Communication and trust helped Hastings Deering deliver a complex and time-sensitive operation at two Brisbane waste transfer stations earlier this year.

In 2018, Cleanaway and the Brisbane City Council formed the Resource Recovery Innovation Alliance (RRIA), a ten-year partnership for the management of Brisbane’s waste streams.

Under the alliance, Cleanaway operates four council resource recovery centres – centrally located to service residents around the greater Brisbane area – as well as one engineered landfill.

Leading the Cleanaway side of the RRIA is Shannon Gorman, Alliance Operations Manager.

Shannon says it’s a unique partnership, one well-suited to the waste management needs of Australia’s most populous local government area.

“It’s the largest post-collections contract in the southern hemisphere,” he says. “We deal with more than 500,000 tonnes of waste and recyclables each year, so it’s a pretty big operation.”

Two of these sites – Nudgee and Willawong – are major transfer stations where a constant hustle of machinery processes tonnes of municipal waste each day.

Street compactors deposit their waste into the main pit, where dozers break the waste up and keep it flowing to one end. Here, the pit opens into a slot over a weighbridge, where a procession of semi-trailers park for loading.

At this point, the dozers and a pedestal-mounted Cat® excavator with a rotating grab work together to distribute the waste evenly in the back of the truck. This small, fixed excavator performs just this one task, but it’s an important one.

Shannon says the excavators at both Nudgee and Willawong are in constant use 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

“These are vital pieces of machinery for the operation of these two sites,” he says. “If they go down, it significantly impacts the ability of the facility to process waste – so uptime is critical for these machines.”

Shannon estimates the original Cat 308D excavators at both sites were installed about 10 years ago – long before Cleanaway took over operation. But despite their reliability, and a regimented preventative maintenance schedule, any piece of critical machinery eventually needs to be replaced.

Shannon and the RRIA team knew exactly who to call when they realised the machines were approaching their end-of-life.

“The logical choice for us was to reach out to Hastings Deering for two new Cat excavators,” he says. “We’d all had such good previous experience with Cat and Hastings Deering that we knew they were the right people to engage on the project. The RRIA uses a lot of Cat gear, so we knew these were very reliable machines – it was just an automatic choice.”

When Shannon picked up the phone, the person on the other end of the line was Wayne Partridge – Hastings Deering’s Account Manager for Resources and Agriculture.

Both agreed the obvious choice was to install new, modified Cat 308 CR Mini Excavators at Nudgee and Willawong.

Wayne says this kind of excavator set-up isn’t uncommon for large waste transfer stations – but the end-to-end process of replacing them safely while minimising downtime was far from an everyday challenge.

“Typically, a supplier would just provide a machine and say ‘here, you do whatever you need to do with it’,” Wayne says. “But Cleanaway was looking for someone to take ownership and collaborate with from start to finish.”

Wayne and the Hastings Deering team needed to find the best way to customise the machines, lift and transport them, swap them out, as well as anticipate any number of potential complications in the process.

Firstly, the two new 308 excavators had to be split in half, allowing the tracks to be replaced with the fixed, custom-built pedestals. Given the excavators are usually lifted by the track frame, special lifting beams had to be designed to allow the machines to be transported and craned in safely.

The RRIA sites would also have to be assessed, tested and, when the time came for installation, cleared of waste.

“Normally, those pits would be full to the brim with rubbish,” Wayne says. “Cleanaway had to manage that prior to the install window, ensuring they were totally clear so we could get our cranes and trucks in.”

Shannon says this was a logistical challenge in its own right.

“We’re serving customers all day, every day at these two facilities,” he says. “Significant volumes of waste pass through, and fully clearing the pits out was a massive undertaking.

“A lot of pre-planning and resources had to be thrown at the operation. Even to install such small excavators it was a really big project.”

There were two key requirements for the project – for the swap-out jobs to be completed safely, and in a very tight window.

“These were literally overnight jobs,” Shannon says. “The sites closed at 5.45pm, and the team had until six the following morning to have the installs done.”

Wayne knew the key to a successful operation would be to maintain clear, ongoing communication with all parties from the start – to a degree well beyond the conventional approach.

“I’d never been involved in a process quite like it,” he says. “We had an email trail which included ourselves and Cleanaway, our crane company, field service and equipment assembly teams, and our product support team. Information was shared freely back and forth.”

Shannon says this free-flowing communication, as well as regular in-person stakeholder workshops, allowed them to explore and troubleshoot a range of issues well ahead of time.

“I’d say this sort of communication was possible because we’d established a level of trust from working together previously,” he says. “And of course, both parties wanted to see that long-term relationship continue. If we’d been dealing with somebody new, it might have been a little trickier to navigate those waters.”

Wayne also felt he had the trust of the RRIA team, which enabled him to speak frankly, provide informed and pragmatic advice, and ultimately deliver the project as safely and efficiently as possible.

“For me, it’s always been about finding the right solution,” he says. “My first question is always to ask why – what a customer wants to do, what they want it to achieve.

“Sometimes a customer will know exactly what they need for a project, but sometimes it’s worth challenging them, collaborating with them – and then you can introduce learnings from past projects.”

When the installation dates rolled around, every stakeholder in the operation was ready. Plans, procedures and contingencies were ironed out, and everyone was on the same page.

Both the Nudgee and Willawong excavators were swapped out and back in operation by the next morning.

Shannon says the RRIA team was impressed by how Wayne and Hastings Deering managed and executed the project.

“In terms of Hastings’ clients, we’re probably pretty small in the scheme of things,” Shannon says. “But despite that, we always get great service from them. And this was no exception.

“This project went beyond business-as-usual for them, but they were happy to do it – and they did a really good job.”

For more information, visit: www.cat.com/en_AU

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