Manufacturing Roof Collapse Case Study
Location: Kansas City, MO
Date: Mar 23, 2013
Facility Size: 400,000 Square Feet
Loss Type: Structural
In March 2013, the Kansas City area had two heavy wet snow fall events causing a section of a manufacturing company's roof to collapse. The over 35,000 square foot collapse affected the 400,000 square paper product warehouse. When the paper manufacturer called on ServiceMaster Recovery Management (SRM) to perform emergency recovery services, we were able to rapidly mobilize a team of professionals. Once the facility employees were accounted for and the facility was completely evacuated. The City Building Officials feared the possibility of a subsequent explosion or fire and disconnected all electrical and natural gas service to the facility. Within the matter of minutes, the manufacturing facility shut down and hundreds of their employees sent home with no work.
SRM coordinated directly with the Kansas City Missouri Fire Department, KCMO Dangerous Building Department and the KCMO Code Enforcement to obtain limited access back into the facility for a Structural Engineer to perform an evaluation. It was determined that the balance of the facility was structurally sound but the collapsed area had to be braced from further collapse and isolated from the remaining structure. SRM provided the Owners with innovative method to rapidly shore and secure the surrounding roof structure from further collapse with the use of sectional shoring. Our team of subcontractors worked around the clock to install a shoring system to stabilize the steel structure. Simultaneously SRM mobilized large commercial generators to provide power for the water mitigation equipment and demolition lighting. As sections of the facility were determined safe, SRM crews extracted water, provided manufacturing equipment reconditioning, stabilized the indoor temperature and humidity and installed containment around the collapsed area utilizing Scaf-Lite heavy duty material on the shoring structure and building a 6” coffer dam.
All of the extensive work performed at the facility was completed without any additional lost production time beyond the containment area. The impacted area was completed and returned into production 7 ½ weeks after the roof had collapsed. Electrical and natural gas service to the facility was restored to normal conditions. As a reflection of the close coordination with the ongoing facility operations, the paper manufacturer was able to complete its obligations to its vendors and even set a production record the weeks SRM was rebuilding the damaged area.