TECHNOLOGY
safety-culture partake in demolition activities,” says Bester. The nature of demolition works lends itself to risk, and the onus is on the demolition contractor to best mitigate and control these risks.“ Without the strictest control of all aspects of the work, these risks build to loss of life, loss of income due to secondary damage, as well as damage to reputation,” explains Bester. Kelly concurs that demolition is a dangerous trade requiring experienced and skilled personnel.“ Safety is the single biggest factor, and for this reason we retain long-term staff. Some of our people have been with us since we started in the 1980s. Hearing is a particular issue: all demolition sites require hearing protection or staff will quickly go deaf,” he says. All staff on site have to be aware of the on-site environment.“ They cannot sleepwalk around,” says Kelly.“ It particularly requires experienced supervisors who perform a risk assessment of each site and put in specific control measures for each risk. The best qualification for this job is experience— I’ ve been doing demolition for 34 years.”
Local standards up to scratch
According to Kelly, safety standards were slipshod in the 1980s when Wreckers first entered the industry. They quickly improved, and today he rates the local industry on a par with the best in the world, although corruption is an issue that affects safety standards. There have been cases where tenders have not been publicly advertised and as a result, he has seen rock blasters being used in a futile attempt to try to demolish a hospital, by a member of the unqualified‘ bakkie brigade’.“ Through various discussions with international stakeholders, we have come to realise that South African( and African) demolition companies tend to be significantly more versatile than our international peers. Jet Demolition won the Explosive Demolition Award during the World Demolition Summit hosted in London in 2017, for our implosion of the HG de Witt Building in Pretoria. As far as we are aware, this is the first African company to be recognised at this level, and we are immensely proud and humbled by the recognition,” Bester says. Another factor the local industry is coming to grips with is recycling materials.“ Due to increased focus on Green-star building practices, we are seeing more clients requesting recycling solutions to demolition waste. The unfortunate truth is that recycling the waste in such a manner as to be re-usable, normally requires extensive effort and cost. More often than not, these costs are not adequately provided for at planning stage, and the full recycling potential of a project is not reached.“ Scrap steel is generally sent to foundries for reprocessing, as the recycling thereof is usually offset against the project cost. The South African market is not yet fully aligned for the recycling of general demolition waste( brick and concrete) as costs are prohibitive. We are confident that this trend will come about in the next few years and look forward to adequate recycling budgets being made available to the demolition industry,” Bester says.
26- CEC July 2018