Sanimax Fire Restoration
Project Scope: Fire restoration
Location: Deforest, Wisconsin
Designer: Ramaker Architecture + Engineering
On the morning of September 11, 2014, employees arrived at the Sanimax plant to find firefighters tending a major electrical fire that had begun near a light fixture in the building’s ceiling. The blaze quickly engulfed the entire roof structure, accelerated by the suction of the building's air scrubbers. The fire burned hot enough to melt parts of the roof and the structural steel of the building before being extinguished. Unfortunately, this building housed the bulk of the recycling tanks and the heart of the operations for Sanimax, which collects and refines cooking oil and grease.
About a week after the fire, Friede & Associates was contacted by FM Global, Sanimax’s insurer. Friede had worked for FM Global and Seats, Incorporated in 2013 when a fire had damaged their plant in Richland Center. Because of the positive outcome of that project, FM Global recommended that Friede & Associates be engaged as the general contractor for the Sanimax fire restoration project. Within a few days, an initial meeting on site was arranged.
The first priority was the clean-up—which allowed for partial operation within this building—and temporary repairs to the roof structure prior to winter. Since the damaged building was also attached to another facility that housed the main intake areas for the grease and oil recycling, it was determined that repairs to the adjacent structure would be necessary as well.
Friede and Sanimax worked closely with Ramaker Architecture + Engineering, the structural engineers on the project, and Butler Manufacturing, to design the new structure. By the end of the year, plans for the rebuild were in place. It quickly became apparent that the entire building would need to be demolished, new foundations poured and a new pre-engineered metal building erected. This would need to be done in phases since Sanimax would need to keep some of its operations going throughout the construction process.
After completing the temporary roof repairs, the project team refined their plan and continued to meet with FM Global representatives to finalize the insurance claim. Demolition began on the western half of the building, with the plan that roughly 40% of the building would be removed during the first phase of reconstruction. A temporary wall was installed to allow partial operations to continue on the eastern half. New foundations and concrete slab installation soon followed. Once the superstructure was back in place, new tanks were installed and temporary arrangements for the balance of the reconstruction were completed by mid-summer. All the remaining tanks that were salvageable were removed, cleaned, and repainted and the new larger tank installation was planned. In total, nearly three dozen 20-foot by 25-foot-tall tanks were reinstalled in the new structure.
Once the primary building construction was completed in early fall, the roof over-build and repairs were undertaken on the adjacent intake building. The construction was completed to allow for full operation to resume in December 2015, some 15 months after the fire. Additional site work was completed in Spring 2016.
This project was recognized by the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of Wisconsin as a 2016 Gold Project of Distinction.