building, tunnels connecting the former printing presses in the main building with the newsprint storage under Church Street and underground packing and warehouse facilities. Fast track project including asbestos

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removal, universal waste removal and removal of some C&D waste as PCB contaminated due to contaminated grout/caulking in building. The location is a highly visible parcel of more than 9 acres adjacent to I-277 and Bank of America Stadium. Following the environmental and demolition and removal scope of work, DHG affiliate D. H. Griffin Infrastructure LLC was subcontracted under a separate contract for additional grading and site utility work for an additional $2,131,000. Challenges included shoring and underpinning related to adjacent streetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;teamed with Hayward Baker and developed a plan to selectively demolish areas to allow shoring installation. Another challenge was busy, urban jobsite that required

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“We’ve got a 60-year legacy in the industry and our clients have always had the confidence that our team has the experience required to complete complex projects safely, on budget and on schedule. That’s our deal.” - Corporate Project Manager John Cavanaugh

coordination of street and right of way closures with the city, developing a “travel path” and enforcing the travel path. DHG also conducted more sensitive demolition after hours. Lifeway Campus Demolition: DHGW was contracted as prime contractor by the property owners to provide for the hazardous materials removal and demolition of the former 12-acre Lifeway Campus for the new Railroad Yard development. DHGW will provide the demolition and abatement of over 1,400,000 sf consisting of (9) structures, concrete and steel construction and implosion of one 12-story structure. The implosion of the 12-story was successfully performed on January 6, 2018. DHG imploded two additional multi-story buildings. These buildings were found to have a unique non-friable asbestos containing waterproofing behind exterior panels. DHG worked extensively with the local environmental representatives, running a variety of air monitoring tests to confirm the safety of the demolition techniques being used. All metals

were segregated and recycled on this project. Hammond Exchange Building: Working for Holder Construction, the 10-story, 200,000sf office building was imploded on March 4, 2017. Selective demo prep of the concrete structure with an exterior glass panels was accomplished with tenants still in the building. DHG removed all universal

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D.H Griffin Wrecking | 8 waste and refrigerants from the building and oversaw post-demolition cleanup. The job covered five months from January through May 2017. “Since we’re a family of companies, we all work together. We’ve had projects with an excess of 100 people just on the construction side. We’re wrapping up one now with 50-plus people on it and 30-plus machines. Anywhere from 50-100 people is a very large demolition job and we can go all the way down to the three-man job tearing down a two-story house,” says Cavanaugh.

Safety Measures Given the exceptionally dangerous\ nature of the industry, enhancing

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safety is always top of mind. Cavanaugh feels the industry as a whole gets a bad rap for being lax on safety. In fact, he says the opposite is true. “What we do is inherently dangerous, we have to be more cautious on the safety side than most industries. It all starts with education, training and mentoring in the field. We have daily safety meetings, we do pretask planning and safety audits, and everyone has stop-work authority. We go above and beyond industry standards,” says Cavanaugh. “We have tool box talks. We have

D.H Griffin Wrecking | 9 safety forums and manager’s meetings with all of our top-level managers where we bring in safety experts to talk about what’s trending in the industry. Every week we talk about our safety program, about how to keep it growing, about how can we make it better and how can we reach out to everyone of our workers, from the guy running the machine to the guy sweeping the road,” he continues. While some companies only focus on safety after an incident, DHGW uses a predictive, behavior-based system to identify near misses and potential hazards on our job sites.

“Through collecting safety data across our platform, we can focus on learning from these near misses and other potential hazards. Taking it a step further, we also look to our trade partners and clients to share this information. Whether an incident happens at a DHG site or not, we focus on learning from what we do and from what others do. Right, wrong or indifferent we want to know about it. Near misses are hard to talk about when something went wrong that wasn’t supposed to go wrong. If it was me that had the near miss, I’d want to be talking about it to someone so they might not be in the same situation,” Cavanaugh says.

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D.H Griffin Wrecking | 10 The Day-To-Day While Cavanaugh says he’s “not big on titles,” he is involved with most phases of the overall D.H. Griffin operation. “I’m involved in all of the day-today operations of the D.H. Griffin Wrecking. While we have different division managers that cover a specific geographic region, I kind of manage the larger projects that require additional resources and coordination from the corporate level. I’m heavily involved in placing personnel and specialty equipment up and down the East Coast to help achieve the goals on any given project. I’m also involved on

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and Greensboro is more commercial with a lot of work being done in urban areas. There are street closures, noise, and dust that have an impact on the people who live, work and play adjacent to these massive projects we do in downtown areas,” he says. However, much of the company’s work is with clients with heavy industrial and manufacturing needs that have moved outside of urban centers. “We work a lot with power generation plants, steel mills, manufacturing and large distribution facilities. Those markets require skill sets and have client concerns that are completely

“Not only is what we do extremely dangerous, we have to be more cautious on the safety side than most industries. It all starts with education, training and mentoring in the field. ” - Corporate Project Manager John Cavanaugh

the scrap side to make sure that when we sell scrap metals to the market we’re able to get trucks and fulfill our orders. So it’s kind of an overall operational standpoint that I look after,” he says. The company utilizes a site-specific approach for every job.

different,” Cavanaugh points out. “We’ve been fortunate to work for some of the largest companies in the world, many on the Fortune 500 list and some even higher than that. No matter what, taking the time to understand the client’s goals and objectives leads to a lot of work for repeat clients.”

“Our work is very dependent on the city. For example our work in Charlotte

The company performs approximately 95 percent of its work with its own

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D.H Griffin Wrecking | 11 vast fleet of equipment. Still it will rent on occasion. “It doesn’t make sense to bring something out of Greensboro if there is a rental place in Birmingham,” Cavanaugh points out. While it has its own recycling, trucking and crushing divisions, the company can’t do everything all of the time. “The more work you can keep inhouse, the better off you are as far as controlling it, managing it and keeping the culture the same … as much as we want to though, we can’t do everything on every job ourselves. When you get into some of these mega-jobs even as big as we are, we need help, so we will contract things like trucking and trash disposal,” Cavanaugh says. In those instances, the company seeks

out like companies that share its values and align with its culture.

Recruitment And Retention Cavanaugh notes that 40 percent of the workforce has been with the company for 10 years or more. Nevertheless, as is the case throughout the industry, replacing workers who are aging out is an ongoing concern. “Without a doubt – and I think everybody would say it – it is the lack of skilled labor. Whether it’s a lack of education or a lack of interest, we’ve seen a large decrease in the amount of younger employees applying for positions,” Cavanaugh notes. “We certainly want to do everything we can to recruit new talent but for

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us the focus is on retention. When we get good people we want to welcome them, train them, and embrace them into the DH Griffin family. We want to make them part of our team so that we’re not searching every year to replace somebody,” he adds.

high-profile manufacturers who make our machines and hydraulics that are working behind the scenes with us to get ahead of that curve as well,” Cavanaugh says.

Cavanaugh cites the opportunities for adopting new technology at the field level in workload, management and training. The use of robotics, unmanned vehicles, laser imaging, and site imaging is growing.

Work is always going to be plentiful for companies with a reputation for excellence. Structures are always going to become obsolete and will need to be demolished.

“We’re working on some of that technology ourselves. We’re very fortunate to have some of the most

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Looking Forward

While staff replenishment can be an issue, Cavanaugh notes, “we’ve got generations of families working for us.” “I was at a meeting [recently] where

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one of our division managers was asking if he could bring his son who just graduated college on as an intern We’ve got several of those opportunities. Some retention is certainly due to personal and professional development through education but part of it is the culture of respect and the family atmosphere we have created at DH Griffin,” Cavanaugh concludes. *** (Editor’s Note: This article includes some interviews and information from prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. D.H. Griffin Companies have adapted to the resulting impacts on the industry, making adjustments to policies and procedures to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its employees.)