In an unprecedented move, the organisers of the Hillhead 2009 exhibition has announced that it has been postponed by 12 months. The quarrying and recycling show, which takes place in Buxton, Derbyshire every other year, is the latest victim of the “adverse economic climate”.
Full details here.
A nice time lapse video showing the demolition and reinstatement of a toll booth in the US. Interesting to note that they managed to keep the traffic flowing, despite the works:
Train services through the Channel Tunnel linking Britain and France, where scheduled to be fully restored in February 2009 following several months of repairs after a major fire in the tunnel on 11 September 2008.
A lorry caught fire on a Shuttle train carrying heavy goods vehicles bound for France through the 50 km long northern tunnel. The fire, which spread to other vehicles, raged for about 16 hours. The extreme temperatures of up to 1000ºC caused extensive damage to about 600 metres of the 7.6 metre diameter tunnel’s concrete lining, approximately 11 km from the French entrance.
The Channel Tunnel operator Eurotunnel awarded the repair contract, estimated to be between €50-60M, to a consortium of Freyssinet, Eurovia Travaux Ferroviaires and Vinci Energies. Freyssinet was appointed to look after the civil engineering works, while ETF would be responsible for track and overhead wire restoration and Vinci Energies responsible for other equipment. The technique of hydrodemolition, which uses high-pressure water jets to remove concrete from various structures, was specified as the method to remove the fire damaged concrete. Freyssinet subcontracted the concrete removal to the specialist hydrodemolition and industrial cleaning contractor Philip Lasserat.
For the hydrodemolition part of the repair Philippe Lassarat hired four Conjet hydrodemolition Robots and pumps, together with a team of experienced operators and a project manager, from Rotterdam based Doornbos Equipment, a specialist in the rental of ultra high-pressure water jetting and vacuum equipment. To meet the tight schedule Doornbos had to work three shifts round the clock and opted to use two Conjet 364s and two Conjet 322s. Conjet supplied specially modified banana shaped feedbeams, which carry the jetting nozzle, to match the curvature of the tunnel wall.
“We had to remove the damaged C45 concrete just from the walls and roof to a depth of 30 mm and managed this at an average of 650 m2/day,” says Doornbos project manager Uwe Clausen. “The total area was about 9,500 m2 over an approximate 600 m length of tunnel, including about 350 m2 directly above the fire where the damage was most severe. We removed all the fire damaged concrete in 14 working days using four Robots. We had to work non-stop round the clock in three 10 hours shifts, which included an hour in and an hour out at shift change to get through all the security.” The Robots were supported by 350 kW and 400 kW pumps operating at pressures up to 1000bar and flow of up to 240 litres/min.
After the removal of the damaged concrete Philippe Lassarat followed on repairing and replacing any fire damaged reinforcing prior to spraying on the new concrete lining. The various services and utilities were then replaced before handing the tunnel back to Eurotunnel to restart a full service of the Shuttle trains on 10 February. Eurostar, the company that operates the passenger trains running through the tunnel, anticipated services would be fully restored on 23 February.
At a time when cross-border unity and environmental concerns have been set aside and replaced by an “every man for himself” attitude to stave off the worst effects of the global credit crunch, the US’ National Demolition Association has announced that it is to postpone its long-awaited and much-heralded global waste symposium.
According to a news report by leading trade magazine D&Ri, the symposium has been put back by a year because “current adverse economic conditions had resulted in many US state governments issuing out-of-state travel restrictions on their employees, thus preventing the NDA from being able to attract one of the major interest groups to the event.”
Full details of the postponement can be found here.
Premier Waste, the first waste management contractor to sign up to the WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) Halving Waste To Landfill agreement has said that for them, diverting 100% of construction, demolition and excavation waste from landfill is an achievable and realistic target.
Read the full story here.
An uncharacteristically deep blanket of snow has brought the UK’s road, rail and air travel to a standstill and has preoccupied news reporters from all the country’s major TV news networks for the past 12 hours or so. Similarly, UK trade magazine is reporting that a large number of UK sites are closed due the the severe weather.
However, demolition men are made of far stronger stuff than most. And during a Sky News report that featured a snow plough that had become stuck, I just spotted a low loader carrying an excavator from London contractor John F. Hunt.
So while the company grinds to a standstill, there are still a few brave (and hopefully warm) souls out there ensuring that demolition is done.
Did you make it into work today? If so, let us know what you’re up to using the Comments tab below.
A new service aims to make locally owned demolition services more “findable” on the Internet. Hometown Demolition connects high quality, locally owned demolition contractors with the homeowners, contractors, business owners, and builders that are using a search engine like Google to find a local demolition service on the Internet.
The US-only Hometown Demolition Contractors service screens local demolition services across America and accepts one company per market area as a client. For each client, full-page advertisements are placed on Hometown’s highly ranked web site for demolition contractors. Hometown Demolition Contractors is the largest and most authoritative demolition marketing web site in the U.S. Hometown’s demolition clients are also marketed directly with search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Full story here.
As part of its commitment to bring you the very latest in the world of demolition and recycling, demolitionnews.com will be attending a number of important industry events in the coming weeks/months. These include:
If you don’t know what we look like, just look for the guys burdened down with multiple cameras, video recorders and notepads.
We hope to see you there.
UK trade magazine Contract Journal is reporting that Controlled Group (formerly Controlled Demolition Group) has run up a further pre-tax loss – this time amounting to £1.8m.
The company only signed off its latest accounts — for the 12 months to 30 September 2007 — on 12 January 2009. Turnover of £10m was up from the figure of £7.4m in the previous year when Controlled made a pre-tax loss of £2.0m.
Full story here.
Good quality (if overlong) video of dust handler stacks being pulled down in North Carolina. There is, however, a certain irony at the end as the dust handler stacks send a plume of – you guessed it – dust into the air!
