Angela Chouaib on how one UK contractor reduced exposure to hand arm vibration.

The HAV debate driven by the Health and Safety Executive, leading contractors, equipment suppliers and rental providers has seen major changes in tool design and operating practices to minimize damage to the health of operatives. Hire companies have had to bear a big responsibility to drive the campaign, updating rental fleets with low vibration equipment and creating initiatives to learn about the HAV facts

But it’s actually working with tools on-site where the issues surrounding hand arm vibration remains a kind of dark art or a nightmare of calculations. The accusation still holds; it is difficult to understand, difficult to communicate, difficult to monitor and difficult to implement.

Many key contractors have put considerable effort into HAV and one particular contractor BAM Nuttall saw an opportunity to assess and manage HAV at a construction project in Kent. Using the latest compact HAVi device, BAM Nuttall product tested the HAVI system for hand-arm vibration management.

The civil engineering project at a waste water treatment works in Lenham, Kent comprised multiple construction tasks, a variety of tools and more than 15 operatives and staff. Here they would trial test the HAVi for more than three months and assess the results

BAM Nuttall Site Agent Nick Howard actively involved operatives in the process including training on HAV and contracted with tool rental provider GAP Group for the supply of a wide diversity of tools and machines. The project proved an ideal scenario to test out the HAVi system.

Nick explained, “Hand arm vibration was one area of health and safety management that BAM Nuttall focused on. We made a decision to look into HAV in a real time situation and if HAVi was to deliver for us then we had a simple working solution for the entire company.

HAVi is a very simple compact piece of kit and operatives easily understood how it worked and adopted it.”
Using as many as 15 HAVi units on site as tools were brought in on hire, HAVi units were set up for each individual tool. All operatives had to do was simply observe the points and be fully aware that the danger limit of 400 points a day is a maximum, pocket size counter books recorded a daily tally. No complicated training, just a quick set up and get on with the job at hand.

“What the HAVI did immediately was get operators on board; they could understand how it worked and what it was measuring” said Nick.

Andy Mee, Technical Sales Manager, for HAVi visited site and set up the project, including training key personnel on how to use a HAVi on different machines. For 2- 3 months BAM Nuttall observed, monitored and got to grips with HAVi.

The majority of tools fell within safe working limits. But one clear observation was that some tools regarded as low risk tools can have a major HAV issue depending on usage time. A lightweight impact tool can do as much damage as heavier high impact tools

The HAVi highlighted some surprising results and allowed both management and operatives to observe and learn about a variety of tools and to take this forward on to other sites

Another element was that the HAVi relies on manufacturers and hire companies providing in use vibration magnitude measurements which are often the results from bench testing. National rental company, GAP Group utilises the traffic light tool tag system to provide the correct data to set up tools.

Not all rental companies are actively providing HAV data, which is surprising given it is a recommended requirement of tool hire. The OPERC HAVTEC database provides details for the majority of plant and equipment to help in the election of the most appropriate tools.

After two months trial with BAM Nuttall the HAVi has provided clear guidelines for managing the HAV risks on site. Overall the impact of trialling HAVi has been a success and immediately identified the low and high risk areas, highlighting problem vibratory tools and methods. High risk areas meant tools could be assessed for performance and operatives could be rotated to share the risk and at the same time BAM Nuttall assessed measures to change to more suitable tools or techniques.

The system minimizes risk by not allowing operatives to exceed the maximum dosage points, it does not wait until the results are logged and recorded to highlight that actually the damage has been done.

Steve Cluer General Manager BAM Nuttall Ltd said “HAVi helped BAM Nuttall focus our efforts where they needed to be so we could monitor and manage HAV in the workplace. Following further assessment I am confident it will become a benchmark for good practice across the company.

Having been exposed to this initial field testing HAVi has demonstrated to be robust at withstanding typical site wear and tear. Staff have bought-in to the system and it definitely places an important part of working safely back into the hands of operatives.“

For further information, please contact Angela at Riverside Environmental Services Ltd on Tel: (UK) 0870 950 0161. To see the HAVi unit in operation, see the video below:

Unexpected demolition of 300+ buildings leaves three dead from shock in Accra.

Three people are reported to have died at Kwabenya, in the Ghanaian capital Accra, following last Saturday’s demolition exercise on the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission land, which affected about 300 buildings, according to Percy Nii Addy, a local representative.

The deceased people, whose names are yet to be established, are said to have died from shock, after witnessing their properties and possessions demolished in an exercise undertaken by authorities of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC), under the supervision of fully armed police and military personnel, numbering close to 200.

Read the full story here.

Construction News publishes its Top 11 demolition contractors table.

UK trade magazine has published details of the Top 11 (why 11 is a mystery) UK demolition contractors by turnover.

There are no huge surprises – Keltbray, McGee and Erith stealing the top three positions – but what is interesting is that the leading six companies all enjoyed a significant growth in turnover over the previous year, even though most of the accounts were submitted after the current recession took hold.

To read the full table, please click here.

Aerial footage of smokestack implosion from Lawrence earlier today.

A pair of 100-year old chimneys were dropped by explosives in Boston just a few minutes ago.

You can check out the raw TV footage by clicking here or you can check out the amateur footage below:

Our weekly news round-up is about to get bigger…and better.

For the past few months, we have been producing This Week in Demolition, a weekly email round-up of all the major news covered by Demolition News during the preceding seven days.

It has proved extremely popular. Indeed, according to our traffic statistics, its arrival on a Monday regularly doubles daily readership levels on the website.

So we’re upping our game.

First of all, future bulletins will be more detailed and contain far more links than previous editions, providing recipients with a simple, single click to the industry news of their choosing.

In addition, we are delighted to announce that for the next 12 month, the This Week in Demolition bulletins will be exclusively sponsored by world-leading crushing and screening equipment supplier, Sandvik.

So if you don’t currently receive a weekly email from us, please use the Sign Up For Newsletter area to the right to add you name and email address details. And if you think any of your friends, colleagues or customers would benefit from receiving this information, please ask them to sign up too.

Demolition work starts at Freedlander department store in Wooster, Ohio.

For 130 years, it held up against the worst Mother Nature could throw at it. It survived a complete revamping of its famous facade. It even withstood thousands of bargain-crazed shoppers year after year.

But the former Freedlander’s Department Store building in downtown Wooster won’t survive any longer. Crews from Cleveland-based B&B Wrecking spent Wednesday putting the final pieces of fencing around the structure, and anticipate beginning dismantling today.

Mike Sigg, director of administration, says the facility was in worse shape than initially thought. “There’s a lot of termite damage all over the building,” Sigg said. “I know (environmental remediation crews) ran into termites while they were working on the building in the floor joist. Ted (Bogner) told us his dad actually replaced the floor joists years ago in there because of termite damage. … At this point, we’re anxious to see it come down. We’ll feel a lot better when it’s on the ground.”

Read the full story here.

Video that nicely captures the post-blast shockwave.

Although some of the ramblings here might suggest otherwise, I am actually a trained journalist. I have been doing this stuff for the past quarter century, honing my skills and perfecting my art.

But, every once in a while, I am reminded that sometimes (just sometimes mind) a situation can be summed up in just one or two words. Enjoy:

30-storey West Palm Beach tower implosion on hold over excessive insurance demands.

The explosive demolition of a 30-storey condominium building in West Palm Beach has been thrown into turmoil after city officials demanded $50 million of insurance cover.

You can read the full account of the story here or you can read our own take on how we imagine the conversation between city and contractor went, below:

City Official: OK, so we’ve read through your plans and that all looks to be in order.
Contractor: Good. When can we start.
City Official: Whoa, hold on there fellah. There’s a few things we need to get straight first.
Contractor: OK
City Official: First, you’ve done this kind of work before right?
Contractor: Absolutely. Hundreds of times.
City Official: So you know we’re going to need detailed method statements, risk assessments. All that kind of thing?
Contractor: Sure, no problem.
City Official: Good. We also have a few very specific requirements for this project too.
Contractor: OK. Shoot.
City Official: Well, we think circular exclusiion zones are just so 80s. So we’d like a trapezoidal exclusion zone. We reckon that would look real pretty from the air.
Contractor: Erm, OK.
City Official: And this here condo is such an eyesore and we’re keen that we shouldn’t replace one eyesore with another. So we’d like you to ensure that what we’re left with isn’t so much rubble…more pixie dust.
Contractor: Hmmm…
City Official: In fact, while you’re about it, we’d really like this entire job to be as environmentally sensitive as possible. So we’d prefer it if you didn’t use traditional explosives and used tiny heart-shaped firecrackers made from hummingbird tears instead.
Contractor: ???
City Official: Oh, and one last thing. You’re going to need $50 million of insurance cover.
Contractor: ARE YOU ON CRACK!!??

Work is underway to demolish Arizona’s Lumberjack Stadium.

It is easy to be critical of local newspaper coverage of demolition contracts (and we have certainly been critical in the past) but we do accept that they are writing for a different and local audience.

While readers of the Arizona Daily Sun were primarily interested in the fact that the Lumberjack Stadium is coming down to make way for a new health centre, we were far more intrigued by the reason given by a local demolition contractor not submitting a bid.

Todd Sleeper, the owner of Flagstaff-based Eagle Mountain Construction, said his company could have done the work. He said he discussed the demolition contract with Mortenson Construction, but ultimately decided against submitting a formal bid.

The strict requirements to meet the green building codes for the Health and Learning Center, he said, made it difficult for him to place a competitive bid. One stipulation, Sleeper said, would have required his crews to separate out the steel from the rubble of the former stadium.

Segregating steel from demolition arisings? What will they think of next.

Read the full story here.

CDI launches forum website to keep South Padre Island residents informed.

Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI) together with the Town of South Padre Island and Ocean Tower LP has launched a question and answer section on the town’s web site to provide information to the public regarding the upcoming demolition of Ocean Tower. The forum is located at www.townspi.com.

Residents of South Padre Island have shown a great deal of interest in the scheduled implosion of the ill-fated Ocean Tower north of the city limits.

Construction of the high-rise condominium was halted when the building began to tilt due to uneven settling of its foundation. After months of study, it was decided the building project could not be completed.

Read the full story here.