Rosenlund Group - Publicity

Although Austrlais is a large, sparsley populated country, rich in natural resources, it is also a booming recycling market. A recent demolition project carried out by the Brisbane-based Rosenlund Group saw 90% of the building’s material recycled as part of a large scale and somewhat complicated project.

The Government of the Australian State of Queensland has been upgrading a lot of it’s major hospitals. As part of the programme, Brisbane-based Rosenlund was awarded the contract to demolish the Prince Charles Hospital, situated about 10km north of Brisbane City centre.

The hospital was built in 1950-51 and has served the area for over 45 years. Its main building was eight stories high and was constructed of suspended floor slabs on top of concrete encased steel columns and beams. The walls were constructed of bricks. The difficulty of the task was increased by the presence of a pedestrian tunnel under the centre of the building that had to remain live. This was in addition to a service tunnel running perpendicular to the pedestrian, which also had to be kept live.

Key to the success of the project was to demolish the main building without disturbing the large operating hospital. Other buildings to demolish in the contract included a four storey structure adjoining the hospital, and a lowrise set of buildings that covered a foot print of about 8000Msq (86,000ft sq).

All the buildings had some asbestos in them, which was removed first by manual methods. After all the asbestos was stripped Rosenlund moved a number of 875kg (1925 lbs) mini excavators into the building to strip out most of the timber and ceilings. They were assisted by several 1.1 tonne (2420 lbs) Bobcat skid steer loaders, which were used to push the debris out of the building into designated drop zones where dust was suppressed by water sprays. Removing the timber and ceiling structure meant that the company would be able to recycle the bricks and concrete created in the main demolition, without fear of it being contaminated.

Very low floor loadings in the building meant that it would have taken a long time to demolish it with small machines working down from floor to floor, so once the buildings were stripped out, Rosenlund brought in a high reach excavator, the machine in question was a Komatsu PD300-5 fitted with a 16.5m (54 ft) reach, two-piece boom and rammer and Draemo rotational cutter ppulveriser attachments. the work method involved dismantling the building’s steel-encased beams, and lowering them to the ground, where the concrete was removed by an Atlas pulveriser, an Australian built pulveriser excavator attachment. this left clean steel beams that could be reused by metal recyclers. The large building was demolished by an Australian made 25.5m (84 ft) longreach boom, manufactured by Jaws, and fitted by Rosenlund to a Komatsu PD400-5. Statistics indicate that over 90% of the buildings was recycled.

All the brick and concrete, about 12,000 cubic metres (420,000 cubic ft) has either been crushed or is being stored to be crushed. the company used its 36” x 24” Kue Ken crusher mounted on a tracked undercarriage for the bulk of this work. An important feature of the machine was tis overhead magnet for removing any steel. This was used in conjunction with an hydraulically powered electro magnet fitted to an excavator via a quick coupler.

This article focuses mainly on the recycling capabilities, the machinery and the methodcs of the Rosenlund Group

. However, it is also important to note
that this was a working hospital site, with all the trappings; sick patients, ambulances, staff, carpark traffic and pedestrians. Noise and dust pollution were severly monitored and restrained.

The overall success of this project was due to the innovations and management of The Rosenlund Group.