In February 2016, the boiler house of the Didcot A Power Station partially collapsed, claiming the lives of four demolition workers. The investigation into that incident remains ongoing. In September 2019, two men were killed on a demolition site at Redcar in horrific circumstances. That investigation also remains ongoing. On Thursday 29 September 2022, a…Read moreRead more
Comment
Opinion – A dangerous precedent
Opinion – The Mark Noble way
You will have to bear with me. The story I am about to lay before you really IS rooted in demolition, even if at first it might feel like an excuse for me to talk about my beloved (and beleaguered) West Ham United. Mark Noble has just been appointed as Sporting Director at West Ham…Read moreRead more
Opinion – The farce of industry awards
The latest outing of the Construction News Specialist Awards saw AR Demolition deservedly emerge victorious in THREE categories. Meanwhile, the awards served to highlight the farce of awards sponsorship by interested parties, and the industry’s willingness to award those identified in a £150 million bid rigging scandal that has brought the entire industry into disrepute.
Opinion – The forgotten fatalities
Later this week, I am due to speak to the BBC yet again about the Didcot Power Station disaster that happened in February 2016. Unlike many of their colleagues in the wider media, the BBC thankfully hasn’t forgotten the incident that claimed the lives of four men on that fateful day. We are fast approaching…Read moreRead more
Comment – Saying goodbye to the Queen of our nation and to the King of my family
On the afternoon of 8 September 2022, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away peacefully in her sleep. She was 96 years old and, as the only monarch most of us have ever known, had been ever present in our lives. Six days before, a working man passed away peacefully in a Sussex hospital. He…Read moreRead more
Demolition by the book
In a speech in 1948, Winston Churchill famously said: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. Quite how he found the time to run a country and win a world war between coining iconic phrases remains a mystery. But that’s a discussion for another day. The fact is that, in…Read moreRead more
Death of the Bootstrap Entrepreneur
Across the span of more than three decades, I have had the pleasure and the honour of interviewing countless demolition company founders. Whether they came directly to demolition or jumped across from an allied business, all those founders have shared a common theme. Each of them started with precious little in the way of money…Read moreRead more
Comment – I do declare!
It is that time of the year when many of us will be heading to the Hellhole that is the modern airport ahead of our summer vacation. Assuming you can navigate the mountains of unclaimed and misplaced baggage, the queues of disgruntled and frustrated holidaymakers and the TV news crews there to capture the chaos…Read moreRead more
Comment – The scales of justice are imbalanced
The life of a roofer is worth 27 times that of a demolition worker. That is surely the implication of a pair of recent fatal accident prosecutions: in the case of a roofer, the fine levied against the company involved was £135,000. In the case of the demolition worker, the fine was just £5,000. I…Read moreRead more
Compliant? Well, sort of…
In the field of demolition, the term “compliant” can apparently cover (or cover up) a multitude of sins.
