by Daniel Green

A couple of hundred years ago a gentleman by the name of Arthur Phillip titled the mound behind Parramatta’s Old Government House Rose Hill. Old Phil must have known a thing or two because after skippering the First Fleet down under he wound up as the founding governor of New South Wales. In 1788!
Convict James Ruse was released from irons eighteen months later. Now that the land around the Old Government House had been renamed Parramatta, Ruse borrowed the former title and planted it in its present day location. Given that prior to his priors Ruse was a multi-generational farmer, taking botanical cuttings and relocating them must have been in his nature. Somewhere along the way the two names became conjoined and government documentation followed suit to the Rosehill we know today.
So when long term Perfect client Unita won the contract to defit and make good one of the suburbs oldest remaining warehouses, Perfect Operations Manager Franky Franczuk followed the company motto and.. well.. you ought to know what it is by now! Fuji Xerox had recently ended a long term tenure in the facility and in readiness for future clientele the stunning storehouse needed a full defit and make good. One quarter of the 5000m2 facility was home to some very permanent temporary build. This was in the form of a 40m x 18m steel frame some 8m in the air. Attached to this were scores of ante rooms in various guises: cool rooms, mechanical plant rooms, workshops, laboratories, storage spaces and offices

The scope:

• Remove unwanted office furniture and equipment.
• Dismantle temporary cool rooms and storage rooms.
• Strip floor coverings
• Disassemble key fixtures and small plant such as compressors, generators and other machines used in the photography industry.
• Retain items as directed by Fuji.
• Demolish beam steel framework.
• Recycle all items and material where possible.
• Work in with electrical and plumbing trades.

09/07/21

On the ninth day in July 2021, legendary Perfect hook truck driver Robertas wheeled his rig into Shirley Street at ten minutes to seven. A shiny new 18m2 skip straddled the rails, full of demolition and make good tools. Oxy acetylene, trolleys, hand tools, power tools, wheeled tub bins and a 2.5t forklift. The whole Perfect team was already present as he entered the site, so he slid the skip to the ground, completed his electronic equipment delivery form and rolled away to his next mission.

The Two Jarek’s / 2J / Jarek²

The same gentlemen that completed the challenging M5 Water Tank Demo for Hicon would helm this project. Big Jarek is one of Perfect’s longest serving workers who specialises in all the tough stuff. Little Jarek is a skilled and experienced demolition supervisor and machine operator. Together they’re a formidable force. Over the years have achieved some of the most challenging demolition tasks we’ve seen. Complementing them was seven of the finest demo workers and machine operators this side of Marrickville.

Play Time

While Jarek² were running the pre-start, the toys arrived. 1 x EWP over 11m, one under 11m and one of our beautiful low-hour Volvo 24t excavators with full attachment suite. The digger had just come from the Wiley Park possession but she was as fresh as a daisy. She came with a surprise new box of equipment you can bet Little Jarek couldn’t wait to start playing. More on that later. So with the pre-start completed, SWMS disseminated & signed and all hands schooled up & on deck, the team got down to business. Unless blindsided by something unforeseen, the plan was:

• Remove furniture.
• Strip out soft linings.
• Dismantle small plant.
• Disassemble cool rooms.
• Raze beam framework.
• Demobilise to the next job.

Under Unita and 2J’s direction, the workforce spent the morning furniture wrangling. Anything of value was collected at the far end of the warehouse and everything else was binned. This included floor coverings – both carpet and linoleum. MR hook driver Billy had the first skip swapped out by morning tea, trading the 18m2 for a 30m3. He left for a quick turnaround at Bingo Auburn and was back within an hour.
Meanwhile, the labourers were stripping floor coverings while the two Jarek’s spun the Sidchromes on the mechanical. Fuji Xerox had gone ahead and marked the small plant they were retaining, so these were palletised and forked off to the end of the warehouse. Two full days of this continued until steps 1, 2 and most of 3 were complete.

Chill Out

The cool room panels were a full 6m high and were of no further use to Fuji or Unita. Or us for that matter. Sadly, you can’t even give them away. And whilst relatively easy to dismantle, they can be painful to store, costly to dump and almost impossible to recycle. There’s too much polystyrene for them to be considered aluminium and too much aluminium to be considered waste. Franky spent the morning ringing around to find a solution but in the end as is often the case, unfortunately they ended up in landfill.
Three working days later there was an empty space where the long white chiller panels had been, so Jarek² turned their attention to the blue hulking steel structure that remained. 8000 high, 40 000 wide and 18 000 deep was a hefty deal, and with Concrete Care coming in behind to grind and seal the floor the option to simply collapse it was off the table. No, this would be a process built around strategy.

New Boots

Little Jarek fired up the 24t and proceeded to install the new equipment: bolton rubber pads for floor protection. And at almost $40 apiece and an hour to install he knew they’d been supplied for good reason: no track marks on the warehouse floor! He hitched up the grabs and tracked the machine inside to where Big Jarek was atop the EWP with oxy/acetylene, a 1†drive rattler, impact sockets, a 5” with batteries & blades and a sawzall.
Big J can do work like this almost in his sleep, but this first lift would set the tone for the rest of the operation. He signalled Little J and a moment later the big excavator grabs latched onto a horizontal beam. A few seconds and some loud rattles later saw the first bolts spin free. Given the entire structure was out of the weather, corroded fasteners wouldn’t be an issue. Soon Big J had the opposite end of the beam unfastened. Little Jarek took the weight and slowly eased it from its home, gently landing it on some dunnage.
And on they went until the entire structure was down without a single concrete chip or crack, including track marks. The material was stacked outside where the hiss of rushing acetylene gas and white hot heat spelled doom for the once proud frame. Skips on repeat meant the scrap steel was at Sell and Parker within a day.

Make Good

Having completed their phase and with Concrete Care arriving the very next morning, the two Jarek’s demobilised to their next job.

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