An uncharacteristically deep blanket of snow has brought the UK’s road, rail and air travel to a standstill and has preoccupied news reporters from all the country’s major TV news networks for the past 12 hours or so. Similarly, UK trade magazine is reporting that a large number of UK sites are closed due the the severe weather.

However, demolition men are made of far stronger stuff than most. And during a Sky News report that featured a snow plough that had become stuck, I just spotted a low loader carrying an excavator from London contractor John F. Hunt.

So while the company grinds to a standstill, there are still a few brave (and hopefully warm) souls out there ensuring that demolition is done.

Did you make it into work today? If so, let us know what you’re up to using the Comments tab below.

A new service aims to make locally owned demolition services more “findable” on the Internet. Hometown Demolition connects high quality, locally owned demolition contractors with the homeowners, contractors, business owners, and builders that are using a search engine like Google to find a local demolition service on the Internet.

The US-only Hometown Demolition Contractors service screens local demolition services across America and accepts one company per market area as a client. For each client, full-page advertisements are placed on Hometown’s highly ranked web site for demolition contractors. Hometown Demolition Contractors is the largest and most authoritative demolition marketing web site in the U.S. Hometown’s demolition clients are also marketed directly with search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Full story here.

As part of its commitment to bring you the very latest in the world of demolition and recycling, demolitionnews.com will be attending a number of important industry events in the coming weeks/months. These include:

• The AGM of the National Demolition Training Group in London on 5 February;

• The spring seminar of the Institute of Demolition Engineers in Leeds on 27 February

• The AGM of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors in London on 6 March

If you don’t know what we look like, just look for the guys burdened down with multiple cameras, video recorders and notepads.

We hope to see you there.

UK trade magazine Contract Journal is reporting that Controlled Group (formerly Controlled Demolition Group) has run up a further pre-tax loss – this time amounting to £1.8m.

The company only signed off its latest accounts — for the 12 months to 30 September 2007 — on 12 January 2009. Turnover of £10m was up from the figure of £7.4m in the previous year when Controlled made a pre-tax loss of £2.0m.

Full story here.

Good quality (if overlong) video of dust handler stacks being pulled down in North Carolina. There is, however, a certain irony at the end as the dust handler stacks send a plume of – you guessed it – dust into the air!

It is the fastest-growing online community in the world and it counts people as diverse as US President Barack Obama, John Cleese and Stephen Fry among its most loyal fans. But to many people, Twitter is merely the sound a cartoon bird makes.

But not for much longer. Following some widespread public exposure, not least on the recent Friday Night with Jonathan Ross show in the UK, Twitter is building an increasingly broad audience who don’t just want news and views; they want INSTANT news and views!

Existing Twitter users among you will be pleased to know that demolitionnews is already using Twitter (www.twitter.com/demolitionnews) and will be using the service to provide rapid fire updates from a number of forthcoming industry events.

Those that haven’t yet enjoyed the Twitter experience can sign up free-of-charge at www.twitter.com. Once you have signed up, you can merely search for other users that you wish to follow (we would strongly recommend twitter.com/stephenfry for entertainment value and www.twitter.com/cnplus and www.twitter.com/contractjournal for wider industry news.

Furthermore, one of our sponsors – Dig A Crusher – has just joined and we’d love to hear about any other demolition or demolition equipment-related users that we should be following.

As ever, please use the comments tab below to make any comments or suggestions.

Happy Twittering!

Kent-based waste management and recycling operator Pinden Limited, a division of “watch it come down” demolition specialist Syd Bishop & Sons, has taken delivery of four new Volvo trucks: two FH-480 tractor units and two FL-280 skiploaders. These vehicles are the latest elements of a fleet replacement programme that saw 26 trucks delivered during 2008 and resulted in an almost 100% Volvo fleet inside three years.

“We’re running around 40 Volvo’s now,” says Paul Elcombe, Transport Manager for the Dartford-based company. “Volvo offered the best package; it’s a name we feel happy with, and we get strong local support with good facilities from MC Truck & Bus.”

Reliability is a particularly welcome Volvo trait, according to Paul; “Yes, other trucks drive reliably, but Volvo is another thing. They’re more solid, more dependable – looking at my monitor now, I can see there’s not a single truck in the workshop. And that reduced downtime means, in turn, that we can offer a more efficient and reliable service to our customers.”

Engineers in Charlotte in the US have had their demolition efforts hampered by an unstable bridge that was to be used to haul construction and demolition waste away from the site.

Full details, and a brief news video can be found here.

Research by KHL Group, publisher of International Construction and D&Ri magazines, shows that global fiscal stimulus could add US$ 355 billion per year to the world’s construction output in 2009 and 2010. This is equivalent to an additional 7% on top of the world’s current annual construction output of about US$ 5 trillion, and equates to more than the annual construction output of Germany, the fourth biggest market in the world.

Chris Sleight, editor of International Construciton magazine said, “The potential boost to the global construction industry from fiscal stimulus packages over the next two years could be enormous. US$ 355 billion is greater than the GDP of many medium-sized countries, and in terms of construction it is greater than the size of the German market – the fourth biggest market in the world.”

He continued, “The key now is for the spending pledges to translate into real on-the-ground activity. Governments need to make sure their planning and tendering processes are as stream-lined as possible and that there are no bureaucratic obstacles in the way of these plans being effective.”

The total additional spending to shore-up economic growth in 20 major economies is set to exceed US$ 1.9 trillion, of which US$ 795 billion has been ear-marked for construction. Most of this will be spent in 2009 and 2010, however schemes such as Brazil’s housing-focussed package will be longer term.

Of all the major economies, China’s extra investment in construction will be the most over the next two years, with US$ 450 billion of its US$ 585 billion stimulus package earmarked for infrastructure. That investment of US$ 225 billion per year for two years is equivalent to an extra +40% boost to China’s US$ 540 billion per year construction output.

Details of the US stimulus package are yet to be finalised, but current indications are that US$ 120 billion out of the total of US$ 800 billion will be invested in transport and energy infrastructure.

In Europe, Germany has unveiled a EUR 50 billion (US$ 65 billion) stimulus package, of which some €EUR 18 billion (US$ 23.4 billion) will be invested in infrastructure.Meanwhile France has announced it will invest €EUR 10.5 billion (US$ 14 billion) in infrastructure and public works and Spain’s stimulus package includes EUR 11 billion (US$ 14.5 billion) for similar schemes.

Elsewhere in the world, smaller developing economies are also planning to spend extra on construction during the economic downturn. These include Chile, which has allocated an extra US$ 700 million to public works this year and Indonesia, where a stimulus package is also planned.

Besides funds earmarked for construction, many other countries have less specific stimulus packages on the table for this year which are expected to provide a major boost to the industry. Mexico for example plans to invest US$ 54 billion to see it through the global downturn this year, and most of the spending is expected to go on infrastructure.

The UK’s respected Daily Telegraph today published the latest in an ongoing series of articles that speculate that supposedly well-meaning recycling activities may, in fact, be contributing to global warming.

However, the Government backed Waste Resources Action Programme has responded quickly, refuting these claims in a hurriedly assembled press release from CEO Dr Liz Goodwin.