Evan Williams of Cambridge Cos. Inc. outlines common transfer station design mistakes and solutions.
Transfer stations are a deceptively simple concept. Once you get past the high-level concept of an enclosure for tipping material from smaller vehicles and loading those materials onto larger ones for transport, questions begin to present themselves regarding how to best perform that task, how the site will function and how it will accommodate future changes.
Through the course of our work, we have observed and studied hundreds of transfer stations across the country. Many are great facilities run by skilled operators, while others need to be reevaluated regarding layout and operations procedures. One constant we observed across the board is that there are typical mistakes that seem present in many transfer stations. These mistakes can be grouped into the following categories: planning and programming, site design, facility design, construction, operations and future accommodations.
