Surely the time has come for a global industry information bank.
A demolition worker lies critically ill in a hospital bed in the US today, following a widely reported accident involving a high reach excavator working at the University of Washington campus during the weekend.
The man – thought to be 53-year old Gil Olson – was crushed under a huge chunk of concrete that fell several storeys before crushing the cab of the excavator he was operating.
Now here’s the thing. To the very best of our knowledge, there is only one recognised training course for the safe operation of high reach excavators anywhere in the world. And that happens to be the UK – which also produced the world’s first set of guidance notes on the safe use of these machines – roughly 4,000 miles from the site of the accident.
But in today’s technological age when information and data is fired around the world at something close to the speed of light, and when we can report on a global industry from the relative comfort of a chair in leafy England, does distance really matter?
Sure, Olson and his employer would not be able to carry out the training and qualification scheme set in place in the UK; but the guidance notes upon which it is based is freely available on the Internet. Whether that would have helped prevent the catastrophic collapse in which Olson was critically injured, we will never know. But it sure as hell wouldn’t have hurt.
Every country with a mature demolition industry has knowledge and experience to share. Maybe the Americans are the masters of the wrecking ball; maybe the Japanese have turned top-down demolition into an art form; and maybe the UK really is the very pinnacle of high reach excellence.
None of that actually matters. What does matter is that this information – whether it is guidance notes, training best practice or even detailed case studies on how a specific contract was carried out safely – flows freely, regardless of national borders and national pride.
As someone who has been involved in the writing of several sets of guidance notes – including top down deconstruction, safe use of mobile crushers and, of course, high reach excavators – I would like to think that the words contained within those documents might have helped make the industry just a little bit safer. And I really don’t care whether it makes it safer here in the UK, or in some far-flung corner of the world.
There is a Demolition Summit taking place in Amsterdam in a few months time, one that will attract representatives from across Europe, the US, New Zealand and South America. What better time to set aside national differences and to create a central, global information resource that is freely available to all within the industry?
If it prevents just one accident or saves one life, that surely would have been time well spent.
