Arriving at Clarity

At Recall, we like our actions to speak louder than words—we don’t go and shout out what we do while we’re taking care of our customers’ needs,” claims Michael McEvoy, safety and security manager for Recall North America, headquartered in Norcross, Ga.

“The services that we provide are more than just physically securing and storing confidential material and ensuring the closed-loop secure destruction and recycling process—we keep our client’s secrets,” McEvoy says.

What isn’t a secretive matter for the global document storage, management, data protection and secure destruction company, he says, is a commitment to “defend and protect” employee safety and a dedication to eco-friendly business methods. Recall has an “expanded concept of protection that goes beyond protecting the customer to protecting the environment and our employees—we intend for them to come to work, be safe and leave the same way,” he says.

“Basically, the frontline managers here at Recall are my customers—that’s who they really are.”

From McEvoy’s perspective, “Recall is remarkably open to innovations and, by drawing on best practices shared across the company, we strive to put the right tools to meet safety goals into the hands of our operations managers.”

Shared Responsibility
With more than 120 Recall locations across North America, responding to the specific safety and security issues that arise at individual facilities is a big part of McEvoy’s job description. Currently, Recall North America has two full-time safety and security managers who divide their duties both geographically and according to their areas of expertise.

George Harris handles western operations and is a six-sigma black belt, while McEvoy, a Canadian with military police and vice president-level retail experience, focuses on the eastern region.

It was McEvoy who responded when Brian Holdren, a Recall area operations manager, reached out with an urgent safety concern. Holdren is responsible for managing Recall’s Secure Destruction Services’ (SDS) facility in Romulus, Mich. He reported “a serious concern with dust” as a result of a recent change in the plant’s secure destruction technology.

The Romulus facility had recently upgraded from a small, hand-fed strip shredder to a 50-horsepower, 1.5-ton-per-hour grinding system.
 

Unintended Consequences
Reflecting on the move to a higher capacity machine in Romulus, Holdren explains, “We had jumped at the chance to improve our tons per man-hour, which is how our industry judges productivity. But we were finding that the obvious volume benefits of a bigger system and integrated baler were being compromised by a reduction in air quality and a substantial investment in labor to clean up the paper dust produced.”

Holdren describes the extent of the dust challenge at the Romulus SDS facility as “dust accumulation that required two hours per day of cleanup time for an eight-hour shift of grinding.” Brian and his team made efforts to mitigate the affect of the dust, including using exterior fans and providing masks to employees to protect against respiratory illness.

He initiated the search for a solution, asking that a safety audit be conducted at the Romulus plant.

A New Safety Audit
Called in for a dust collection site assessment at the Romulus SDS plant, McEvoy chose to conduct a complete safety audit of the facility. “Reflecting changes in sustainability goals at Recall, we have developed ‘new-style’ audits based on our steadily evolving standards, which include a 98 percent recycling rate,” he says. “Basically, we now audit for everything related to employee health, safety, security and environmental impact.”

Regarding air quality, Recall’s audits are based on OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 29. However, McEvoy says Recall goes “above and beyond compliance with the surrounding regulations that cover dust.”

McEvoy’s on-site audit in Romulus confirmed Brian’s reports: “The environment was dusty; visibility was low; risks for dust explosions, fire and adverse health impacts from exposure were high; and, personally, my glasses rapidly had dust on them.”

McEvoy began making phone calls.

As Holdren recollects, “By end of day—it was almost instantaneous,” the head of security for Recall North America had given the go-ahead for a dust collection system. “I certainly asked for it, but McEvoy’s arrival was a stroke of luck for us,” Holdren says.
 

Taking the Initiative
Holdren says, “Just as we’re responsible for monthly P&L statements for each facility, it’s the operations manager’s responsibility to look for the best equipment, conduct an analysis of the application and submit specifications for review.”

The corporate procurement department at Recall reviews all capital expenditures for operations and suggests vendors for the job, Holdren says. “They’re a very supportive team, they understand our needs and, in this case, Jason Brown, a former procurement manager and now the digital solutions project manager, suggested the folks at Imperial Systems, located in Jackson Center, Pa.

“Implementing a new system within a demanding service business like ours requires the right vendor to partner with,” he continues, “and it’s useful to have a solid recommendation based on previous history with the company.”

Holdren then followed up the recommendation with his own “homework” on Imperial, concluding that “by far, Imperial Systems offered the best fit as a supplier for our specific requirements, which were for a turnkey dust collection system. They are geographically close to Romulus and provide total installation packages, as well. We needed to work fast, get it right and deal creatively with the space constraints at the facility,” he says.
 

Small Footprint, Big Challenges
Recall’s Romulus SDS center occupies a 7,300-square-foot warehouse in a business park near the Detroit Metro airport. “By Recall’s standards, we’re a small secure destruction operation, but we represent a strategy of responsible growth for the company,” Holdren says.

Holdren’s primary concern was working within this limited footprint to engineer an effective dust-collection system for Romulus. “I sent blueprints to the Imperial engineering team and was impressed that they delivered system drawings back to me in less than 24 hours. Ultimately we needed to revise the layout, but I had the new blueprint in hand the same day,” he says. “Imperial’s turnaround time was remarkable, and that was a big help to us.”

Another preventive safety technology that Imperial provided for Recall’s Romulus plant was a high-tech inferred spark detection and extinguishment system. This system is designed to detect sparks or fires anywhere in the system after the grinder, including conveyors and ductwork, and uses atomized water nozzles to quench these hazards ‘on the move’. This system operates during secure destruction and “gives us another measure of safety and security and meets NFPA (National Fire Prevention Association) 654 guidelines,” Holdren says.
 

Time-Critical Installation
By mid-2011, the project was on schedule and plans for installation and startup of the Imperial 512 SCS dust collector were underway. The system averages 5,500 cubic feet per minute and is equipped with DeltaMaxx shaker bag filters.

Managing a seamless installation process was critical to the success of the project, Holdren says. “Our NAID- (National Association for Information Destruction-) certified, AAA-rated secure destruction business is based on a promise to our customers—once your confidential material is in our hands, it will be securely shredded within a 24-to-72-hour time frame, and there is no room for error,” he says.

To minimize the downtime associated with the dust collection equipment installation and startup in Romulus, the Imperial Systems field team arrived over a weekend and completed the job before business began Monday morning.

“With this ‘in and out’ time frame, Imperial handled everything,” Holdren says, “including all the duct work and fittings, and conducted run-out testing of the system, with no loss of operating time.”
 

A Sustainable Vision
Recall checks in on equipment installations four or five months later to make sure “promises were kept and the solution worked,” McEvoy says. “The cleanliness is amazing, and scheduled air quality checks have been outstanding.”

Holdren reports that “cleanup is a snap, and we have regained two hours of processing time and labor that had been devoted to cleaning up the paper dust at the end of every shift. The dust collection system has saved us time and money.”

As Recall plans more innovations for the future, recycling the dust collection filter media may yield a “100 percent material recycling rate,” McEvoy says. Recall currently works with Waste Management for total closed-loop recycling.

“We’re all about pioneering and working with partners like Imperial to develop new ideas,” McEvoy says of Recall. “Where safety and security are concerned, that makes the process as exciting and valuable for our company and customers as the final destination.”

The author is a business and technical writer based in Bloomington, Ind. This feature was submitted on behalf of Imperial Systems, Jackson Center, Pa. She can be contacted at aperiome@juno.com.