A pair of new videos showing Allied-Gator demolition attachments in action.
Let’s face it. There’s only one thing better than watching demolition attachments rip steel and munch concrete, and that’s watching video footage of them doing so. So here’s a pair of new videos from attachment specialist Allied Gator. The first shows one of the company’s MTR 10C units mounted on a skid steer loader; while the second is a nice video of a pair of excavators working in tandem to take down a steel conveyor bridge using MTR 70S and MTR 90S attachments.
And there’s plenty more where these came from. In fact, Allied-Gator has an entire area of its website dedicated to video footage of its products in action. You can view or download them all here.
DustScan becomes latest company to join Demolition News directory.
DustScan, recognised leaders in the field of dust monitoring, prevention and consultancy, has become the latest company to join the Demolition News Business Directory.
The company provides a selection of dust monitoring equipment and analytical services for nuisance dust monitoring and monitoring for fine particulates. In addition, DustScan provides an environmental consultancy service specialising in dust issues such as providing advice on the application of monitoring techniques.
To find out more, please click here to visit the Business Directory and to link directly to the DustScan website.
John Campbell Associates offers Demolition News readers a 30% discount on CadnaA software.
In recent months, we have twice featured the CadnaA sound monitoring and predicting system on offer from the software developer John Campbell Associates; and on both occasions, the response from Demolition News readers and subscribers has been extremely positive. (You can check these here – Audio Interview and Video Presentation).
Based on this, John Campbell Associates is now offering Demolition News’ readers a 30% discount on the purchase price of the software, dropping the price from £4,667 to a recession-busting £3,267.
To qualify, simply contact John Campbell Associates and quote the Demolition News reference JCADN, and get your sound issues under control today.
Time is running out for our special offer on Business Directory listings.
The end of August will mark the end of our special offer on Demolition News Business Directory listings, when we remove the option to pay just £75 + VAT via PayPal. All listings will then be priced at £100 + VAT.
In order to secure your place in the second most visited area of the Demolition News website, please click here, hit the join directory button, and submit your entry. We will then approve your entry and send you your invoice; it couldn’t be easier.
And you will then have direct access to the thousands of demolition professionals that visit Demolition News each and every week.
A new construction industry conference will examine work at height issues.
The Association for Project Safety (APS) and the Access Industry Forum (AIF), along with Working Well Together (WWT), have joined forces to present a work at height conference – with associated exhibition and live demonstrations – at Lingfield Park Racecourse on Monday, 28 September 2009.
The event is entitled Working at height: Know it all …think again! and will address the key issues facing CDM duty holders involved in the construction sector.
An line up of recognised experts in their respective fields will address:
* an update on guidance relating to scaffolds, SG04:05 (by NASC);
* the planning and management of safety net installations (FASET);
* fall prevention when using mobile access towers (PASMA) and
* staying one step ahead with ladders (Ladder Association).
* HSE will bring delegates up-to-date with recent cases and prosecutions.
Seven-storey fall kills skid steer loader driver in Chicago.
A 35-year-old construction worker has died after the skid steer loader he was driving fell seven storeys to the ground as demolition work was being done at a Chicago Housing Authority high-rise, officials said.
According to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Quention Curtis, the Bobcat had been lifted to the seventh floor in the 2400 block of South State Street. Once it arrived there it fell off the floor, falling to the ground.
In the midst of the recession, price undercutting has reached a new high (or low).
Price undercutting is almost as old as the demolition business. In fact, it’s fair to say that no matter how low a tender price might be, there’s always someone willing to shave off a little more to keep their men employed and their machines moving.
But in the midst of the current recession, where workloads are lower and margins are so think they’re verging upon transparent, comes news that the practice of price undercutting in the US demolition business has reached a new high (or low).
Demolition News has received a document that purports to show the bid prices from 15 US contractors, all bidding for the contract to demolish the Texas Stadium, former home of the world-famous Dallas Cowboys American Football team.
As you can see from the attached document, there is a huge disparity in the tender prices, with the highest base price running at approximately 200% higher than the lowest bid. Even allowing for the fact that the highest bid (from Brandenburg) is the highest by a considerable margin (approximately $5 million) there is still a huge disparity of around $3 million between the second highest bid and the lowest. And this on a project that looks to be worth around $9 million.
Reports from the US also suggest that price undercutting is not the only issue impacting upon their business. Apparently, there is a growing trend for contractors from the Eastern side of the US to bid for contracts as far afield as Texas, Florida and even California, something that is almost unprecedented during non-recession times.
As far as we’re aware, the contract for the demolition of the Texas Stadium is still under negotiation and the successful bidder has not yet been named. But we will keep a close eye on this one; it will be interesting to see if Weir Bros (the lowest bidder) gets the nod.
We would love to hear your comments on this story or your own experiences of undercutting in the current economic climate. Please use the Comments tab (in blue, below).
The demolition industry will feel the effects of recession long after it’s officially over.
Mark Anthony
In the past few weeks, the dark veil of recession has shown signs of lifting. France, Germany and, more recently, China have seen their economies enjoy a sufficiently sustained period of growth, albeit negligible, that has lasted long enough for economists to declare them officially “out of recession”.
Closer to home, mortgage lending is on the rise again at long last and even house builders, among the worst hit by first blows of the credit crunch onslaught, are reporting a slight upturn. Together with some more positive news about consumer spending, these statistics have brought a slight flush to the cheeks of the lifeless corpse that is the world economy.
But we’re not out of the woods yet. In fact, I am concerned that even when we do crawl out of the recessionary chasm that swallowed us some 12 months ago, the struggle is far from over for the demolition industry.
The first hurdle the industry is likely to encounter is a hangover of thinner margins. Main contractors and developers have “enjoyed” a period of intense competition among demolition contractors which has led to some near-suicidal pricing practices. Having grown familiar with that level of cost, these developers and contractors are not suddenly going to accept a post-recession price hike. Indeed, I would personally be amazed if the “value engineering” built into virtually every contract these days does not continue long after we’ve shaken the recessionary monkey off our collective backs.
The second and, perhaps, bigger challenge is in planning. With the notable exception of certain Government-funded departments, new build and its associated planning has all but dried up in recent months. Even when the supposedly wise heads in Government sound the “alert over” sirens and the world returns to some semblance of normality, demolition contractors will find their workload wedged behind a logjam of planning applications held over from the dark days.
Both of these problems are beyond our control and, as usual, we will just have to make the best of a bad job. We’ll have to do the same with equipment fleet renewals, expansions and maintenance programmes that have been undermined by the current recession.
Governments around the world have climbed aboard the stimulus package bandwagon, injecting trillions of tax dollars into comatose economies; but that has failed to change the attitude of most banks and finance houses that would still rather see those dollars on their own bottom lines than on ours. As a result, even those demolition companies that have managed to maintain a good workload through the recession have found themselves blocked at every turn when they set out to buy new or replacement equipment.
And can we all, hand on heart, say that we’ve invested as much on machine maintenance during the recession as we might have during a boom period?
The one area where demolition contractors do control their own destiny however, and the area that may yet prove to be the hardest to fix, is in the field of training and recruitment.
Sadly, and despite the fact that many of us have experienced a recession or two in the past, the industry has largely followed its usual path of knee-jerk cost-cutting. First to go is the marketing budget, followed by the investment in training and then, when all else fails, companies have slashed labour levels. And, as in previous years, these job cuts may have started by slicing thin slivers of fat to help make contractors leaner, but they have continued to slice through the meat and to the very bone of some company’s corporate structures.
In my opinion, this is where our biggest problem will lie.
For one thing, training agencies have also responded to the recession by slashing grant-funding for training, a move that has been particularly keenly felt in the UK. In addition, with the majority of industry training reliant upon either on-the-job tuition or employer-funding, anyone that has found themselves unemployed during the recession will also have found themselves falling behind in their training, unable to keep up-to-date with the latest legislative changes and unable to renew existing qualifications because of the prohibitive cost.
This, I fear, is going to come back to bite us two-fold.
First, many of our most experienced and knowledgeable staff may have been forced to move on into other industry sectors, simply to keep a roof above their heads. As a result, there are now contracts managers and site supervisors stacking shelves at the local Wal-Mart of Tesco, or flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Never mind all this talk of secondary aggregates recycling and materials efficiency. This is a waste of HUMAN resources and one for which the economies of the world should be ashamed and held to account.
The second and equally savage bite will manifest itself in a long and drawn out inability to train newly-recruited staff quickly enough to track the upturn when it does finally arrive.
Many training bodies haven’t just turned off the spending tap; they’ve dismantled the pipe work and sold the water tank for scrap. That’s a problem that will not be fixed instantly and that could easily run for years as the industry stabilises. And even if a contractor refuses to allow a lack of grant funding to stop him training his new staff, will the industry still have the qualified trainers available to do the work? Or will they be salting fries alongside the site supervisor at McD’s?
Before you dismiss this as scaremongering or the cynicism of a bitter old hack, ask yourself this question:
If your workload returned to 2006/07 levels tomorrow, could you cope?
CDM implementation still “some way off” according to new impact survey.
It is more than two years since the introduction of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM2007), in April 2007. Their purpose was to bear down yet further on unacceptable levels of avoidable accidents, injuries and deaths. According to the first CDM2007 Impact Survey, effective implementation of the regulations still looks to be some way off for a significant minority of organisations operating in the UK’s property, building and construction and related sectors.
The survey was carried out online during July by CDM2007.org, the award winning CDM2007 digital training organisation. It reveals that over half (54 per cent) of the 228 CDM2007 duty-holder participants in the survey are not confident that their management colleagues across all levels inside their organisations understand their CDM2007 responsibilities. Almost as many (47 per cent) doubt whether those colleagues are competent to carry out their CDM2007 duties.
Significantly, among specialist Health and Safety professionals surveyed, that opinion is even more strongly held, with 53 per cent of them lacking confidence in fellow managers, at all levels, having CDM 2007 competence.
Those taking part in the survey included a large contingent of Health and Safety professionals (41 per cent) plus strong representation from those with Site (17 per cent) and Design (22 per cent) responsibilities. Other participants came from Planning (5 per cent), Architecture (3 per cent), Training (2 per cent) and other (10 per cent) disciplines.
“Our sample is sufficiently large to offer useful indications of the current state of CDM2007 implementation. All of those who have contributed regard CDM2007 as critical to improving health and safety in the building and construction industries. They understand their responsibilities for turning CDM2007 into reality inside their own organisations, enterprises and practices. As an informed and committed group of people at the frontline, their voices are particularly worth hearing”, said Steve Dalby, Business Director of CDM2007.org
“Most of the survey participants are reporting good progress, however a substantial minority seem to be telling us that there is still plenty of room for improvement on the part of their employers” said Dalby
Almost six in ten (59 per cent) respondents see positive recognition and priority being given to CDM2007 by their boards and chief executives. However a sizeable number of participants either say this is not the case (19 per cent) or don’t know (22 per cent). In less than four in ten organisations represented (36 per cent of respondents) chief executives are viewed as actively sponsoring CDM2007.
While leadership and communication appear to be significant areas needing attention for some organisations, many more (75 per cent) are reported as having set out clear policies for CDM2007 implementation. And a similar number (74 per cent) have clear chains of responsibility in place at all appropriate levels of competence. Perhaps not surprisingly, more than seven in ten respondents (72 per cent) also see a positive CDM2007 culture of awareness and informed activity inside their organisations.
Conversely, one in four respondents (25 per cent) say that their organisations do not have clear CDM2007 policies. A similar number (26 per cent) are not aware of any clear chain of responsibility. Approaching one in three (28 per cent) of those surveyed report that there is no CDM2007 culture.
Over six in ten (62 per cent) of respondents are getting the support and resources they need to carry out their own CDM2007 duties. Those who are being given appropriate support also tend (67 per cent of them) to have greater confidence in the competence of their duty-holder colleagues elsewhere in the organisation. On the other hand, 38 per cent of all respondents are adequately supported only sometimes or not at all.
Amongst those reporting that their employers had established a clear chain of CDM2007 responsibility, almost nine in ten of them (88 per cent) also pointed to there being a clear policy for implementation. In addition, almost the same proportion of them (87 per cent) viewed their organisations as having positive CDM2007 cultures. And even more of this group (93 per cent) said that CDM2007 was reflected in their organisations’ workforce related programmes, such as training, performance and professional development
“It appears that those employers who have implemented clear chains of responsibility and implementation policies, positive cultures and appropriate support and resources to duty-holders are broadly the same organisations. That may leave a significant gap between them and others. As many as one in four employers could well be doing a significant amount in these recessionary times, but not enough and not well enough.
“As to the majority of organisations represented, the survey suggests they may be doing better than the minority in embedding CDM2007 good practice, but at least some of them cannot yet be too confident they are taking enough effective measures, nor that these are in place throughout their operations” said Dalby.
The Health & Safety Executive rebrands vibration website to provide more information.
Earthmoving News reports that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has rebranded its vibration website with a new design and featuring advice and guidance on the risks of vibration.
The website, which can be accessed here, features information associated with hand arm and whole-body vibration (WBV).
The new-look website features links to expert information, details of regulations associated with vibration, and advice on how to prevent whole body vibration.
In recent months, we have twice featured the CadnaA sound monitoring and predicting system on offer from the software developer John Campbell Associates; and on both occasions, the response from Demolition News readers and subscribers has been extremely positive. (You can check these here – 
A 35-year-old construction worker has died after the skid steer loader he was driving fell seven storeys to the ground as demolition work was being done at a Chicago Housing Authority high-rise, officials said.
Demolition News has received a document that purports to show the bid prices from 15 US contractors, all bidding for the contract to demolish the Texas Stadium, former home of the world-famous Dallas Cowboys American Football team.
Earthmoving News reports that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has rebranded its vibration website with a new design and featuring advice and guidance on the risks of vibration. 