Our annual forward-focused bumper edition is here.
We are proud and delighted to bring you the third of our annual Demolition Directory & Yearbook publications.
As has become the tradition, this one eschews the tired old idea of looking back at a year that has passed and instead looks towards the years ahead.
The tone is set by an opening feature called Visions of the Future in which we look ahead at how technology will impact upon working practices in the not-too-distant future. This theme is continued by a second feature entitled Answering the Questions of Tomorrow that looks at how plant and equipment will be monitored, managed and controlled on the construction and demolition sites of the future.
The rise and rise in the popularity of drones and drone technology is addressed in the feature Time Flies, while artificial intelligence comes under the spotlight in a feature called When AI meets Construction. The Diesel Debate, meanwhile, examines the continued use of fossil fuels and the likelihood of them being replaced in the foreseeable future.
A key chunk of the Yearbook is an updated directory of all the UK’s demolition companies. And that too makes for fascinating reading. This time last year, the directory contained 586 individual companies. This year, that number is just under 500. We have, of course, lost a few companies along the way but that is a drastic drop.
Of course, since we buy-in the directory data, there is every possibility that this might be a data anomaly. But a decrease of any kind serves as a timely reminder of the difficult and unpredictable times in which we live and work.
That said, just a few days before the start of the New Year, we conducted a straw poll among our 13,000+ Instagram followers. And a staggering 81 percent all believed that 2018 would be better for demolition than 2017 had been.
Let’s hope their predictions are correct.
