Leading Scottish contractor takes community liaison to new levels.

Former demolition company of the year Safedem is helping to keep local residents informed of progress on its Coll Place contract with a new contract-specific website. The contract – the 16th tower block to be imploded in partnership with the Glasgow Housing Association since 2005 – will be tracked throughout asbestos removal, sof strip and pre-blast preparations on the new website as part of Safedem’s ongoing community liaison initiative.

“We have developed these project specific websites in response to numerous inquiries about our projects (notably the explosives projects) from not only local residents but students undertaking projects and countless media firms looking at demolition documentaries and information on the demolition process,” explains managing director William Sinclair. “The objective is to explain the operations and to keep the local community up to date with site progress and key dates. We are also looking at the possibility of airing the blowdown live over the internet in order to emphasise the safety message for interested parties to remain clear of the area on blowdown day.”

DemolitionNews is just a day or two away from a major publishing milestone.

It is two years, four months and one day since DemolitionNews.com first threw open its online doors and welcomed the demolition professionals of the world to make use of this online news portal of ours. In the meantime, we have published just under 2,000 blog posts (that’s an average of more than two posts per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year), attracted readers, comment, support, criticism, two threats of legal action and one of physical violence from around the world. And, despite the best efforts of the banks, international Governments and a few disgruntled contractors, we’re still going strong.

Indeed, in the intervening two and a bit years, we have continued to grow, adding a used equipment area, Discussion Forum, Business Directory and Job Board along the way.

As we have mentioned numerous times, the seeds of the idea for DemolitionNews.com – a single news portal featuring demolition news and views regardless of geographic location or association affiliation – came from John Woodward, the new IDE president, who remains a fervent supporter of this site today. We’re grateful to John for his inspiration, support and his continuing role as our public conscience and moral compass.

But, over the past two years or more, we have picked up more than our fair share of contributors, advisers and – dare we say – fans including some of the biggest names in the global demolition business. They know who they are and we are grateful to all of them.

We are grateful, of course, to our growing number of sponsors and advertisers. To be honest, we would probably do it without them as this site has always been more of a passion than a career. But their financial support has helped make this sustainable as well as enjoyable.

And we are even more grateful to you, our loyal and constant readers who have grown in volume in just about every part of the world that can understand our slightly odd form of English. It is interesting to note that, according to our web statistics, we are attracting more readers in an hour today than we were in a week when we first opened our doors.

So, if you’ve been with us since the beginning, we thank you for sticking with us through our highs and lows; and if you’re new to DemolitionNews…you don’t know what you’ve missed.

Australian Entertainment Centre demolition to link city with Northbridge

Demolition of the former Perth Entertainment Centre will begin early in 2011, with the one-time concert venue making way for the long-awaited Perth City Link project.

Planning Minister John Day and Seven Group Holdings (Seven) chief executive officer Peter Gammell today announced that demolition of the Perth Entertainment Centre will begin in early 2011.

Mr Day said the Entertainment Centre, which has been vacant since 2002, sits on an integral area of land within the Perth City Link project which would reconnect the city centre with Northbridge for the first time in more than 100 years.

“The State Government has reached an agreement with Seven that sets timeframes for the demolition and facilitates the land exchange necessary to deliver the Perth City Link project,” he said.

“The Entertainment Centre will begin to be demolished early next year which will enable the State Government to progress bus and rail infrastructure works.

Read more here.

EPA orders Old Forge factory owner to cease asbestos demolition

The owner of an abandoned lampshade factory in Old Forge must cease all demolition work and enact corrective measures in order to halt the release of more asbestos into the air, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday.

The long-defunct factory on Hillcrest Drive has been on the radar of federal and state environmental officials for a slew of violations recently, including improper removal of asbestos materials during demolition and storing harmful waste materials on the property.

“We’re going after all the materials,” said Mark Carmon, a state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman. “They’re (EPA) after all the asbestos in the building.”

Efforts to reach the property owner, Walter Stocki Jr. of Old Forge, were unsuccessful. Mr. Stocki also must submit a work plan to the federal agency and post warning signs around the building, according to the EPA order.

Read the full story here.

The NFDC’s London & Southern region did itself proud on Saturday night.

Under normal circumstances, even the most demolition-related social event would fail to make the pages of DemolitionNews. However, Saturday night’s National Federation of Demolition Contractors’ London & Southern Counties region Xmas Ball, held at the prestigious Royal Lancaster Hotel in London’s West End, certainly merits a mention.

Organised by L&SC regional chairman Martin Wilson, Nikola Oakey and the team at Lawson Group, the event attracted more than 400 people for what was a great mix of old-style soul music, marching band pomp and ceremony, excellent food and more than a drop or two of alcohol (well, at least those that hadn’t drawn the short straw as nominated driver!)

Through some bizarre quirk of planning, DemolitionNews found itself on a table hosted by NFDC president David Darsey and his lovely wife Sarah, and sat beside the new IDE president John Woodward and his equally lovely wife Jill.

A variety of raffles and charity auctions raised well over £20,000 for Martin Wilson’s nominated charity – Help for Heroes, and ensured that the evening was as generous as it was enjoyable.

So, heartfelt congratulations to Martin Wilson, Nikola Oakey and everyone else involved in the planning and execution of a fabulous night.

Partial implosion marks beginning of major renovation works at Amon Carter Stadium.

A portion of TCU’s Amon Carter Stadium was imploded on Sunday to make way for a massive renovation project.

After a series of explosions at about 8:20 a.m., it took just seconds for the west grandstand of the Fort Worth landmark to fall.

The demolition is part of a $105 million renovation project that will create three-tiered seating, two-dozen suites, a 20,000 square-foot club level, as well as a new press box.

Read more here, click here for an excellent photographic sequence, or view the video below:

Demolition underway at Transbay Terminal as “Big Red” takes centre stage.

Is the wrecking ball a throwback to the demolition of yesteryear? Perhaps. Is it the most effective form of demolition? Perhaps not. Do we still love them? Damn right we do. Why is why we were so taken with these fantastic photos from the demolition of San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal

We have included one shot here; but click here to see the rest and to read the accompanying article.

Is the explosive demolition sector engaging in a mutually assured destruction?

The subject of the Ohio smokestack that fell the wrong way is a story that just refuses to go away. Still the subject of conversation and discussion here in Europe, the story is now attracting a similar level of debate in the US where it is the subject of our latest Demolition Digest blog post.

However, the longer it goes on, the less the story is about a problematic demolition and the more it becomes about the way in which those problems are being exacerbated and perceived.

When we featured Eric Kelly’s comments on Monday this week, the story quickly became the most visited on the website for some considerable time. But with the promise of an independent engineering report that is expected to, at least partially, exonerate Kelly and the Advanced Explosive Demolition team, the short-term damage to Kelly’s reputation is likely to be replaced with the long-term damage to the blasting sector.

As we have stated previously, the demolition business is highly competitive and, at times, verging on cut-throat. The fact that some of Kelly’s competitors have sought to make mileage from this perceived failure comes as no surprise.

But are these companies not in danger of undermining their own livelihoods by calling into question the very way they make a living?

Try putting yourselves in the position of a prospective client with a smokestack to demolish. Do you really want to entrust that demolition to a method that can, occasionally, go awry?

It is not as if the client doesn’t have a choice. Between high reach excavators, top down methods and even helicopter-mounted attachments, explosive demolition is not the only game in town. And the constant questioning of this particular method may merely serve to sow the seeds of doubt in the clients’ mind.

Furthermore, while we certainly aren’t sounding the premature death knell for explosive demolition, surely it is already destined to become an increasingly niche demolition method?

As the world becomes more environmentally-aware, and selective recycling and the associated waste segregation becomes a key driver of future workload, explosive demolition is already in danger of becoming marginalised like manual demolition and the wrecking ball before it.

The one thing it doesn’t need right now is to be undermined by the very purveyors of what remains a proven and, in the right circumstances, economically-sound and ostensibly safe means of demolition.

Pickaxe blinds teenager on demolition job, reports Construction Enquirer.

A demolition firm has been fined £8,000 after a teenager was blinded in one eye while helping to demolish a mill in Tameside.

The 19-year-old was using a pickaxe to lever up wooden floorboards at Hyde Mill, on Ashton Road in Hyde on 8 September 2009, when he was hit in his left eye by a splinter.

Dovestone Contractors Ltd, which has an annual turnover of £2.7 million, was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive after it failed to ensure the teenager wore goggles or other eye protection.

Read the full story here.

Mystery surrounds death of Shanghai demolition protester.

The latest tragedy in a string of bloody cases of forced demolition in the country occurred on Tuesday in Shanghai, when a 49-year-old man died while trying to protect his house.

The victim, Zhou Daming, was “besieged” and “pushed” by a group of 20 men who came to notify him of the impending demolition of his house, located in downtown Shanghai’s Huangpu district.

When the men dispersed, Zhou was found lying unconscious, said witness Zhou Juhua, the victim’s sister.
The man died half an hour later, despite emergency treatment by the nearby 120 medical emergency center, his sister said.

It was not clear whether the demolition squad beat the man, as he had no obvious injuries, she said.
The possibility that the man, who suffered from high blood pressure, might have died from a sudden rise in blood pressure due to stress or anger could not be ruled out, she said.

Read more here.