Spate of accidents and fatalities seem to coincide with economic downturn.
Not even the glass-half-full optimists would ever claim that the demolition industry is a safe place to be.
There is no question that the sector has made huge strides in the development of training and techniques to help safeguard its employees. But the fact remains that those same employees are still required to work in and around buildings considered too unstable to be occupied, surrounded by materials too harmful for non-industry types but which are all part of the demolition man’s working day.
However, thanks to the advent of high reach excavators and remote controlled Brokk-style machines, men have been largely removed from harm’s way. And this has shown in the steady and marked decline in the number of accidents and incidents reported by the industry each year.
Indeed, the number of major accidents have fallen so much that in recent years, the industry had taken to worrying about a slight increase in incidences of minor eye and hand injuries that have coincided with the need for more meticulous materials segregation demanded of our recycling-obsessed business.
But, just recently, that tide appears to have turned. And while it is impossible to be specific – in the UK, demolition accident statistics are swallowed up amongst a wider construction category – there is a feeling that major accidents and, worse, fatalities are on the rise once again.
Of course, some of these accidents might be just that; the tragic outcome of an unforeseen and unforeseeable set of circumstances. But the industry must look at itself to see just why those other accidents – the foreseeable and preventable – are on the rise.
There has, to the best of our knowledge, been no change in the demolition industry’s recruitment policy; so sudden attraction of gung-ho risk-takers. Despite concerns to the contrary, demolition training companies are reporting a maintained or slightly increased demand. And the equipment used hasn’t suddenly become unsafe and self-destructing.
The only over-arching trend that has tracked the rise in the number of accidents has been the decline in the global economy. As workloads and margins have fallen, so the accident numbers have risen.
This could, of course, be a coincidence; an anomoly; a statistical freak.
But we find ourselves in a buyers’ market; one in which demolition contractors are forced to march to the beat of the client’s drum. In an eagerness to keep men and machine working, demolition contractors are working for less. If a client demands that a 12-week demolition programme is condensed into just eight weeks, there are plenty of companies out there that will agree and then pull out all the stops to make that happen.
Are we, therefore, cutting corners and putting lives at risk merely to satisfy over-demanding clients?
Such things are virtually impossible to prove. And, as I suggested above, perhaps the recent spate of accidents is nothing more than a statistical blip; an unhappy coincidence.
But I am reminded of a quotation:
“A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish – but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.” Vladimir Nabokov
