Saluting the Marathon Man…

The canny and affable Scot stepped down as second vice president of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors – effectively abandoning a long-held professional ambition – to pursue his one true calling: the training of the UK demolition industry’s workforce.

Since his arrival in the demolition business, it is a passion he has pursued relentlessly. He was on hand in the late 1970s when the NFDC took its first tentative steps on the road to adopting its own card scheme; he was a driving force behind the development of the industry’s first demolition specific training courses, his native Scotland setting a UK benchmark that the UK was to follow; and, together with former chairman David Clarke, Caldwell oversaw the NDTG’s evolution from Staines-based NFDC sideshow to equal partner and training pioneer when the Federation and Training Group relocated to Hemel Hempstead in 2009.

Caldwell has seen many changes during his many years at the sharp end of the demolition business. He has seen a huge upswing in the acceptance and adoption of training and the resulting decrease in the number of on-site accidents suffered by the sector. He has seen the advent of high reach excavators and remote-controlled demolition robots that have largely removed workers from hazardous areas. And he has seen a seemingly endless number of well-intentioned card schemes and Government interventions come and go. But today, he firmly believes that the demolition business is setting the standard.

“In many ways, the current card schemes are holding us back. We have put a huge amount of work into the CCDO scheme to ensure that the training is fit for purpose and to ensure that it is recognised and embraced,” he says. “But the CSCS system will need to improve – and improve quickly. Dealing with this system is not like painting the Forth Bridge; it’s more like swimming in quicksand. The deeper we go, the harder it gets.”

While CSCS gets its house in order, Caldwell is still looking ahead for the NDTG, setting in place training courses and guidance in advance of changes to the Control of Asbestos Regulations that are scheduled to come into force in April next year. In the latter months of his chairmanship, he has also overseen a series of standardisation meetings to ensure that the training providers linked to the NDTG deliver exactly the same course content, regardless of trainer or geographic location. And he has also presided over the training group’s strongest period of growth in its history against a backdrop of global economic recession.

“There was some concern that a downturn in demolition workload would force some demolition companies to abandon their training commitments to cut costs. But, if anything, the opposite has been true,” he asserts. “Training accomplishment and the competence of its workforce is now seen as a key differentiator during the pre-qualification process. As a result, a number of demolition companies have actually increased their training spend during the recession.”

Of course, the end of Caldwell’s reign is made easier by the fact that he’s handing over to his NDTG right-hand man of the past two years, Richard Comley. But, although he describes Comley as a “safe pair of hands”, there is no hint that Caldwell will be leaving the fray entirely.