The 2024 annual general meeting of the Institute of Demolition Engineers took place at Nortons, an Irish bar in a less than salubrious area of the UK’s second city. The venue was chosen by the then-incoming IDE president Adrian McLean to reflect his Irish heritage and his Birmingham roots. Even though that AGM was well attended, his choice of venue was not universally popular.
Yesterday, the IDE’s AGM returned to Nortons and it dawned on me that the venue was about more than just Guinness and Irish songs sung with Brummie accents. The venue was a metaphor.
Nortons sits literally in the shadow of HS2. It is so close, in fact, that traffic to the venue is diverted around the HS2 construction works.
The UK’s high speed rail project famously hit the proverbial and financial buffers back in 2023 when the incumbent prime minister Rishi Sunak pulled the plug amidst spiralling costs. Rather than linking London to Manchester and Leeds as had been planned originally, HS2 was to terminate in Birmingham. Although Sunak’s decision called into question the UK’s ambition and its ability to deliver major infrastructure projects, it did succeed in resetting the HS2 debate. The project largely vanished from newspaper front pages, leaving the working men and women to bring the project to fruition through hard work, dedication, and passion.
Like HS2, the Institute of Demolition Engineers had hit the proverbial and financial buffers at around the same time. Membership numbers were declining, the coffers were alarmingly bare, and an air of fatalism hung heavy over the IDE’s future. But like HS2, the IDE has seen a reset. Like HS2, that reset has allowed the real work to recommence. And like HS2, the rediscovered enthusiasm is being delivered by working men and women.
Adrian McLean set himself a target of balancing the IDE’s books within three years. That has been largely accomplished in his first year as president. Membership numbers are once again on the up. And, after countless false starts over the past decade, the Institute officially has its first overseas member with more set to follow.
And all of that has been accomplished without fuss, frills or fanfare. Which is precisely why Nortons was the ideal venue for the latest IDE AGM. As a venue, it is a leveller; a place where company owners and demolition engineers are all equal; where egos and rivalries are left in the cloakroom; where everyone is united for a common cause.
The history books will show that Adrian McLean was at the helm when the IDE’s books were balanced; and that he was the president when the Institute celebrated its 50th anniversary. What they won’t show is the McLean took the IDE back to its roots; and that by doing so, he reinvigorated it. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment, however, will be something entirely unspoken. Those in attendance yesterday weren’t there because rules required them to be. They were there because they wanted to be a part of it.
Sláinte.
