“It was louder than I expected” says project manager as judicial building falls.

Explosives reduced the old Colorado Judicial Building to rubble. Some parents saw this as a rare spectacle to share with their children. “I figure [my daughter] is at the stage where she likes to knock things down. She’s going to enjoy this after it scares her!” parent Tony Schwietzer said.

Some have a curious fascination that keeps them wanting to watch the tumbling of a building over and over again. If you blinked during the demolition, you missed it. However most of downtown heard its roar.

As for the after shock, those in the downtown area who didn’t know it was coming seemed to experience the most shock. One viewer wrote to 9NEWS saying, “Explosion! At 8:00 today, there was a large boom, and a concussion wave that hit the second after.”

The sound was even startling to those who planned the demolition.

“Well, it was a little louder than I thought, but it went as planned,” Project Manager Bill Mosher with Trammell Crow Company said. He says it was time for the building to come down. “[Buildings back then] just weren’t very well constructed; lots of leakage issues, water issues, lack of quality materials,” Mosher said of the 33-year-old building.

Read more here or view the video below.

Man’s body found at former asphalt plant.

A 59-year-old Mississippi man was pronounced dead at the scene after falling from a catwalk at a demolition site three miles north of Detroit Lakes on Saturday.

Becker County sheriff’s deputies were contacted by the man’s wife Saturday night after her husband didn’t check in with her that evening as he usually did.

Deputies found the man’s body at the site where he’d been working: a former asphalt plant that was being disassembled. According to a press release, the victim “had apparently … fallen from a catwalk of a substantial height.”

Read more here.

Our thanks to the guys at Hy-Safe Technology for bringing this one to our attention.

C&D Consultancy’s main man is top of the league.

Although Manchester United are still to play, the first weekend of our Demolition Fantasy Premier League is all but over. The points have been checked and verified. And we can exclusively reveal that C&D Consultancy’s John Woodward is currently in pole position with an impressive 65 points.

Woodward’s early season success is doubly remarkable. His team contains no real big name players; and it has three players from his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers, surely contenders for relegation by this time next year!!

To make things even more frustrating for those of us competing with John “Shankly” Woodward is the fact that he was actually texting and tweeting about his success whilst at the Wolves v Stoke game with Genesis’ Arne Marx on Saturday.

We would like to say that this is merely an early season blip and that the cream will rise to the top but, having seen the cream of my own beloved West Ham sink to the bottom for most of the past 20 years, we’re already adjusting our expectations and praying for mid-table mediocrity.

And it’s not too late for you to join the league. Just click here for more details on how to create and register your team.

Oshkosh company set to sue for additional works at water treatment plant.

In the latest example of the demolition extras trend, Miron Construction Co. and the city of Oshkosh could be headed to civil court over the cost of a revision to a water treatment plant demolition contract.

In an Aug. 2 claim filed with the city, Miron’s attorneys said the city owes the company $340,318 for having to re-stabilize ground equipment, perform additional excavation and remove an underground, concrete retaining wall at the water treatment plant. Engineers and city staff did not discover the wall until September 2009, more than a year after Miron began work demolishing the old water tower and other structures at the city water treatment plant.

The city and the project engineer, CH2M Hill, have said Miron is only entitled to an additional $26,034 — the cost to remove the retaining wall.

In its claim, Miron said CH2M Hill instructed its crews to begin removing the retaining wall immediately, promising that cost adjustments would be dealt with later. CH2M Hill said it would recommend the city charge Miron for any project delays if Miron did not promptly proceed with work.

When Miron submitted a $340,318 bill that included the cost of ground stabilization and additional excavation on Dec. 16, CH2M rejected it and recommended the city only increase the payout by the amount it cost to remove the wall, $26,034. In its claim, Miron states it has tried to settle the dispute with the city in earnest since December, but said the city has refused to offer any more than the $26,034 CH2M recommended.

Read more here.

Undiscovered asbestos to balloon costs.

The cost of the Quincy Fair Mall demolition project could more than double after even more asbestos was found in the building.

It was thought last week the material was contained to only one section of a hidden floor that had asbestos tiling. But the city was informed this week that it’s more widespread, pushing the demolition several months behind schedule into the fall.

“It’s turned out to be about as bad as it can be,” said Dennis Harrington, Quincy’s planning director. “Not from a public health standpoint, but from a cost standpoint. It turned out there are lots of hidden floors with asbestos material.”

The situation is expected to balloon the project cost from $500,000 to about $1.1 million, Harrington said. That said, the added expense won’t come out at city taxpayers’ expense, and instead will be paid with surplus federal stimulus funds.

The state department of environmental protection has determined asbestos is all around the building, making it more difficult, delicate and costly to get rid of the materials. Nonetheless, officials stress that the asbestos is not a public health threat because it hasn’t been disturbed and become airborne.

“They don’t know how much flooring is false, because this building is partially demolished and they can no longer send people to walk around in there (due to asbestos),” Harrington said. “They’ve decided to assume it all has to come out.”

Read more here.

Up to half of all country’s residential properties in need of demolition & rebuilding.

Chinese officials announced recently that they estimate up to half of the country’s existing residential structures will need to be demolished and rebuilt in the next 20 years in part because of poor quality building work – but also because many of the buildings were built without planning permission.

China annually sees more construction than any other country. In recent years, the nation has had up to 2 billion square metres of development annually. Each year, China uses 40 percent of the world’s cement and steel, the main ingredients of the construction industry.

But both experts and industry watchers have questioned the rapid speed of demolition and reconstruction, criticising poor building practices and a lack of consistent urban planning, along with a blind pursuit of economic gain on the part of developers.

In April, Qiu Baoxing, vice-minister of the ministry, said during an industry forum that Chinese buildings can only stand for between 25 and 30 years. In contrast, the average life expectancy of a building in Britain is 132 years and they last around 74 years in the United States.

Read more here.

Michigan motorcycle shop may close after demolition next door causes subsidence.

A Bay City business could be relocating in the coming weeks after a neighboring building’s demolition caused walls to buckle and subside.

Bill Smith, owner of Competition Enterprises, was told to leave his motorcycle shop due to damage done to a common wall between his shop and an unoccupied building at 1610 Broadway Street.

Now, Smith could be searching for a new location, as a city inspector had the business shutter its doors and leave about $100,000 worth of merchandise behind.

View the video here.

Brandenburg is low bidder but Bierlein gets the contract.

The city of Parchment and River Reach Partners LLC, which is planning to redevelop a vacant paper-mill property in the city, are hoping for state approval of the company they have chosen for the first round of demolition of mill buildings.

Bierlein Companies Inc., of Midland, among the largest demolition companies in the United States, is the choice of the city and developer from five bidders who sought the long-anticipated city project. Bierlein’s bid of $1,345,000 to take down Mill No. 1 along Riverview Drive between First Community Federal Credit Union to the south and Island Avenue to the north was the second-lowest of the five bids.

Brandenburg Industrial Service Co., of Chicago, came in with a lower bid, but the city and developer gave their support to Bierlein because it is a Michigan company and for the way it addressed such things as pricing of individual components of the project.

Read the full story here.

Cape Times takes simplistic approach to Athlone Tower implosion explanation.

Predicting the rate and direction of a just-imploded falling structure is notoriously difficult. In fact, until the advent of computer simulation software from the likes of Applied Science International (ASI), it was something of a black art, known to only a handful of experts who passed their knowledge down through the generations.

South Africa’s Cape Times newspaper apparently doesn’t have access to the high tech ASI software; nor was it able to call upon the incisive and experienced mind of a lifelong blaster. So, in order to explain the technical issues facing the demolition engineers charged with felling the Athlone Towers on 22 August, it resorted to that tried and tested simulation method of large photo and red marker pen.

It will be interesting to see just how closely the descent of the two towers matches the low-tech predicted path.

Workers and locals hurt as demolition of Quezon City shanties resumes

Eight people were hurt on Thursday as a demolition team tried, for the second day, to clear a 7,000-square meter lot at the corner of Broadway Avenue and 7th Street in Barangay Marianas, Quezon City in the Philippines.

Several pillbox explosions occurred as residents stood their ground behind a makeshift barricade to protect their shanties, according to Superintendent Edgardo Pamittan, commander of the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) Station 11.

“Intermittent pillbox explosions in the area resulted in the injury of six laborers and two members of the Special Weapons and Tactics team,” Pamittan said.

Read more here.