When your current facility becomes inadequate for your current and future needs or when you are expanding into a new market, you will have some tough decisions to make regarding how you will design those needed improvements. One approach is to purchase an existing building and re-purpose it for your needs. While this option can be attractive in terms of cost and timeline, careful planning and evaluation is important to ensure that you are not purchasing a headache in a building that is ill-suited to your needs and will yield less savings than initially planned for due to poor building performance. Oftentimes, within the waste industry, existing buildings do not work well for the specific needs of your operations.
As an example, if you are looking to acquire an existing building for a hauling operation, an old auto maintenance shop building might seem like a good fit. The building may be the right zoning and general use for a truck maintenance shop, but the reality is that the size of that building is likely not compatible with servicing solid waste trucks. The ceiling clearance will not be high enough, the building depth will not be deep enough, and the overhead doors will not be tall enough. It is quite possible that the width of the bays will even be too narrow for your use.
Another example would be an old warehouse that has 150,000 square feet of floor space, which may sound like the optimal set up for a new MRF, however, the issues arise in that typical warehouse buildings usually only have 22′ to 26′ clear height inside the building and a column grid every 30′ to 50′ on center throughout the entire building. In addition, the floor slab is typically +/-6″ thick, not near enough to handle the processing equipment or the tipping area. You can usually make that sort of building work, but you either compromise the system design to shoehorn it into a shorter space and risk the building’s structure with operating a tipping area with columns, or you will spend a significant amount of money reworking large parts of the area’s structure to have greater height, larger open areas, and a thicker floor. At that point, it is often cheaper and easier to just take down the building and start over.
These are only two quick examples about how tough it is to find existing facilities to convert to something that is right for you. You have a tough task ahead of you when deciding what is right for you and your company in the short and long term. It is important to engage a firm that can help you figure out exactly what it is you need in the new or upgraded facility. The firm should have waste industry experience, so they know to ask all the pertinent questions regarding operational goals, financial goals, staff needs, vehicle routing, and maintenance, etc. The main objective will be to develop what the long-term goals would look like and figure out if that is something you want to do right away or do you phase into the final master plan as you hit growth objectives and goals.
Upgrading Your Existing Site
As your company looks to grow and expand their operations, you may be best served to evaluate your current facility to identify the best options to expand the operations. This could include buying neighboring properties, separating operations between multiple properties, or having smaller operations spread across different parts of your service areas. This is because you already know the current zoning should be right for your operations. This is not a viable option for every company and every site, but we highly recommend you perform a baseline assessment of your current site and your options there while you are also evaluating new properties and run the processes concurrently, so you do not lose time.
The master planning for expanding or upgrading an existing site typically takes less time than a new site. This is due to the following factors:
• You do not have to find and purchase a new property, which could take six to 10 months in and of itself.
• You will not typically need to go through re-zoning.
• Your neighbors already know who you are and what your operations consist of so they may not fight any improvements you want to make.
Some of the downsides of working on your existing site could be:
• If your current building is old, you may have to bring it up to current code or ADA compliance, which could be costly and disruptive.
• Your operations may be impacted by the construction, which could mean temporary displacement of team members.
• If you are planning on phasing improvements at your existing site, that work will likely take longer and cost more than a new site due to the extended construction schedule.
• Your existing site may not be big enough to handle all your future expansion needs.
• The design may not end up as operationally efficient as a new site could be, if you are planning on keeping existing site buildings or features.
