NCM Group of Charlotte, N.C., is nearly finished the demolition of the office building in the SouthPark section of the city.

According to Joseph Delahunty, operations manager, work began in mid-July on the former Maersk Shipping building, and will be completed shortly. The demolition will make room for a new 350-unit apartment project.

“The project is actually ahead of schedule by about two weeks,” Delahunty said. “We were asked to go out of sequence to accommodate a new apartment building going up. It was more difficult to complete this way, but we were able to do it, and it accelerated their schedule by 1-1/2 months.”

NCM is the demolition contractor, while JLB Partners is the general contractor, under the direction of Bryan Walker.

NCM’s contract entails the demolition of the 300,000 sq. ft. (27,870.9 sq m) office structure, which has been empty since 2009.

“The interior drywall and ceilings were removed via Bobcats and hand work,” Delahunty said. “We worked to segregate the recyclable material in the building. We had excavators equipped with shears, grapples, and buckets to demolish the building and below grade structures.”

Other machines used include Hitachi and a newly purchased Komatsu PC490 excavator with a Genesis attachment.

The number of people working on the job fluctuated between five and 20 throughout the timeline of the job.

Construction debris was disposed of in a landfill, concrete was taken to recycling yards and steel and non-ferrous metal was taken for reuse. A total of 90 loads of construction debris were removed, as well as 1,600 truckloads of concrete.

“The biggest challenge on the job site was demolishing the structure out of sequence to allow the GC to construct a below grade parking structure where part of the building once stood,” Delahunty said. “This meant demolishing next to a 25-foot drop for the remainder of the project while other contractors were working constructing the new parking garage while we maintained a safe work site. Plans were set in place and executed to allow the work to take place safely without incident.”

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