For more than 30 years, I have charted the rise and fall of the UK demolition industry. It is an industry that is constantly in motion and in a continuous state of change and flux. So rapid is that change that DemolitionNews evolved from updates once or twice a week to six and seven days per week. Today, DemolitionNews is the driving force behind a LiveStream that covers all the very latest industry developments on a daily basis.
But while the changes are constant and rapid, are they truly significant? Are they game-changing developments capable of shifting the direction or redrawing the landscape of the industry as a whole?
Having thought about it long and hard and having consulted with a number of other industry professionals for whom I have the utmost respect, I am not convinced that there have been any significant contributions for, well, for quite some time.
The Accredited Site Audit Scheme introduced by the National Federation of Demolition Contractors (NFDC) back in the early 2000s was launched with great fanfare and promise. But, even though it remains a prerequisite of NFDC membership, the scheme has failed to progress. The site being audited is nominated by the member company and it is timed to suit them too – hardly the exacting litmus test of competence and compliance we had all hoped it might become.
The various sets of guidance notes produced by the NFDC similarly had the potential to raise standards among the Federation membership and beyond. But like a swotty schoolboy covering his work with his arm to ensure it isn’t copied, the NFDC has now placed those valuable guidance notes behind a firewall, accessible to just a select few. (It surely undermines any claims of elite status when access to a few books is considered a key differentiator).
The demolition degree pioneered by the Institute of Demolition Engineers gave the industry its first tangible taste of academic credibility; and certainly those that emerged with the qualification did so – rightly – with considerable pride. But the degree course seems to have faltered and now requires a significant shot in the arm if it is to truly progress.
Having polled several key individuals with their fingers on the industry pulse, we have managed to come up with just two potentially game-changing developments of recent years.
The first, I believe, is the Top Down Way tower block demolition system pioneered by Italian contractor Despe. It is unquestionably an engineering marvel; but it is also a vertical (if you’ll pardon the pun) innovation with relatively limited scope – It is best suited to tower blocks of 90 metres or taller. In the right application, the Top Down Way is a game-changer; sadly, the right application does not come along anywhere near often enough.
The second true game-changer, in my opinion and the opinion of others, is the automatic quick coupler from the likes of OilQuick. Steelwrist and Lehnhoff. The arrival of those quick couplers spawned a mini revolution within the industry. Today, no demolition contractor worth its salt is without quick couplers and the broad array of attachments it facilitates.
But that’s not much, is it? For an industry that is constantly innovating and constantly evolving, that is not a great deal to show for two decades or more.
Maybe the industry is now so mature that it is wrong to expect a landscape-shifting development at this stage. We already have high reach machines so now only the height is likely to vary. We have demolition robots so we have already pinned our colours to the remote control and autonomous operation mast that those in construction are only now beginning to consider.
But for all those meetings, those working parties, those committees, the R&D spend, and all those incremental innovations, the industry needle has barely shifted.
