Eyesore of unfinished homes face wrecking crews as city clamps down.

In news that will gladden the hearts of local lawn service and weed spraying companies, an Albuquerque home builder only has six weeks to get some of his homes in shape, or else the city will tear them down. The unfinished properties were built by Longford Homes and have become crime magnets and eyesores for more than a year.

Neighbors say the group of homes have become well known for attracting prostitution, illegal dumping, break-ins, burglaries, vandalism, even a couple having sex in a garage, since Eyewitness News 4 broke the story last year.

One way or another, the problem will end by June 1st. That’s the deadline city officials have given Longford Homes to restart construction and clean up the weeds and garbage. If that deadline is not met, the city will roll in its bulldozers and flatten five or six of the problematic homes at a cost of more than $60,000 to the taxpayers.

You can read the full story here or watch the Eyewitness News video below.

Chinese official behind enforced demolition jailed for 11 years.

It may be the world’s most populated nation and it may boast the world’s fastest-growing economy but, where demolition is concerned, China appears to have cornered the market in bad news.

In previous months, we have seen people setting themselves on fire and another buried alive as they protested about the enforced demolition of their homes. But thankfully, it appears that the tide may at last be turning with the news that an official in east China Anhui Province has been jailed for 11 years for taking bribes and abusing his power to help a forced demolition that led to the house owner’s suicide.

Cao Yingzhang, vice head of Yingchuan District in Fuyang City, received the sentence from a county court on Monday.

The court also confiscated 100,000 yuan (US$14,651) he received in bribes from property developers, Beijing Times reported today.

House owner Chen Shaokun drank a bottle of pesticide in November 2008 after a demolition crew beat up his son’s wife, broke her nose, and tore down his house without his consent. Since then, he has been in a vegetative state.

Fuyang city government started the eviction plan in May 2008 to widen the street. Chen refused to move because he did not agree with the compensation plan.

Read the full story here.

Bidding war breaks out between lawn services company and weed spraying company.

Way back at the beginning of September last year, Demolition News interviewed the US National Demolition Association’s Ray Passeno and Mike Taylor about the bidding war that was (and still is) raging in the US demolition sector; the fact that many local contractors were searching further afield for much-needed work; and the fact that tenders were attracting the interest of companies with little or no demolition experience.

During that interview (which you can hear here), Mike Taylor memorably coined the phrase “Bob the Landscaper” to describe a man with a machine who, with no work in his chosen field of endeavour, decides to venture into the demolition business to help keep his business afloat.

That throw-away remark has now proved to be strangely prophetic with the news that a bidding war has broken out between a lawn services company and a weed spraying firm over a demolition and land clearing job for the Bloomfield School District.

The confusing and ongoing dispute relates to a proposed settlement to the original low bidder, who was later shunned when a negotiated price was agreed upon with another contractor. Local newspaper The Greene County Daily World has learned the school district may offer Kramer Custom Weed Spraying and Land Clearing LLC of Linton an undisclosed amount of money. The offer will represent the anticipated profit margin that Kramer would have made on the job. Kramer told the Greene County Daily World on Tuesday that the amount he told the school district that he would have made on the job exceeds $1,000.

The full story can be read here and, not surprisingly, it concentrates primarily upon the local politics of the bidding war. What it fails to address, however, is the fact that the two front-runners in a demolition bidding war are clearly not demolition contractors. While the contract clearly contains some land clearance, does anyone really believe that a weed spraying company is the ideal candidate for any kind of demolition?

Either way, perhaps NDA chief executive Mike Taylor can now add “prophet” to his CV.

UK demolition contractor fined for allowing son to work on pub roof without scaffolding.

The Health and Safety Executive prosecuted Ivan Pope after two men were spotted dismantling the roof of a disused pub in Lincolnshire using just the upturned bucket of an excavator to work from.

Leicester Crown Court heard that between 16 and 25 January 2008, Mr Pope, trading as Westwise Demolition, was demolishing the former Manvers Arms public house on Monks Road in Lincoln. The demolition involved piece-by-piece removal of the two storey pub’s roof tiles.

One man sat on the roof, removing tiles and passing them to the son of the defendant, who was standing in the upturned bucket of an excavator positioned level with the edge of the roof.

Once the bucket filled with tiles, Mr Pope’s son climbed onto the roof before the bucket was lowered, emptied and raised back up; he then climbed back in and carried on the task.

There was no scaffolding to prevent the men on the roof from falling and nothing to protect those working below from any tiles dropped or dislodged during these activities.

Mr Pope, of Hassock Hill Drove, Gorefield, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching Section 3 (2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 for failing to ensure people not in his employment were not exposed to risks to their safety.

He was today fined £6,000 and ordered to pay £13,483 costs by Leicester Crown Court.

Read more here.

Closure of Construction Equipment magazine will have widespread repercussions.

Those of you that read these idle ramblings on a regular basis will recall that, late last year, we lamented the sad passing of the UK construction magazines Contract Journal and Plant Managers Journal after their owner – Reed Business Information – decided it was no longer willing to prop up these ailing titles in the face of declining advertising revenues. You might also recall my own personal sadness at this unfortunate turn of events, Contract Journal being the magazine upon which I cut my journalistic teeth.

However, sentimentality aside, the closure of these two magazines was, perhaps, inevitable. Starved on investment, they had long failed to compete with other UK construction magazines and were a shadow of their former selves. And, in some areas, they had no-one to blame but themselves. Without wishing to hark back to the “good ol’ days”, it is certainly true that the journalistic make-up of these magazines had changed, and not for the better. Twenty years ago, the editorial staff included qualified civil engineers and construction professionals; the equipment was written about by people that had bought, sold and operated it. They were of the industry. Today, however, trade magazines are the domain of journeyman journalists who have written everything from computers to construction, or for ambitious youngsters for whom a spell of writing about diggers is merely a stepping stone towards national newspaper journalism.

Like the dust cloud from an Icelandic volcano, the fallout from the failure of these magazines continues to have an impact. Construction News, the last remaining weekly construction title, now has a near monopoly and can do more or less as it wishes without fear of competition, including putting its content behind a paid firewall which means that readers have to fork out cash each time they read a new article. Rather than cropping up on new or existing magazines, the editorial team behind Contract Journal now haunts the online hinterland that, for many, is the elephant’s graveyard of journalism. And, worst of all, the UK construction business loses a valuable and often insightful source of news and information.

Why am I mentioning this now? Well, quite simply, because Reed Business Information has now repeated its construction magazine culling with the shocking and unexpected closure of US title Construction Equipment, a leader in its field for some 60 years.

But while the ultimate effect will be the same, if not worse, the circumstances could not be more different. The journalists behind Construction Equipment were the top of their game, the “grand fromage” of the mobile equipment sector. In fact, when I first picked up my journalist’s notepad some quarter of a century ago, my then editor handed me a copy of Construction Equipment and said, simply: “THAT is what you’re aiming for”.

Unlike its UK Reed stablemate, Construction Equipment HAD successfully made the offline to online transition. Indeed, it was some of the machine test videos and other online content from the likes of Rod Sutton and Larry Stewart that helped shape Demolition News. It was also the reason that I was honoured to write a regular Demolition Digest blog for what was the world’s largest and most widely-read construction equipment magazine.

Sadly, Reed’s determination to divest itself of paper-based business-to-business publishing, combined with a recessionary decline in available advertising revenue, has brought all of this to an untimely end. And sixty years after setting the standard for the industry, the world’s foremost source of mobile equipment news, views and insight has closed its doors.

And the global construction sector will be poorer for its passing.

Texaco Beacon Research Center to be demolished to allow assessment of contamination.

Demolition is expected to begin soon at the former Texaco Beacon Research Center in the Fishkill hamlet of Glenham. The purpose is the assessment and removal of contamination at the site.

Mark Hendrickson, project manager for Chevron Environmental Management Co., said 43 of the site’s 64 buildings will be taken down to their foundations after asbestos remediation is completed.

“The site is inactive, and we would like to put it back to productive use,” he said.

The former research center is in the Fishkill hamlet of Glenham.

A textile mill was built on the site in 1811. It closed in 1875 due to financial hardship, but reopened under new owners. That business closed its doors in 1929.

Texaco purchased the property in 1931, renovating the former mill to become a crude oil refining research facility.

Expansion, including above-ground storage tanks, took place until 1980. Texaco and Chevron merged in 2001.

At its peak, the center employed about 1,200 people.

A decrease in research activities led to the closure of the facility in 2003. The storage tanks were demolished the same year.

Hendrickson said a lot of investigation into contamination has been done over the years. “Basically, under the (foundation) slabs are some of the last remaining places to look,” he said.

Once the structures are demolished, Hendrickson said, technicians will drill through the concrete slabs to sample the soil underneath.

Read the full story here.

Work has restarted on Haiti cleanup following fatality. But workers are still at risk.

When news of the tragic and devastating Haiti earthquake made the news on 12 January, governments, celebrities and citizens leapt to the aid of one of the world’s poorest nations sending financial and humanitarian aid valued at billions of dollars.

But 12 weeks on and local and volunteer demolition workers remain at risk without hard hats and protective workwear. The lack of proper safety equipment was brought into stark focus last week with the death of one demolition worker, and the injury of another. And now, just a few days later, another man has been seriously injured having fallen from a roof after suffering a seizure.

All demolition work was basically halted in Jacmel last week after one man was killed and another injured while working for one of the many non-government organizations that employ people in town to tear down damaged buildings. At a meeting the morning after the death, several groups met with city and federal officials to discuss how to make demolition work safer.

Wearing green t-shirts, locals and volunteers have been doing everything from garbage collection to street sweeping and heavy duty rubble clearing over the past few days. But many of these workers have complained that they are being mistreated. Holding out hole-filled gloves, some of the men said they were lucky to be issued gloves at all. Many split pairs with their friends, each wearing one to pad whichever hand bore the brunt of their shoveling work. There aren’t enough hard hats to go around, they said, nor are there work boots. Many of the workers had on sneakers or Crocs while they were clearing the lot.

Read more here.

Police applaud Priestly Demolition wrecking of Hell’s Angels gang HQ.

Police officers were among the onlookers when a former Hells Angels clubhouse in Oshawa, Ontario was demolished on 30 March. A crowd of civilians, as well as a helicopter, were also there to observe the demo job by Aurora-based Priestly Demolition. For members of the Durham Regional Police Service who observed the demolition, the building stood as a symbol of defiance to authority.

“This really is a symbol of criminal activity and organized crime, basically snubbing their nose at the community and saying ‘we’re here and we’re not going anywhere and you can’t make us go anywhere,’ and now they’re gone,” Durham Regional Police Service Chief Mike Ewles told Oshawa This Week.

The contract apparently meant rather less to Priestly Demolition. “It was nothing special to us,” says John Phillips, vice-president of operations with Priestly. “It doesn’t make any difference to us if the front door says Hells Angels or Girl Guides. The Ministry of the Attorney General asked us for a quote a year ago and recently asked us to get the job done quickly to finish the contract before their financial year-end.”

Read the full story here.

Fallout from Iceland volcano could impact upon world’s biggest equipment exhibition.

The Bauma exhibition in Munich is more than just a trade show; the vast event not only gathers together everybody who is anybody in the construction and demolition equipment sector, but it also acts as a highly accurate barometer of industry confidence. A successful show never fails to give the industry a shot in the arm.

But the organisers, exhibitors and delegates that were to cram into the Messe Munchen next week are now looking to the heavens, their plans, hopes and aspirations at the mercy of an ominous cloud of dust and silica contamination blasted into the atmosphere by a volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Here in the UK, the country experienced its first ever peace time no-fly day, with all airports being closed to air traffic. Those closures continue today. The cloud has also grounded aircraft in Denmark, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden, all key contributors of both exhibitors and visitors. And, at the time of writing, the volcano remains active and the disruptions look set to continue into the weekend when many visitors would be traveling to Munich.

Of course, travel disruptions will have little or no effect upon the tens of thousands of German natives. But with both rail and ferry services being called into action as a replacement for grounded aircraft, even those traveling to the show from neighbouring countries in mainland Europe are likely to face delays.

Scientists to use findings from Texas Stadium implosion in research into Earth’s crust.

The implosion of Texas Stadium in Irving may soon provide researchers with more data to use in determining characteristics of the earth’s crust and mantle.

The stadium is located in the Ouachita deformation zone. “Dallas happens to be a really interesting location between a couple of terrains,” Dr. Jay Pulliam, professor of geology, said. “The stuff below the sediments, the actual solid elements, the crust and mantle has not been studied here.”

Pulliam worked with Dallas ISD teacher David Boyd and a team of Baylor students to place a seismometer and recording equipment 0.47 kilometers from the implosion site last Tuesday. This proximity will allow the researchers to know the exact time of the implosion and the specific wave form created by it, so that they can track the wave at other stations that picked it up.

“We wanted first to see the seismic wave form that was created when they blew up Texas Stadium,” Boyd said. “If we know the exact parameters of that wave form, we can deduct that wave form from the other seismometers.”

Read the full story here.