New 65-metre high reach hits the streets.

If there’s one thing we love here at Demolition News Towers, it’s an ultra high reach excavator video, even if it is entirely in Japanese.

And so when our buddies over at High Reach Demolition shared this, we couldn’t wait to take a look.

The paint-job is typically garish but that doesn’t detract from what, at 65 metres, is an absolute monster of a machine.

Chinese mega-implosion fells Wuhan viaduct.

A two-mile viaduct in the Chinese city of Wuhan has been demolished, breaking a record for the longest reinforced concrete bridge ever blown up in the country.

The viaduct, built in 1997, is to be replaced by a six-lane viaduct, more than three miles long.

Boss faces jail after Swan Hunter shipyard Worker is killed by falling girder

A company boss has been convicted of causing the death of a worker who was killed while working at Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend.

Allan Turnbull was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence after a four week trial into the death of his employee Kenneth Joyce.

Kenneth Joyce, from Lanchester, County Durham, had been dismantling a building at a Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend, North Tyneside, on December 2, 2008 when the incident happened.

The 53-year-old fell 30ft when his cherry picker machine was struck by a 14-tonne girder.

A second girder also fell, knocking a 250kg beam off a crane and on to MrJoyce.

He died of head and neck injuries.

Turnbull, 61, of Inkerman Tow Law, County Durham, owns A&H Boring and Machining.

He had been contracted by North Eastern Marine Offshore Contracts (Nemoc) based at Yarm, near Stockton, to carry out the work.

Jurors at Newcastle Crown Court were told a catalogue of health and safety failings led to Mr Joyce’s death.

Among the failings were that Turnbull did not undertake a specific risk assessment, failed to identify the risks of the job and that there was a risk of death and he failed to take advice from a competent person.

Prosecutors said Mr Joyce’s death could have been avoided if a safe system of work had been established and followed.

Read more here.

City hires firm with mob ties to demolish Prospect Plaza Houses in Crown Heights

A demolition firm with mob ties and a deadly safety record has been selected to finally tear down an abandoned public housing development that’s remained vacant for more than a decade, the Daily News has learned.

Some 1,500 tenants of the Prospect Plaza Houses in Crown Heights were relocated starting in 2001 with the promise that they’d be back in by 2005 once everything was renovated.

A decade later, the renovation plans have been abandoned and the city has decided on demolition instead, hiring a company called Breeze National to tear down the four boarded-up, rotting buildings that remain.

The hiring of Breeze, however, has its own set of issues.

Until recently, the company was owned by Toby Romano Sr., an alleged organized crime associate who was convicted 1988 of bribing a health inspector during an asbestos removal job.

In 2006 the city’s Business Integrity Commission denied a Breeze affiliate, Breeze Carting, a license to haul trash in the city, citing Romano’s record and charging that the company made what it termed “material misrepresentations” — aka “lies” — in its application. By 2009 the city began requiring that Breeze hire a special anti-corruption monitor to oversee its work — but even that didn’t necessarily fix the problem.

That year while Breeze was tearing down the old Shea Stadium, the monitor in place discovered that one of Breeze’s employees was Herb Pate, a “known associate of the Luchese crime family.” Breeze got rid of Pate and insisted that since then, Romano Sr., the company president, “no longer has an ownership interest.”

Read more here.

Railway viaduct demolition bid on hold while evidence is gathered.

A bid to demolish a former Cambridgeshire railway viaduct has been refused after planners called for more information about the project.

A landowner submitted plans to remove the 12-arch viaduct at Rings End, near Guyhirn, last month, sparking opposition from a local heritage group.

Fenland District planners said archaeology and wildlife surveys would need to be carried out first.

They said they also wanted more evidence about the site’s restoration.

Their report added the structure had been identified on a register of Buildings of Local Interest and stated: “In principle, the loss of such a dominant feature in the Fenland landscape is of concern.”

Read more here.

It’s mean, green and it will have Brokk looking over its shoulder.

We have written about the Avant Robot before but Plantworx 2013 gave us our first opportunity to see the Avant 185 Robot “in the flesh” and mighty impressive it is too.

From the striking green livery to the thinly-disguised Rammer IN hammer at the business end, the Avant Robot is a breath of fresh air for the demolition robot sector. Moreover, the ease with which the upperstructure can be removed to reduce the transport height to just 750 mm means that the new machine is as transportable as it is powerful.

Take a closer look in this exclusive video from the team at Diggers and Dozers.

New products and old style values made Plantworx 2013 a success.

Pardon me for a second while I share with you an analogy that occurred to me while I was walking around Plantworx 2013 for the final time yesterday. It may take me a little while to get there but trust me, I know roughly where I am going.

Construction and demolition equipment exhibitions are like rock bands (no really, stick with me). They start small fuelled by little more than passion and enthusiasm and the help and support of a small handful of loyal fans who see in them something special.

In the beginning, band and fans (and exhibition organisers, exhibitors and visitors) are as one. They share a common belief and mix freely over a post-gig beer or three.

But, over the years, things start to change. The venues get bigger and more expensive; the ability to interact with those loyal supporters begins to suffer; and, sooner or later, they sell out to commercialism, largely abandoning those loyal supporters that were with them from raw and slightly rough-around-the-edges beginning. Think of Joshua Tree-era U2 and compare that to the preening, self-important and egotistic stadium fillers they eventually became.

Latter day SED was Bono.

Plantworx was not the biggest show I have ever seen (a single hall at the mighty Bauma could swallow the entire show whole and still have room for desert) and it wasn’t the best (Whipsnade-era SED will always have a special place in my pea-sized, black heart).

But I can honestly say that Plantworx was by far the most inclusive and engaging exhibition that I have ever had the pleasure to attend. Through the clever use of social media and a co-operative ethos, the exhibition turned exhibitors into willing evangelists that weren’t promoting themselves or a plant show; they were advocating unity. Along the path, the organisers, exhibitors and even the usually cynical press rallied more than 10,000 acolytes that descended on the showground regardless of the mix of rain, hail and sunshine that is the mark of any real plant show.

For that alone, the organisers, the exhibitors and the attendees all deserve considerable credit.

If you didn’t make it to this year’s show, you can try again in 2015, although you could, of course, be attending the exhibition equivalent of that difficult second album.

But if you were among those bold enough to exhibit or attend an unproven show, just remember this:

If Plantworx ever becomes over-commercial and Vegas-era Elvis bloated, you can tell your friends, family and colleagues that you saw the first gig; you saw it before it was tainted by fame, money and success; you saw it when it was good.

New cab makes major contribution to site safety.

If someone had told me at the beginning of the week that an excavator cab would be the most exciting item on display at the inaugural Plantworx exhibition, I would have (a) laughed in their face, (b) cancelled my travel to Warwickshire, and (c) written a lengthy comment article on the lamentable state of innovation in the construction and demolition equipment industry.

But the Step Safe Cab – the result of a joint venture between Volvo Construction Equipment Great Britain and arch innovators Kocurek – managed to pull off the ultimate trick in innovation – It made you wonder why no-one had thought of it before.

Quite simply, the Step Safe Cab takes the concept of the elevating cab and brings it down a level, dropping the cab down to the cab for easier ingress and egress and, thereby, eliminating the slip and trip hazards associated with steps and ladders.

Make no mistake, this is a major step forward for the health and safety of the industry. Moreover, it is an innovation that could easily allow disabled operators to carry on working or return to work.

Check out the following video from our buddies at Diggers And Dozers.

While some grasped the Plantworx opportunity, others appeared alarmingly underprepared.

At the time of writing, Plantworx 2013 is a day old and the UK has a viable new construction and demolition equipment exhibition in its annual diary.   Sure there were gripes.  The organizers had employed the usual gate Nazis who, armed with a high vis’ vest and a walkie-talkie, went power crazy and tried their level best to ensure that no-one set foot inside.   And the person responsible for organizing the weather on the opening day needs to take a long, hard look at themselves.

But such minor criticisms seem churlish when set against the numerous positives from the exhibition.  The venue is central and easy to find for all but the congenitally lost; parking was easy and – astonishingly – free; and the show aisles are wide and spacious affording plenty of room to marvel at and admire the highly-polished and tyre-blackened kit on display.  Best of all, the organizers and the exhibitors managed to recreate the welcoming feel of a county fair that was all too sadly absent in the latter days of the terminally-bloated SED.

So you would have thought that the equipment manufacturers – those poor multinational companies that have spent the past five years fighting the twin terrors of rising steel prices and dwindling demand – would have grasped the opportunities afforded by Plantworx 2013 like a drowning man grasps at driftwood.   You would have thought that the stand and sales staff had slept with the new product spec sheets under their pillows for the past six months, that they had all been ordered to dust off their shiny suits and rather less shiny shoes and given a customer care refresher course before heading for the Stoneleigh Park show ground.

In far too many cases, however, this was clearly not the case.   In fact, even though the exhibition has been looming on the industry’s collective calendar for some two years now, it seemed to have taken a good many exhibitors completely by surprise.   And instead of greeting Plantworx as an opportunity to shake off the recessionary shackles, a good many treated it as an unwelcome intrusion into their expense account-funded beer, service station lunch and golf-centric social lives.

Before I tell you what I mean, let me explain that I toured the opening day of the show with a camera slung around my neck and a sandwich-board sized name tag that shouted PRESS.

Now compare and contrast these visitor experiences.  One of the first stands I visited was that of Volvo Construction Equipment GB which just happened to have on display the single most innovative piece of kit at this or any other show of recent years; the Step Safe Cab.   I was greeted by a smiling receptionist, passed smoothly to the marketing manager and, subsequently, to the product specialist who not only explained the system but gave me a complete guided tour in a manner as smooth and efficient as the company’s excavators.

Such welcoming engagement was not the sole preserve of the large manufacturers.  Nearby was the stand of Steelwrist, a one-trick pony of an importer offering nothing more earth-shattering than an excavator tilt rotator.  What could have been a flying visit, however, turned into a passionate explanation of the product’s feature and benefits, an iPad demonstration of just how the system works followed by a full working demonstration.  In 15 engaging and informative minutes, Steelwrist converted a career skeptic and gained a new fan.

Now compare that to my experience with several other unnamed but industry household name manufacturers.

One was displaying a new mini excavator so, as my job requires, I asked what was new about it.   Salesman #1 explained that this was the first time he had seen the product.  Not great but I gave him the benefit of the doubt as a lot of new machines arrived hot-foot from a Bauma launch just last month.   Salesman #2 agreed that the machine was new (the sign on the machine was probably his first clue) but explained that he hadn’t been briefed on it.  ”Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully.  ”I’ll fetch someone to help you.”

Almost 20 minutes later, that person had failed to materialize and salesmen #1 and #2 were in a conspiratorial huddle trying desperately to avoid eye contact like an overworked diner waitress.   I gave up and left.

I then went to check out a new wheel loader on another stand.   All was going swimmingly well until I asked a question about the technical specification of the machine.  The response?   “if you were going to ask questions, you should have phoned ahead.”

I am rarely at a loss for words but on this occasion I was utterly stumped.   Having now slept on it, I have a suggestion for the “professional” I had the misfortune to encounter.

“Have you considered a career as a gate Nazi?”

777 machine does canny job in the North East.

It’s a long way from home, but 777 Demolition’s Hitachi high reach excavator is doing a fine job for Thompsons of Prudhoe in the North east of England.