Walbridge Uses Woodchuck.Ai Materials Platform To Divert 8K Tons of Wood on $3B Michigan BlueOval Project | Columbus Ohio Dump Trucks

Most of all, using the AI-enabled platform reduced project costs. While the AI analyzes the site and materials for the most efficient and sustainable removal—and eventual recycling—general construction processes that have always been used are put under the microscope, too.

"Jobsites can be really congested with just too many trucks, which generates too much dust," says Todd Thomas, CEO of Woodchuck. "The more trucks you have, the more risk of an accident occurring there is. By reducing the trucks, it really does simplify the jobsite a great deal, which improves safety and, of course, reduces the [contractor's] cost.

"We don't haul materials off site in 40-yd dumpsters, which is the traditional way," Thomas adds. "You've got a dump truck coming 10-20 times a day to haul off 40-yd dumpsters. Instead, we consolidate that material. So we take all of the wood, all of the pallets, and we chip them into wood chips, and we haul those off by oversized semi truckload."

Thomas said a lot of the  packaging for the EV battery columbus oh dump truck equipment would arrive on massive skids and require a lot of breakdown.

The amount of traffic saved on the ring roads allowed Walbridge to devote more craft workers to the project and not to hauling what was mostly shipping materials away in dumpsters, a 1930s technology.

"You can carry roughly one-and-a half to three tons of wood pallets and crating material in a standard 40-yd dumpster, whereas you can take 25 to 30 tons in a semi—the math is pretty straightforward," says Ross Linton, group vice president at Walbridge, noting the significant reduction in the amount of truck traffic required on site.

Other materials such as plastics and scrap metal are being hauled off the Marshall BlueOval site in a similar fashion with the goal of a more organized, sustainable site with better outcomes for waste. Thomas said Walbridge's crews and Woodchuck staff bale cardboard and plastic onsite into 1,000-lb bales, and then similarly load those into a semi. Woodchuck's AI system, with cameras, helps presort and divert materials for recovery and ensure it never gets commingled in the first place. Linton said a typical delivery to the site could involve 80-ft skids reinforced with metal angle iron. 

"We receive the wood, we receive the plastic, we receive the cardboard and the AI system can help us to identify if someone puts the wrong thing in the wrong container," Thomas says.

Walbridge's sustainability leaders on Linton's team columbus oh dump truck work regularly with the Woodchuck team to ensure everything is routed properly. Large magnets on the containers tell the workforce—in English, Spanish and via images—what material Walbridge wants in those containers. Once workers know that separating materials is expected, Walbridge says they receive good compliance.

Recycling Insights

One insight that came from the project is how to better package skids and palletized assemblies. Thomas said analysis of the different plastics used on the different skids showed that clear plastic and white plastic were very recyclable and have a good commodity value once placed into 1,000-lb bales. "There was also some plastic that had fiber in it. It was more like a tarp material, and that has a much lower recyclable value," he says. Not only was recycling the materials important, but getting someone to pay for its commodity value was, too. Linton and Thomas said they plan to use what they've learned on BlueOval battery park in future projects. 

Linton said that using Woodchuck on the job happened at a later stage on this initial project, but he sees more efficiencies from using the system from the start of a project and working with suppliers to send the right kinds of crates and skids to optimize site efficiencies.

"This was, in several ways a beta test, but now that we've learned so much through this journey, we've had several lessons learned, meetings and conversations between my team and Todd's team on how we can do this differently, better, more efficiently, on a job where we knew we were going to do it right out the gate," he says. "Absolutely, there's that much more efficiency and recommendations of how things are packaged, to improve it."

In the case of the wood chipped onsite and hauled off in semis, it was turned into biomass. The biomass partner, North Star Clean Energy, used the 8,000 tons of wood from pallets, skids and other materials to produce renewable, clean energy that supports homes and businesses across Michigan.

In all, the Walbridge team says it was able to achieve roughly 40% of projected material savings and is ahead of schedule on the BlueOval battery park project, which is expected to be completed later this year.