Man critically hurt by falling concrete.

A construction worker helping to demolish the former Technical High School on Elliot Street in Springfield was critically injured Thursday afternoon when he was pinned under a slab of falling concrete.

The worker was carried from the demolition site and rushed to Baystate Medical Center following the 1:45 p.m. accident, officials said. He was identified as Sean McMurray, 51, of Wallingford, Conn.

Construction workers are demolishing the former high school as part of a $110 million project to build the Springfield Data Center.

According to officials close to the operation, McMurray was employed with Stamford Wrecking, of Trumbull, Conn., one of the subcontractors for the demolition.

He was doing demolition work when a slab of concrete inside the remaining portion of the building collapsed.
Officials said it appeared he fell with the slab and was pinned underneath it.

Read more here and for more recent updates, here.

Students have lucky escape as car park collapses during demolition.

According to local newspaper reports, two teenage students escaped serious injury when falling rubble from a multi-storey car park narrowly missed them.

Read more here.

Libra Demolition failed to manage asbestos on Nottingham contract.

A demolition firm has been fined after failing to manage and monitor asbestos removal work at a site in Nottinghamshire.

Yorkshire-based Libra Demolition Ltd was the principal contractor on a project to demolish buildings at the former Vesuvius works in Sandy Lane, Worksop, Nottinghamshire between 25 March and 22 August 2008.

A number of buildings on the site contained notifiable asbestos, the removal of which should be declared to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and carried out by a licensed asbestos contractor.

During a joint HSE and Environment Agency (EA) prosecution, Worksop Magistrates’ Court heard the buildings were demolished but no records of the safe removal or disposal of the asbestos were found and HSE received no notifications for its removal.

The discovery came to light when debris from the Vesuvius site was found at an unlicensed waste disposal site on Leverton Road, Retford, by the EA.

Read more here.

Various mistakes and errors in the “vast majority” of the 10 bids submitted.

Youngstown, Ohio’s Board of Control this morning will consider a request by the city engineer to reject all of the bids submitted for demolition and remediation work at the site of the former Weatherbee Coat Factory and seek new bids.

In September, the city was awarded a $657,396 Clean Ohio grant for the work. Last year, Valley Foods announced plans to expand operations into the former Weatherbee building to accommodate expected business growth.

The city sought bids to demolish and clean up the four-story section of the building on the east end of the property, said Sarah Lown, city development incentive manager. That section of the building is about 100 years old “and more costly to rehabilitate than to tear down and build new,” she said.

In his request to reject the bids and rebid the work, Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works, cited “various mistakes and errors” in the “vast majority” of the 10 bids submitted. The work was broken down into four different base bids depending on the scope of the work, Shasho said.

The errors included proposal sheets that were improperly filled out, listing lump-sum prices for individual items rather than unit prices, he said. In some cases the proposals were not returned intact or filled out completely, and in a couple cases the bids exceeded the engineer’s estimate of $553,560.

“We just didn’t feel it was representative of a competitive bid process,” Shasho said. “There was some confusion in the way these bids came to us,” Lown added.

Read more here.

Klenck Company shoots 80-year old bridge.

The steel-girder bridge that linked Mount Carmel to Gibson County for nearly 80 years came down in a matter of seconds on yesterday.

No longer needed after the opening of a new bridge in December, the Illinois Department of Transportation hired Evansville-based Klenck Company to remove the bridge, a series of four blue-green painted steel spans supported by concrete pilings.

Klenck, which was also the demolition contractor for the Evansville Executive Inn, in turn hired Dykon, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company known for explosive demolitions, including last year’s demolition of Texas Stadium, former home of the Dallas Cowboys.

Read more here or view the video below.

The title of this video says just about all you need to know.

TV and film production companies spend millions of dollars and employ thousands of writers to create comedy shows and movies. And yet the formula for funny is way easier than that.

Take one backhoe loader. Add a swimming hole. Stir in one redneck (drunk, ideally) and just hit record. Health and safety professionals look away now:

Yet more delays in Coliseum demolition project.

The city of Corpus Christi is experiencing yet another setback in the demolition of the Memorial Coliseum.

A&R Demolition, the company contracted to complete the project, recently got back to work after the city filed a default notice for delays.

But now, more delays have prompted the city to file another default notice.

A&R has until this Friday to respond.

Read more and view local news video here.

Bids low (and not so low) in Washington county garage demolition project.

If the high bid for the demolition of an old garage comes in at $599,000, take a guess at what the low bid was. For those of you that said $300,00, you’re out. $200,000? Nope, not even close. How about $73,000?

Sounds crazy but that is precisely the bid spread on the demolition of Washington East Chestnut Street’s garage project. According to local news sources, this is all down to the escalating price of scrap steel (perish the thought that anyone would ever bid at suicidal rates).

“We were pleasantly surprised,” said Nancy Basile, city transit director. According to Basile, bids were anticipated to come in between $300,000 and $350,000.

However, that cost did not take into consideration the price of scrap steel. Steelmakers have increased prices six times, for a total increase of 20 to 30 percent, since November on basic flat-rolled steel, used in everything from cars to toasters, to offset the higher cost of raw materials, such as iron ore and coal.
In fact, the rise in scrap prices has been one of the factors driving steel prices higher.

Basile said she’s reviewing all the bids to make sure that they meet the bidding specifications. She said eight of 12 bids received are under the budgeted cost.

Read more here.

Demolition work underway on studio home of Harry Potter movies.

Downwell Demolition Ltd has commenced work on a prestigious six month contract at Warner Brothers Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire. The project will see the contractor strip out and dismantle the world-famous studio buildings where the entire series of Harry Potter films together with the James Bond film Goldeneye were all filmed. A total of seven stage set buildings will be stripped of their ceilings, roofs and existing sound-proofing to allow the creation of new structures that can be used to produce forthcoming blockbuster movies.

A full recycling programme will be implemented for all materials removed from the site to ensure the minimum environmental impact. The end result will leave the seven cavernous studios stripped bare, with the adjacent area clear of unwanted buildings in readiness for the new phase in the history of Leavesden studios.

“Downwell Demolition is very proud to announce its involvement with the redevelopment of Leavesden Studios. We are confident our skill and expertise will ensure an expeditious strip out of the studios and controlled demolition of the adjacent buildings, whilst remaining compliant with the principal contractor’s health and safety and environmental requirements,” says managing director Matt Phillips. “We fully expect to deliver the structures ready for their refurbishment and rebuild on schedule and on budget.”

Video captures the moment a hydraulic hammer felled the Spectrum Stadium roof.

It’s been almost three months since an all-too-small wrecking ball was swung to commence the demolition of Philadelphia’s Spectrum Stadium. But yesterday, the roof finally came down, the final blow dealt by an excavator equipped with a hydraulic breaker.

Read more here or view the video below.