Forum: A public meeting place for open discussion; A medium for open discussion or voicing of ideas, such as a newspaper, a radio or television program, or a website.

I love America. I love its literature and its culture; its pride and patriotism. I love the fact that it can hold a World Series of Baseball and not invite the rest of the world. I love the fact that you can get a burger constructed almost entirely from cholesterol anytime, day or night, and that you can probably sue someone on the rare occasions that you can’t.

But most of all, I love the fact that Americans see freedom of speech and freedom of expression not so much as a constitutional right but as an item they have on temporary loan and must, therefore, use to its full potential each and every day. (This, after all, is a country where Charlie Sheen can demand a meeting with the President because he’s not entirely convinced by official explanations over the 9/11 attacks).

So I was saddened and more than a little disappointed when we received an email from the US-based demolitionforum.com to say that we have been effectively banned from their discussion area.

Rather than dwell upon the matter, I would like to take this opportunity merely to lay before you the email that we received and the one that we sent in response, purely to show our readers (and theirs) precisely why our comments have ceased without warning:

Hi Mark,

James Seligman
President
JMCA Media, Inc.

Hi James,

Kind Regards
Mark

“Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”.
Groucho Marx – 1959

It would be a terrible shame if someone posted a link to this article on demolitionforum, wouldn’t it…?

The clean-up of the 2.5 km2 Olympic Park, much of it contaminated through decades of industrial use, is almost complete and on track to beat its tough sustainability targets.

The cleaning and clearing of the Olympic Park utilised sustainable techniques to recycle and reuse over ninety per cent of the demolition material and eighty per cent of soil on site. This significantly reduced lorry journeys in the local area as only a minimal amount of contaminated material was taken to landfill sites.

As previously expected and announced industrial contamination on site included oil, petrol, tar, cyanide, arsenic and lead as well as some very low level radioactive material. In line with Environment Agency guidance a small amount of soil containing traces of this very low level radioactive material, classed as ‘exempt’ under current environmental law, has been safely buried in a cell under a bridge embankment on site. It is covered and capped on all sides. This safe disposal has been approved by the Environment Agency and the legacy landowner the London Development Agency and in no way poses a risk to the health of the workforce or public now or in the future.

Read the full story here.

Mike Taylor (left) and Ray Passeno

So when we bumped into NDA chief executive Mike Taylor and president Ray Passeno at the 2009 Convention of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors (which took place this past weekend in Killarney, Ireland) we took the opportunity to record this exclusive audio podcast interview with them.

Price undercutting is almost as old as the demolition business. In fact, it’s fair to say that no matter how low a tender price might be, there’s always someone willing to shave off a little more to keep their men employed and their machines moving.

But in the midst of the current recession, where workloads are lower and margins are so think they’re verging upon transparent, comes news that the practice of price undercutting in the US demolition business has reached a new high (or low).

Demolition News has received a document that purports to show the bid prices from 15 US contractors, all bidding for the contract to demolish the Texas Stadium, former home of the world-famous Dallas Cowboys American Football team.

As you can see from the attached document, there is a huge disparity in the tender prices, with the highest base price running at approximately 200% higher than the lowest bid. Even allowing for the fact that the highest bid (from Brandenburg) is the highest by a considerable margin (approximately $5 million) there is still a huge disparity of around $3 million between the second highest bid and the lowest. And this on a project that looks to be worth around $9 million.

texas-stadium-results

Reports from the US also suggest that price undercutting is not the only issue impacting upon their business. Apparently, there is a growing trend for contractors from the Eastern side of the US to bid for contracts as far afield as Texas, Florida and even California, something that is almost unprecedented during non-recession times.

As far as we’re aware, the contract for the demolition of the Texas Stadium is still under negotiation and the successful bidder has not yet been named. But we will keep a close eye on this one; it will be interesting to see if Weir Bros (the lowest bidder) gets the nod.

We would love to hear your comments on this story or your own experiences of undercutting in the current economic climate. Please use the Comments tab (in blue, below).

Mark Anthony

In the past few weeks, the dark veil of recession has shown signs of lifting. France, Germany and, more recently, China have seen their economies enjoy a sufficiently sustained period of growth, albeit negligible, that has lasted long enough for economists to declare them officially “out of recession”.

Closer to home, mortgage lending is on the rise again at long last and even house builders, among the worst hit by first blows of the credit crunch onslaught, are reporting a slight upturn. Together with some more positive news about consumer spending, these statistics have brought a slight flush to the cheeks of the lifeless corpse that is the world economy.

But we’re not out of the woods yet. In fact, I am concerned that even when we do crawl out of the recessionary chasm that swallowed us some 12 months ago, the struggle is far from over for the demolition industry.

The first hurdle the industry is likely to encounter is a hangover of thinner margins. Main contractors and developers have “enjoyed” a period of intense competition among demolition contractors which has led to some near-suicidal pricing practices. Having grown familiar with that level of cost, these developers and contractors are not suddenly going to accept a post-recession price hike. Indeed, I would personally be amazed if the “value engineering” built into virtually every contract these days does not continue long after we’ve shaken the recessionary monkey off our collective backs.

The second and, perhaps, bigger challenge is in planning. With the notable exception of certain Government-funded departments, new build and its associated planning has all but dried up in recent months. Even when the supposedly wise heads in Government sound the “alert over” sirens and the world returns to some semblance of normality, demolition contractors will find their workload wedged behind a logjam of planning applications held over from the dark days.

Both of these problems are beyond our control and, as usual, we will just have to make the best of a bad job. We’ll have to do the same with equipment fleet renewals, expansions and maintenance programmes that have been undermined by the current recession.

Governments around the world have climbed aboard the stimulus package bandwagon, injecting trillions of tax dollars into comatose economies; but that has failed to change the attitude of most banks and finance houses that would still rather see those dollars on their own bottom lines than on ours. As a result, even those demolition companies that have managed to maintain a good workload through the recession have found themselves blocked at every turn when they set out to buy new or replacement equipment.

And can we all, hand on heart, say that we’ve invested as much on machine maintenance during the recession as we might have during a boom period?

The one area where demolition contractors do control their own destiny however, and the area that may yet prove to be the hardest to fix, is in the field of training and recruitment.

Sadly, and despite the fact that many of us have experienced a recession or two in the past, the industry has largely followed its usual path of knee-jerk cost-cutting. First to go is the marketing budget, followed by the investment in training and then, when all else fails, companies have slashed labour levels. And, as in previous years, these job cuts may have started by slicing thin slivers of fat to help make contractors leaner, but they have continued to slice through the meat and to the very bone of some company’s corporate structures.

In my opinion, this is where our biggest problem will lie.

For one thing, training agencies have also responded to the recession by slashing grant-funding for training, a move that has been particularly keenly felt in the UK. In addition, with the majority of industry training reliant upon either on-the-job tuition or employer-funding, anyone that has found themselves unemployed during the recession will also have found themselves falling behind in their training, unable to keep up-to-date with the latest legislative changes and unable to renew existing qualifications because of the prohibitive cost.

This, I fear, is going to come back to bite us two-fold.

First, many of our most experienced and knowledgeable staff may have been forced to move on into other industry sectors, simply to keep a roof above their heads. As a result, there are now contracts managers and site supervisors stacking shelves at the local Wal-Mart of Tesco, or flipping burgers at McDonalds.

Never mind all this talk of secondary aggregates recycling and materials efficiency. This is a waste of HUMAN resources and one for which the economies of the world should be ashamed and held to account.

The second and equally savage bite will manifest itself in a long and drawn out inability to train newly-recruited staff quickly enough to track the upturn when it does finally arrive.

Many training bodies haven’t just turned off the spending tap; they’ve dismantled the pipe work and sold the water tank for scrap. That’s a problem that will not be fixed instantly and that could easily run for years as the industry stabilises. And even if a contractor refuses to allow a lack of grant funding to stop him training his new staff, will the industry still have the qualified trainers available to do the work? Or will they be salting fries alongside the site supervisor at McD’s?

Before you dismiss this as scaremongering or the cynicism of a bitter old hack, ask yourself this question:

If your workload returned to 2006/07 levels tomorrow, could you cope?

I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Mark Anthony

Demolition News has today received a message from one of its readers who (like far too many others) finds himself in the unfortunate position of currently being unemployed and unable to afford to pay to maintain his demolition qualification card. Which set us thinking – Is this really fair?

The man in question – and he is NOT alone – has spent 40 years working in the demolition industry. He has worked his way up through the ranks, committed to the required training route, and has achieved Top Man status thanks in part to the backing of his employer and the grant funding available to them, but also thanks to his own hard graft and commitment over the years.

And now, through no fault of his own, he finds his beloved industry in recession and himself prematurely on the scrapheap. From a personal point of view, the man in question is now having to consider alternative forms of employment because the cost of the card renewal is beyond his current means.

But what of the cost to the industry?

This is a man with four decades of hands-on experience in an industry where experience is everything.

Can we REALLY afford to allow a man like this (and the hundreds of others like him) to take their knowledge to another or worse, to abandon it altogether?

We’d love to hear your comments on this matter. In addition, if you find yourself in this unfortunate position, don’t forget to register at www.demolition-jobs.co.uk.

In recognition of the growing importance of the Internet in helping to promote demolition businesses, demolitionnews.com has created a series of podcasts containing some simple, easy-to-follow, and quick to implement tips and tricks to help enhance your company’s digital presence.

We have broken these down into six episodes that you can listen to individually (below). Alternatively, you can skip to the end and simply download the script that we created (and almost stuck to) for these podcasts:

Episode 1 – Introduction

Episode 2 – Getting Started

Episode 3 – What to write about

Episode 4 – How often should you write

Episode 5 – Attracting traffic

Episode 6 – Adding audio and video

raising-your-companys-web-profile

Terry Quarmby

Anyone with even the most tenuous link to the demolition business knows that demolition contractors are the undisputed world leaders in the recycling and reuse of materials, a fact that has put this industry at the very forefront of the drive for sustainability.

However, as this exclusive audio podcast reveals, this leadership comes at a cost.

What follows is the raw audio recording of a presentation by Terry Quarmby, president of the Institute of Demolition Engineers, in which he suggests that all is not rosy in the sustainability garden. In fact, Quarmby says:

• Architects and designers are undermining sustainability initiatives by an increasing use of non-recyclable, composite materials
• Demolition industry waste return figures are combined with those of the construction sector to help bolster the construction sector’s less-than-impressive statistics
• That the construction industry is unlikely to reach Government targets to reduce waste to landfill.
• The sustainability is being pursued at the cost of health and safety, forcing the demolition workforce back into more hazardous areas.
• That the growth in sustainability has been mirrored with a growth in on-site incidents and accidents

The following podcast runs for about 30 minutes but please try to find the time to listen to this either here or via iTunes.

Although the gremlins prevented these from being uploaded live, the Audio Boo system did (thankfully) retain these audios recorded live at the IDE Roadshow earlier today.

In the first of our exclusive audio podcasts recorded live at the last of the 2009 IDE Roadshows (held earlier today at the fabulous Mercedes Benz World in Weybridge, Surrey), IDE vice-president and Demolition News regular John Woodward gazes into his crystal ball at the legislation that is likely to impact upon the demolition industry in the coming months.

NOTE: This was recorded as a video (which may be posted later) but, given the timely nature of the content, we have uploaded this in its raw, audio format).