59 year old bridge is scheduled for implosion later today.

The Allegheny River Bridge is set to be demolished Tuesday morning after standing over Harmar Township since 1951.

A lot of the removal work has actually been done ahead of time. “All the deck for the whole length of the bridge has been removed. It’s 23-hundred feet long, so it was quite a bit of work to remove all the deck,” said Chuck Parish, project manager with Walsh Construction.

“It’s a good bit of work-up ahead of time, but if everything goes smoothly, it should be minimal impact to the public and to traffic.”

The bridge is being replaced by twin spans, each nearly a half-mile long, costing more than $193 million dollars.

The Turnpike Commission and KDKA will be broadcasting the implosion live on their respective websites to reduce spectator numbers and we hope to bring you footage of the implosion later today. In the meantime, please click here to view the pre-blast video and to read more.

Work stops on famous Plymouth landmark demolition pending further investigation.

The demolition of the Hoe Centre in Plymouth has been halted on the grounds of public safety.

The University of Plymouth’s decision to knock down the building in Notte Street has ignited a storm of protest.

Now, in an e-mail passed to local newspaper The Herald, Jonathan Harris, an inspector for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), wrote on Friday: “I attended the site today and stopped demolition work on the grounds of public safety being compromised by the limited exclusion zone. I am meeting with representatives from the demolition contractor on Monday to discuss the way forward.”

The HSE was apparently alerted to the danger by a Plymouth City Council officer, who sent photographs of the site.

Read more here.

Three high-profile incidents in three weeks casts the Canadian demolition in poor light.

As anyone that has ever had their ill-advised attempts at disco dancing broadcast to a watching world will testify, YouTube is an unforgiving medium. And if proof of that were needed, there are at least two Canadian demolition companies that might have preferred NOT to have appeared on the web recently.

But while three separate incidents (two in Vancouver, another in Edmonton) do not a trend make, three high-profile accidents in as many weeks has certainly cast the Canadian demolition sector in a very unpleasant light. And thanks to the global reach of services like YouTube ensures that the fallout from such high profile accidents is not limited merely to the city, state or country in which they occurred.

However, while the companies in question were undoubtedly unfortunate to have their worst practice captured on film, we can’t help wondering if these three incidents (and let’s not forget that the first two happened just minutes apart) are the sign of a deeper problem in the country’s demolition and dismantling industry.

Now we’re not suggesting that all of the blame resides with the contractors (although dumping three buildings or parts thereof in the streets does not look good on anyone’s records). How was work on both contracts allowed to progress while the busy street adjacent remained open to car and pedestrian traffic? Why did the company behind the Vancouver contract not have a written safety plan?

Have Your Say: We’d love to get your thoughts on this recent spate of Canadian accidents and what they say about the current state of the country#s demolition sector. So please click here and let us have your thoughts.

Eureka Mill demolition ongoing despite asbestos concerns.

A company ignored several government warnings to postpone tearing down an abandoned Chester County textile mill until all asbestos was properly located and removed, according to state documents.

A July 6 letter from South Carolina’s top environmental agency to Chester County officials says demolition continues at several buildings on the Eureka Mill property just outside Chester even though PJW Enterprises had not properly determined the location of asbestos-contaminated materials.

The Department of Health and Environmental Control ordered the company to stop on six occasions since October, the letter says. Some of the debris collected from the mill contained an asbestos concentration of 30 percent, according to the letter. Any material with an asbestos concentration higher than 1 percent falls under state removal rules.

“We are looking at the potential for taking some type of enforcement action,” DHEC spokesman Thom Berry said.

Read more here.

Another Canadian contract, another building winds up in the street.

Debris from a building in the midst of being demolished collapsed on Sunday, covering the eastbound lanes of a downtown Edmonton thoroughfare.

No injuries have been reported and police were clearing people from the scene late Sunday afternoon.

The collapse crushed the plywood retaining wall wrapped around the building and covered a backhoe with rubble.

Katie Orr, an employee at the Second Cup across the street from the scene, witnessed the collapse Sunday.

“It just went the wrong way,” Orr said. “Luckily it was a pretty slow time and no one was hurt.”

Orr said the collapsed building also knocked over a tree and partially tipped over a street light.

The Mayfair, a drab, five-storey structure built in 1944, is being removed by ProCura Real Estate to make way for a new twin-tower apartment complex expected to house about 900 residents.

Read more here.

Double near-miss contractor accused of taking more safety shortcuts.

The company responsible for a demolition gone wrong in downtown Vancouver last month started up work again Friday, but was asked to stop once more within hours.

In a report released Thursday, the city found that Global Excavating and Demolition didn’t have a written safety plan or final clearance from building inspectors before knocking down the former home of the William Davis Centre for Acting on June 10.

At the demolition site Friday, CTV News heard a warning to the crew as they were allowed to resume work for the first time since that day. “We took a bunch of shortcuts this morning. You see these corners — they’ve got to be covered with something to keep them from cutting the rope. That’s a bust if we get caught,” one member of the crew cautioned workers.

But a man who said he was the site engineer said the company wasn’t taking any shortcuts.

“I haven’t heard that kind of thing; no one is planning to take any shortcuts,” he said.

When CTV News called Global’s head office, a company representative said he didn’t have time to talk.

James Schouw, president of the development company looking after the site, insists that Global is an experienced and reputable contractor that has completed 139 jobs in Metro Vancouver, including 51 in municipal Vancouver.

Crews know they are being scrutinized, Schouw said, and are working to avoid even common demolition mishaps.

“The kind of mistakes and little slip-ups that can happen on a regular basis clearly will not be tolerated at all on this site,” he said. “There’s just no room to make another mistake.”

Friday afternoon, the company was told to stop work by city inspectors because it didn’t have a necessary extension to a zone permit. The issue was resolved shortly after, and crews were back at work on Saturday morning.

Vancouver Coun. Suzanne Anton said the city should investigate the possibility of “shortcuts” being taken on site. “It doesn’t reflect well, if that’s what was said, on the contractor or the city’s oversight processes,” she said.

Read the full story here.

JCB unveils shagtastic new low fuel consumption backhoe loader.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if ever Austin Powers hung up his mojo and took up a job in the construction industry? No, neither had we; at least not until this photo arrived from JCB.

The company has produced this one-off machine to announce the launch of a new backhoe loader that will not only cut customers’ fuel costs by 16 percent but which also features “an in-cab drinks machine able to make tea, coffee and soup for those cold winter mornings”.

Impressive and questionable though these developments are, we were far more enamoured with the patriotic paint job.

OH BEHAVE!

Farmer who repelled demolition crews with home-made rockets lands cash payout.

A farmer in China who fired improvised rockets at demolition teams says he has been rewarded with a generous compensation package.

Yang Youde, a 56-year old farmer, was told his land was needed to build new offices. The developers offered him compensation but he did not think it was enough. The case highlights the efforts some Chinese are taking to preserve their property rights in the face of forced relocation by government officials.

Mr Youde built a watchtower. When demolition teams arrived, he fired home made rockets towards them, repelling them twice.

Read the full story here.

Company behind botched demolition didn’t follow regulations, says city.

In what must surely qualify as the year’s finest example of stating the obvious, Vancouver city officials have declared that the company behind last month’s double-demolition near miss “didn’t follow regulations”. (The fact that Global Excavating & Demolition Ltd twice deposited several tonnes of debris onto busy streets in just a few minutes was probably a clue).

The city’s review of the incident found the contractor did not have a written safety plan in place and did not have final clearance from the district building inspector.

The city’s chief building official on Thursday lifted the suspension of the company’s demolition permit for the site after reviewing and accepting Global’s construction safety plan for the location, payment for the damage to city property and compliance with the requirements set out for the company to do demolition work in the city, it said in a press release.

Read more here.

Further administrative delays push Bellaire Bridge demolition back still further.

There are times in this business when the planets align, the Gods smile, and the headlines and stories just seem to write themselves. Just a week after we uploaded our podcast on a Europe-wide study on administrative burdens comes a story of a bridge that is seemingly being held up by nothing more than paperwork.

As we have reported previously, the demolition of the Bellaire Bridge had been delayed by a variety of unforeseen administrative hold-ups. Several weeks on and those hold-ups apparently show now sign of subsiding. Despite now owning the bridge in question, Delta Demolition seems to have run headlong into a series of obstacles constructed almost entirely from red tape.

“Just like any contractor who comes to town to do any work, we require them to have a contractor’s license, workers comp, provide insurance and provide us guarantees that they own the bridge. They own the property, and they are going to do the work satisfactory so we don’t have any problems down the road,” said David McLaughlin, Benwood Code Enforcement officer.

Delta Demolition said it has also discovered asbestos in the window frames on the old toll shacks. The demolition crew now has to wait for results to come back for the shacks

To learn more, please click here to view the News 9 video.