Greenfield Aluminum
Russellville, KY
CONTRACTOR
Denham-Blythe Company, Inc.
SQUARE FOOTAGE
280,000
CONTRACT AMOUNT
$12,750,000
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The new 280,000sf Greenfield Aluminum plant produces 600 million pounds of recycled cast ingot annually – making it one of the largest aluminum expansions in the country. In addition to the obvious environmental impacts, this American owned aluminum plant also significantly impacts our country’s metal industry. With the recent tariffs placed on foreign made aluminum, the demand for domestic metal is at an all-time high. In addition, phase one of this massive recycling plant created nearly 200 permanent jobs for local residents. At completion, Greenfield Aluminum will represent a 408 million-dollar investment in a greener tomorrow.
The team started the project with the robust underground work of Greenfield Aluminum. This portion of build was the most complex and required a great deal of coordination. The installation included underground electrical duct banks and underground conduit, trenching, backfilling and concrete encasement. The fast-paced schedule and the evolving design plans presented many challenges, starting with the duct bank trenches. Due to the congested worksite, the trenches had to be dug in sections – not to disrupt the other trades who may need to work or run heavy machinery in the same space we needed to dig. In addition, the degrees of the trench turns were unpredictable, so the team was forced to dig and bend conduit on the fly alongside the trenches.
The project also required the use of 3” ridged conduit – which is extremely heavy and difficult to connect. Our engineering team designed a 4x8ft modular support system by using fabricated marine boards to accurately place and support the weight of 30 ridged conduit. By using a module template, our in-house team cut and drilled 30 perfectly placed holes in each board – over 2,000 marine boards were prefabricated and shipped to the jobsite. The innovative use of marine board cut costs, aided in conduit installation and coupling setting, and made for easy 2000psi concrete encasement. All of the underground duct bank was routed towards the recycling facility’s pre-existing MCC pits. Once the ridged conduit was in place, our team self-performed core drilling through solid concrete. The underground work also required the electrical team to deliver precise stub-up locations for the Greenfield recycling equipment. Our team used Trimble technology to pinpoint stub-up locations, allowing us eliminate errors and maximize placement accuracy and productivity.
