Employees for the Savannah River Site's management and operations contractor recently volunteered their construction skills at Aiken's Golden Harvest Food Bank.
Led by Vice President Dan Armstrong, a group of construction, project management and project control employees from Savannah River Nuclear Solutions volunteered their Fridays off to re-engineer and repair a walk-in cooler at the food bank.
According to a press release, the plywood flooring that supported a walk-in cooler had fallen into disrepair. Over time, the flooring became so warped and unstable that Golden Harvest was not permitted to use the space.
Johnathan Adams, chief operations officer of the food bank, said officials were unable to fix the room and that the contractor proved helpful in its volunteer work.
"The labor and materials needed were going to cost us more than $10,000," Adams said.
The first task was to find out what was causing the damaged insulated floor to feel bouncy and spongy. When Armstrong's volunteers initially ripped up the first layer of plywood flooring, they were expecting to find wood rot or a lack of floor supports. Instead, they found layers of stainless steel and galvanized steel that had caved in.
Armstrong said the site was not what employees expected.
"We weren't expecting to find stainless steel under the floor. When the demo didn't go as predicted, we called a safety 'time out,' stopping work until we had the right tools and appropriate personal protective equipment for the job," Armstrong said.
After Armstrong's volunteer team reassessed the hazards, the group safely removed the damaged floor in the cooler without having to demolish the structure's walls. Using donated materials, they installed new supports for the walls and a curb inside the cooler to prevent pallets from contacting the walls.
They also filled the gaps in the cooler room's walls with spray foam and installed a new door seal. As a final step, a group of volunteer construction painter apprentices applied epoxy paint to the cooler floor.
Adams added, "Golden Harvest's five locations collected 17 million pounds of food last year, and a lot of that food was fresh produce. Now we can store more refrigerated goods, and in turn, reach out to more agencies that help people in need in our region."
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013. He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.