Exclusive video interview with AR Demolition’s Richard Dolman on “All-Risk” contracts.

There can be little doubt that the demolition landscape has been altered by the economic crisis; clients and main contractors, themselves impacted by the collapse of the banking sector, demanding keener prices and faster turnarounds.

However, according to AR Demolition director Richard Dolman, one of the key issues thrown up by this changing landscape is the use of “all-risk” contracts in which demolition contractors are expected to burden the risk should their work uncover asbestos or other potentially harmful (and, therefore, costly) substances or problems.

In this exclusive interview, Dolman explains his concerns. And despite the poor quality of the recording (it was captured on an iPhone and has not been edited) he makes some fascinating points:

Two recent announcements suggest “check your facts” policy has gone way of the Dodo.

Call me old-fashioned and call me stuck in the past; but I come from an era in which journalistic facts were checked, double-checked and then checked by a fire-breathing editor who could disable a typewriter (yes, I really am THAT old) at a hundred paces with nothing more than a beer-addled stare.

Sadly, such policies seem to have gone the way of the wrecking ball and crawler crane; consigned to the waste basket of history even though, in many instances, they remain the best solution to a particular job.

And I am not talking about bloggers or so-called citizen journalists here; those people armed with a basic understanding of the English language, a rudimentary grasp of the Internet and blessed with perhaps a little too much time on their hands.

No. The reason for my Friday morning ire is that, during the past 24 hours, I have read two separate announcements relating to high reach excavators in which – quite clearly – no-one has even thought to check their facts.

The first came from a PR company (and yes, I realise that their job is to stretch the bounds of truth to make their offerings more appealing to miserable curmudgeons like me) announcing the fact that a UK demolition company had taken delivery of a Komatsu high reach machine equipped with an “unsurpassed 45 metre boom”.

Hmm, let me think about that. Unless the rules of mathematics have been changed along with the rules of journalism, I think 50 metres still surpasses 45 metres, as does 60 metres and 65 metres. So, this unsurpassed boom is, in fact, surpassed by probably half a dozen machines currently at work on UK demolition sites.

Now I was willing to let that go. I was busy, I was hyped up on coffee and I was feeling generous, even though the errors contained within the press release saw it consigned to File 13, a small basket stowed beneath my desk.

But then along comes this press release from Leeds City Council with the news that a local tower block will be demolished using a high reach machine, “one of only two in the country that can reach to a height of nearly 50 metres”.

For the record, the highest machine currently in the UK has a reach of 65 metres (unless Kocurek have something else up their sleeve); and while 45 metres is hardly a “tiddler”, it most certainly IS surpassed.

So if you are in the PR business and you’re planning to send us a press release, please do us and yourselves a favour: check your facts…because if you don’t, we sure as hell will.

Exclusive footage from today’s LIVE broadcast from the NDTG AGM.

As promised yesterday, we finally managed our first ever live streaming broadcast, from the National Demolition Training Group annual general meeting. The broadcast was not without its hitches but we were delighted that a number of people took the opportunity to tune in.

Thanks to the vagaries of technology, not all of the footage shot today is available, but here’s a flavour featuring incoming NDTG chairman Jim Caldwell, together with training group manager Sophie Francis and NDTG chief executive Howard Button:

Questions over bidding process bring major contract to a standstill.

Cedar Rapids City Council last night set aside a decision to accept a local contractor’s $10 million bid to bring down most of the flood-and-fire damaged old Sinclair meatpacking plant.

The decision to postpone the award of a demolition contract came over questions related to the city’s bidding process as attorneys for two of the 11 competing firms addressed the council last night, one of whom already has filed a lawsuit against the city.

The council, though, did take on the related matter of the 100-year-old Sinclair smokestack, giving a strong endorsement to Maura Pilcher, chairwoman of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, to see if she and others can quickly find funds to study, stabilize and, ultimately, restore the smokestack.

However, council member Pat Shey noted that the clock is ticking on the smokestack, which city, state and federal officials have said is in danger of collapse and is a threat to demolition crews working nearby. Shey said the city needed to see some action from Pilcher before demolition crews at the Sinclair plant got to the spot near the smokestack in the next couple of months.

Read more here.

Financial penalty for contractor that violated asbestos regulations.

An Albuquerque contractor has agreed to pay a $225,000 penalty under a consent judgment for asbestos air quality violations that occurred during the 2007 demolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs school dormitory in Holbrook, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and Arizona Attorney General’s Office announced last week.

In May 2007, a subcontractor for Gerald A. Martin Ltd., a New Mexico corporation, began demolition of the dormitory after the building had reportedly gone through an abatement process for the presence of asbestos and a quantity had been removed.

After demolition of the facilities had begun, the subcontractor discovered within the debris materials that he believed contained asbestos. At that time the demolition came to a standstill as the Holbrook Fire Department was called in to wet down the debris to ensure that it would not become airborne, and thus become a potential hazard. As a precautionary measure, Holbrook High School canceled a football game and the area surrounding the demolition was cordoned off.

Read the full story here.

Two cleared but demolition contractor still to stand trial.

Two company directors have been cleared of all charges over the death of a demolition worker at a tower block near Paddington Station.

Polish labourer Rafal Prezestrzelski was crushed by falling masonry at the 12-storey Telstar House project on July 25, 2005.

Nicholas Ward, manager of contractor John F Hunt Demolition, based at London Road, Grays, and Oscar Menezes, director of Menezes Structural Consultants, were due to stand trial on health and safety charges this month.

But at the Old Bailey last Wednesday the prosecution offered no evidence against both men and Menezes Structural Consultants.

Last year gross negligence manslaughter charges were dismissed against Bayoak Demo Ltd, Barry Eaton, Nicholas Ward, Oscar Menezes and Menezes Structural Consultants Ltd following legal argument.

Read more here.

Does the sudden movement in the demolition job market mean we’re out of the woods?

We have been writing about the downturn in the global demolition business virtually since Demolition News opened its virtual doors. In fact, terms like “banking meltdown”, “low bid” and “job losses” have become as much a part of our industry vocabulary as “high reach excavator”, “implosion”, and “US site accident”.

So we’ve been rather caught by surprise by what appears to a sudden (but nonetheless welcome) upturn in the demolition job market, at least here in the UK.

Even in the run-up to Christmas, we were regularly reporting on job losses, lay-offs and redundancies. But, suddenly, these seem to have been replaced by job advertisements from UK contractors that have ridden out the economic storm and are now preparing to climb out of the red and back into the black.

Now, admittedly, five or six recruitment adverts do not a recovery make. But (and it’s a big but) the jobs that we’re aware of are spread across the whole of the UK and all are for highly-skilled and, therefore, highly paid individuals. In other words, not the kind of jobs that become readily available when “times is ‘ard”.

Of course, with the London 2012 Olympics drawing ever closer (and with Gordon Brown doing his level best to buy an unlikely General Election victory with an increase in public spending), there is likely to be an increase in available work. And if the UK Government’s chief construction adviser is to be believed, we stand on the very brink of an environmentally-fuelled boom to rid the country of its stock of its less-than-green building stock.

But is this a real upturn? Or is it merely another false dawn that will end in further frustration, disappointment and job losses?

We’d love to hear what you think so please use the Comment area below.

Demolition work is underway on Dillsboro Dam in North Carolina.

The aging hydroelectric dam in Dillsboro, North Carolina, the subject of a long-running dispute between local residents and electricity generator Duke Power, is finally coming down, as this video proves.

Demolition and clean-up work is underway in Port-au-Prince, despite lack of plan.

More than two weeks after the 12 January earthquake, the work of taking apart a ravaged city is slowly, and chaotically, beginning.

While aid agencies and the government are still focused on tending to the hundreds of thousands left homeless and injured, many Haitians are picking up the pieces and moving on.

The government estimates that 25,000 government offices and businesses either toppled or need to be demolished. In addition, there are 225,000 residences that are no longer habitable. Estimates suggest that around half a billion cubic metres of concrete and rubble will need to be hauled out of the city.

However, there is no official demolition plan in place yet. Asked about tearing down the teetering buildings that crowd the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince, the spokesman for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, Vincenzo Pugliese, said demolition is part of the reconstruction effort.

While much of the debris is simply garbage, some of it could become the foundation for the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince, said Herb Duane, the president of a Boston demolition firm that cleared the earthquake damage in Managua and Guatemala in the 1970s.

Poured concrete can be crushed, turned into aggregate and reused, he said. To do that, however, the country will likely have to import mobile crushing plants that separate out metals and other debris.

And while steel rebar should not be reused in construction, it has a scrap value on the international market of about $100 a ton, Duane said.

Read the full Miami Herald story and watch the video here.

Endangered leopard loose as Moscow demolition progresses.

Last week, we reported that a Moscow resident was planning to protect his home from demolition with a little help from his pet leopard. And, unless this particular part of Moscow has its own leopard breeding programme, it appears that he wasn’t joking.

A leopard found in Moscow’s Rechnik neighborhood, which the city is demolishing in the face of residents’ protests, will be sheltered as experts determine if the cat is an endangered species from the Far East.

The female cat, raised among humans, cannot be returned to the wild, the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry said in an e-mailed statement Friday.

If it is an Amur leopard, it will be sent to a preserve in Sochi, the Black Sea resort set to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. If it is an African leopard, it will be given to a zoo, the ministry said.

According to this Moscow Times news report, the owner of the leopard was not identified….but local officials might want to start their investigations by speaking to Sergie Bobyshev, the man behind the original leopard threats.

Read more here.