CONTRACTOR'S CHOICE GOLD: Proper removal

In a slowly rebounding economy, it can be hard to hear of bid projects and even more difficult to win a job. But that is just what National Concrete Cutting, a concrete removal, demolition and bridge and highway contractor in Council Bluffs, Iowa, has been doing recently with the help of a couple of Bobcat M-Series S630 skid-steer loaders.

“One of our guys had a lot of hours on his machine, so I went to talk to my dealer and he showed me the S630,” said Chris Brandt, vice president of National Concrete Cutting. “He explained all of the new M-Series features, and we really liked that it was configured more like the older 863 model with a tighter turning radius and larger operator’s cab. We were operating two S220s before that, but we now have two S630s and one more on order.”

Brandt’s S630 skid-steer loaders have been in his fleet of more than 30 pieces of equipment for about a year, and he uses them for a lot of tear-out projects on industrial and commercial jobsites, including cutting up and removing street panels to install new gas lines and constructing new driveways for commercial sites. He employs various attachments, including breakers, curb grinders and box brooms, to help efficiency on jobsites. One of the company’s more recent projects included demolition and removal of a bridge deck on I-80 in Atlantic, Iowa, earlier this year.

“We were a subcontractor to another contractor who was putting the bridge back. We approached them to offer our services for the deck removal and won the bid,” Brandt explained.

National Concrete Cutting’s portion of the job took about two weeks, using the S630s and an excavator. “The actual deck removal took about a day and a half; it was a precast deck so it’s time- and labor-intensive. It had to be initially chipped down with hand chippers, and then we put down chain-link fence and plywood as protection because the embankments were covered in limestone for erosion control.”

After the bridge deck was removed, a compact excavator was used to rake the rock off the chain-link fence and plywood protective surfaces and was moved to an area where the S630s could load and remove the debris.

“One of the biggest challenges during the job was that the road below had to remain open to through traffic, so we were working in a fairly tight area without disturbing everyday life for residents in the area,” Brandt said.