Is the explosive demolition sector engaging in a mutually assured destruction?
The subject of the Ohio smokestack that fell the wrong way is a story that just refuses to go away. Still the subject of conversation and discussion here in Europe, the story is now attracting a similar level of debate in the US where it is the subject of our latest Demolition Digest blog post.
However, the longer it goes on, the less the story is about a problematic demolition and the more it becomes about the way in which those problems are being exacerbated and perceived.
When we featured Eric Kelly’s comments on Monday this week, the story quickly became the most visited on the website for some considerable time. But with the promise of an independent engineering report that is expected to, at least partially, exonerate Kelly and the Advanced Explosive Demolition team, the short-term damage to Kelly’s reputation is likely to be replaced with the long-term damage to the blasting sector.
As we have stated previously, the demolition business is highly competitive and, at times, verging on cut-throat. The fact that some of Kelly’s competitors have sought to make mileage from this perceived failure comes as no surprise.
But are these companies not in danger of undermining their own livelihoods by calling into question the very way they make a living?
Try putting yourselves in the position of a prospective client with a smokestack to demolish. Do you really want to entrust that demolition to a method that can, occasionally, go awry?
It is not as if the client doesn’t have a choice. Between high reach excavators, top down methods and even helicopter-mounted attachments, explosive demolition is not the only game in town. And the constant questioning of this particular method may merely serve to sow the seeds of doubt in the clients’ mind.
Furthermore, while we certainly aren’t sounding the premature death knell for explosive demolition, surely it is already destined to become an increasingly niche demolition method?
As the world becomes more environmentally-aware, and selective recycling and the associated waste segregation becomes a key driver of future workload, explosive demolition is already in danger of becoming marginalised like manual demolition and the wrecking ball before it.
The one thing it doesn’t need right now is to be undermined by the very purveyors of what remains a proven and, in the right circumstances, economically-sound and ostensibly safe means of demolition.
