AR Demolition uses site incident as industry learning opportunity.
AR Demolition’s Richard Dolman, the newly-elected president of the Institute of Demolition Engineers, has proven that he is a man of his word by not just coming clean about an on site incident, but actively using that incident as an industry learning opportunity.
The email servers at Demolition News Towers lit up last week with photos of an AR Demolition machine that had tracked over and partially into an unseen underground void. No-one was hurt in the incident. But from the outset, Dolman assured me that he would publish full details of the incident just as soon as his team had carried out an investigation.
That investigation took less tan a week and a report of its findings can now be found here.
According to the report, ground inspection reports – including bore hole tests – had failed to identify the presence of the void. The area was also inspected by the machine operator, but this too proved to be ineffective.
“As a business, we are using this incident as a tool for improvement and a training aid to remind staff of the dangers of underground voids,” the report says. “Whilst thankfully no-one was injured during this incident, the potential is clear. Therefore, the issues and findings can serve as a free lesson across all industry to ensure (or reduced) the potential for incidents of a similar nature in the future.”
This honest and transparent response to a near-miss is a further example of Dolman’s openness. He has previously built a forum website to allow fellow demolition contractors to post details of near-misses as a further aid to learning. And he reiterated that commitment in an exclusive interview here on DemolitionNews immediately after his election as president of the Institute of Demolition Engineers. You can revisit that specific discussion here.
