Jansson Rocks!
Published: 12/10, 2021
With many large and complicated heavy demolition jobs, Jansson Entreprenad qualifies among Sweden’s largest heavy demolition firms. PDa met Jansson during the demolition of the Bilia Volvo car reseller plant in Stockholm in June.
Jansson Entreprenad AB, the demolition contractor from the city of Linköping in Sweden, is doing well. After many years of working close to their home base of Linköping, Sweden, Jansson Entreprenad AB, now works all over the country. They tackle different types of complicated demolition tasks at process industries, real estate and infrastructure facilities.
Jansson Entreprenad is so busy that you have to meet them at work. Interviews for this story required visiting the demolition of a car reseller plant in Stockholm called Bilia. It is a facility of a total of nearly 323,000 ft2 (30,000 m2) on up to five floors.
“In total, we will demolish 40,000 solid tons of concrete,” says the appropriately surnamed project manager, Hannes Hammar.
The project began in the spring of 2021 with remediation and selective demolition. For a few weeks now, the heavy demolition has been underway and four demolition-equipped excavators at work are equipped with powerful hydraulic demolition tools that chew their way through the concrete TT cassettes the structure is built from. The TT cassettes contain heavily reinforced concrete. Two more excavators are used for excavation.
Johan Persson is one of the demolition operators and drives the company’s newly acquired demolition-Volvo EC750EHR excavator. Built for demolition tasks, the Volvo EC750EHR has a reach of 118 ft (36m) and weighs 104 tons.
“We are very happy with the machine,” says Persson, who oversees all of Jansson Entreprenad’s machines. “It is flexible and safe to work with and has a fantastic capacity. The climate in the cab is also exceptionally good on hot days like today.
The other three demolition machines at work come from Caterpillar, Cat 352F, Cat 340 Next Generation and Cat 330F. The machines have demolition tools from Cat Work Tools and hydraulic quick couplings from OilQuick.
“We are very pleased with Cat’s demolition tools and use them on most of our machines,” Persson adds. He has particularly high praise for Cat’s MP365 large pulverizer, calling it an “incredibly good tool.”
The visit to Bilia is one of the hottest days of the summer with a temperature of around 86° F (30° C). The operators constantly replenish water supplies and there is a lot of dust. Dust suppression cannons from Duztech go at high speed to keep the air as clear as possible.
Persson explains that the job is divided into different stages. After beginning with heavy demolition, the crew pivoted in August with excavation to for new housing structures that will be built on the site beginning in November. At that time, Hammar says, the current 30-person workforce will likely more than triple. The new construction will be completed in 2025, an include a separate building in which much of the site’s demolition debris will be reused. Johan Jansson, who owns and operates Jansson Entreprenad with his brother Victor, says business is going very well.
“We have a lot of projects underway and new ones are added all the time,” Jansson says. Examples include Värtahamnen, a major new apartment complex adjacent to Stockholm’s harbor. Outside the city, the firm is demolishing a large property in the suburb of Liljeholmen, and is scheduled to begin demolition of the old Kalix road bridge in the far north of Sweden this fall. Jansson feels such a heavy workload is to expected as “we are the country’s largest heavy demolition contractors, in my opinion.”
Third-generation contractors
Jansson Entreprenad opened its doors in 1946 in the haulage industry, led by Janssons grandparents. His father, Kjell, joined the company early and eventually took over the business, which has focused on demolition, remediation, and recycling for the past 25 years. Today, Kjell has taken a step back for the benefit of his children. Along with Johan and Victor, daughter Malin works on the business’s administrative side. Jansson Entreprenad currently has 35 demolition machines in its fleet, from 1t Bobcats to 104t excavators, most of which are made by Caterpillar. Each carrier has about five different hydraulic demolition and sorting tools at its disposal, adding up to about 175 hydraulic tools. The tools are of the type hydraulic hammer, pulverizer, concrete shears, shredders and sorting buckets, milling cutters and more. The majority of the excavators are also fitted with hydraulic quick coupling systems from OilQuick.
Most of Jansson Entreprenad projects consist of own turnkey contracts in demolition and construction work. The organization calculates and manages the contracts under its own auspices, usually with its own resources when capacity exists because investments have been made for generations on an ongoing basis. Today, an estimated 80 to 85 percent of jobs are demolition, but work is being done to increase regular construction operations. The 40-person company occupies a 1 million ft2 (100,000 m2) industrial site in Linköping, where it also operates a recycling and sorting plant. An office, workshop and machine and tool warehouse facility was recently opened north of Stockholm.
“With as many jobs as we have in the Stockholm area, we simply have to have our own depot on site,” Jansson says. “Here we have plenty of space for both the staff and our machines. Jansson himself moved to Stockholm four years ago to be on site and lead the business.
“It is not extremely far between Linköping and Stockholm,” he says, “but it is time consuming to commute in the long run,” says Johan.
Jansson Entreprenad is certified according to the quality management system ISO9001, the environmental management system ISO14001 and the work environment system ISO45001. In 2020, the company was awarded the Infrastipendium prize by the Swedish industry organization Maskinentreprenörernas (ME) at its annual Big Infra Day event.