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Memories of a Demolition Man

Tony Hurley

President of the Institute of Demolition Engineers

1992 - 1994

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I came into this life on the 24th of January 1947 at 17 Archer Street Castleford, a two up, two down end of terrace house abutting the local railway. The weather that year was quite horrendous with lots of snow (so I was told). My father worked on the railways and my mother was a housewife and part time shop assistant. Both my parents served in the services during the war, Father with Monty in the desert rats and my mother with the WRAF. Castleford was a mining and railway town not to far from Leeds. The house I was born in belonged to my grandmother (mother’s mother); we actually lived in a village called Crofton which was close to Wakefield, again not to far from Leeds. My sister Margaret came along eighteen months later. My early life was blighted with illness and I spent a lot of my early life in Hospital with bronchial problems. And then at the age of 3 some youths pushed a shed over onto me and broke my thigh so it was back in hospital laid up in traction for quite a while. (My first experience of demolition) I left school at the age of 15 with no qualifications what so ever and no idea what I wanted to do for a living. Most of my school friends went into the mining industry, some thing I had no intention of doing. My grandfather on my mother’s side died as a result of a mining injury and she was left to bring up 5 children on her own. My grandfather on my father’s side had his back broken down the mines as a result of a roof fall, my uncle Dennis was blown to pieces in an explosive accident so you can appreciate my reluctance to follow in their footpaths. Little did I realise how much the mining industry would play a part in my working life. My first job on leaving school was as an extra in the film This Sporting Life staring Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts. It was a film about a northern rugby league team and a lot of the action was filmed at the Wakefield Trinity Rugby ground. I couldn’t really call it a job as we weren’t paid any money but were given free bingo. It was quite an experience, there were probably about 300 of us and we moved around the ground where set pieces were taking place and we had to shout and wave as the pieces were played out. Behind us were rows and rows of painted cardboard cut outs of people, I have watched the film closely many times and have yet to glimpse a shot of myself in the crowd and have never been able to distinguish between the real people or the cardboard cut outs. My first proper job was as a trainee storekeeper in an engineering company on Thorne’s lane in Wakefield, F W Spence Engineers. I was paid the princely sum of 1shilling an hour (5p) and we worked a 48 hour week, 15 minutes break on a morning, half an hour at lunchtime and 15 minutes in the afternoon, a buzzer went at the start and finish of each break and woe betide you if you slow timed in getting back to your post. Fred, the owner was a stickler for time keeping.

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Storekeeping was not really for me and during my lunch breaks I used to go into the fabrication shop and I taught myself to cut and weld. Probably because I had shown initiative I was given a position in the fabrication shop which gave me a good grounding for my later work role. It was whilst I worked there that I saw my first demolition project. Fred, the owner had bought some terrace properties to knock down to extend his empire and I was fascinated by the work being carried out but at no time did I ever think that that would eventually be my lifetime occupation. I had always had a fascination for motorbikes and had actually owned one since the age of 13, I bought this first bike in a box in bits for the sum of 2shillings and sixpence (12 and a half pence), from an old friend of my fathers. It was a Francis Barnet bike with a single cylinder engine with twin ports; it also had a hand gear change. I built the bike up with no idea how to start it or in fact ride it. I remember clearly the first time I got the engine going; it was a matter of pushing the dam thing, jumping on and dropping it into gear. When it did finally did start it frightened the life out of me because I hadn’t a clue what to do!! I finally mastered it and road it around the field’s local to where we lived. Much to the annoyance of the locals because I had taken the silencers off and it made one hell of a row but by inserting brillow soap pads into the ends of the remaining exhaust pipes it silenced it enough to appease the locals. This was the start of my motorcycling career; I didn’t know that at the time. I eventually saved up and bought a motorbike for work, it was a Triumph Tiger Cub which I bought off a work friend for the sum of £25. With the interest in motorbikes firmly fixed I came to realize that the job I was doing would not be able to finance my biking interests. My sister’s then boyfriend came to the rescue and got me a job at a company called Charles Roberts in Horbury Bridge near Wakefield. The company made rolling stock for the Railways and I worked in the forge operating a drop hammer. If you can imagine a French Guillotine you are some where near to visualising the actual piece of equipment, except on a much larger scale. You had the two uprights which held the forging block in place; this weighed probably about 3 tonnes. Fixed to the bottom of the forging block was the die, and at the base the lower half, the die was fixed in place, when the two came together it stamped out the piece of kit you were making. A series of shafts and motors at the top of the equipment drove the thing. You had a piece of rope which hung down at the side of the guides and by pulling on the rope you applied a brake to the revolving shaft, this lifted the block to the top and when you released the rope the block would come crashing down to stamp out the hot metal billet into the required shape. The forge man would place the hot metal billet into the die after liberally coating the insides of the die with thick grease; this was to stop the finished article sticking. You can only imagine what happened when the hammer block came crashing down on to the hot metal, flames and bits of hot metal flew everywhere and as your mid section was right in line with where both parts met up it could be pretty pain full, a leather apron was your only form of protection. The work was hot and hard

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and as we were on piecework we never stopped from morning till night. And they say demolition was dangerous!! Today’s health and safety officers would have a field day. For this work I earned around £12 per week for a good week if things didn’t go wrong, as a comparison, at the time my father earned around £7 per week. This new job allowed me to buy a bigger motorbike which really was what it was all about. My next job was my first introduction to Demolition. My Uncle Al was a mechanical engineer at Glass Houghton Colliery in Castleford, at the time T W Ward were undertaking work demolishing part of the colliery and he obviously thought he could do that. After convincing Wards that he could, he was employed by them as a foreman and he asked me if I wanted to be part of the team, as the pay was £13 per week plus £5 lodge allowance I jumped at the chance and so I became a demolition man for the first time at the age of 17. It wasn’t really demolition at that stage; we were employed taking up railway track between Bramley in Leeds and Tyersall in Bradford, taking down bridges and buildings along the way as we progressed. It was pretty hard work; a couple of guys would go ahead with oxygen and propane bottles on a bogey which ran on the track. They would go along cutting just the top section of the rail every five foot, a further two would follow on behind with a compressor fitted with a air spanner to take out the screws which held down the railway chairs and two more guys would follow on behind breaking each rail by hitting it with a sledge hammer, it always amazed me how easy they broke and I never travelled by train again without thinking “ I hope there’s no cracks in the rail” Once this part of the work was completed the broken sections of rail and the released chairs were hand loaded into a machine bucket for loading into railway wagons. This was followed by the removal of the timber sleepers and then the collecting of all the screws from the cast iron chairs, it was hard work but we were well paid and it enabled me at a later date to take up my hobby of motorcycle road racing, but more of that later. When this first contract was completed, Wards were obviously happy with Uncles performance so we were sent to ICI Hillside Thornton Cleveleys near Blackpool to start off a major piece of Demolition work, it was never intended for us to stay to the end of the contract, we were there just to set it away, it was like heaven to me, a young boy working and living so close to Blackpool, I was there every night and was disappointed when I was told I was going to Huddersfield Gas Works to start a job there. The foreman of this particular job was called Jack Hinchcliffe, one armed Jack! He had lost an arm whilst taking out a boiler and the guys who I worked with on site said he was a hard task master and to watch my step or he would have me out of a job.

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I went to the site alone as Uncle was finishing part of the work we had started. I reported to Mr Hinchcliffe and asked him what he wanted me to do. He asked me what my job was and I told him I was a scrap burner, he then told me to report to his charge hand a Mr Johnny Robinson. Mr Robinson was an Irish man as were a lot of Wards men in those days and he obviously didn’t like the look of me. He asked me what I did and I repeated what I had told Mr Hinchcliffe “I was a scrap burner” He asked to look at my hands and after inspecting them told me “you’re no scrap burner” he then showed me his hands which were burnt and scarred, I told him I wore gloves. This obviously didn’t impress him and he put me to work on one of the worst tubed boilers I had ever seen, it was plastered in lime scale and some one had made a half hearted attempt at cutting it up and then left it. I’m not one to be beat and I was determined to show our Mr Robinson that I was a scrap burner and a good one at that. I set about this boiler and at the end of a day I had it all cut up to size. He came along later and apologised to me and said you are indeed a burner and a bloody good one, John and I got on very well after that and both him and Mr Hinchcliffe asked if I would stay and work permanently with their crew. The week went well and it came to Friday, wage day. The wages in those days came in a brown paper envelope with all the details of your wages written on the outside so the foremen new exactly what you earned. Mr Hinchcliffe came over with mine and asked me what the hell this was, handing my wage to me. I thought I’ve been rumbled, how can a 17 year old boy earn this kind of money, in those days you never earned a mans wage until you were 21 years of age. I was as respectful as I could be and told him it was my wage, he hit the roof and said “your doing a mans job, you will get a mans wage” and from that point onwards my wage was increased to £21 a week with £5 lodging allowance, it was like winning the pools, now I could think more seriously about the bike racing. I worked with Wards for a number of years and it was mainly Gas Works and Railways and I enjoyed every moment of it, unfortunately all good things come to an end and I had a fall out with my Uncle which resulted in me leaving the company. Here I was, first time out of work since leaving school, rather than hang around, it was summer time and I took on a job as an ice cream salesman for Mister Softee. I managed to stick that out for 6 weeks, the wages were poor and the job was the most boring I had ever done then or since. I then went into construction for a while working for Turriff Construction on a warehouse extension for Greens Economisers on Calder grove road Wakefield and it was whilst there that I found out about a small scrap and demolition company in the area who were looking for men, I went along and got set on straight away. The money was no where near as good as T W Wards but at

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least it got me doing what I liked again. The company W.E.S, mainly did colliery work, demolition and scrap recovery. I hadn’t been with the company long when they made me up to site foreman, to be honest at 20 years old I had probably had more experience than any other of the guys. I would like to take this opportunity to digress a little at this point. You have to consider there were no rules, regulations codes of practice to call anything in the early days, that came much later, there were no washing or toilet facilities on site and you made do the best you could. There were no method statements or risk assessments and as foreman it was you job to source your own labour and work out how you were going to do the job. You stood or fell by your own endeavours. It was hard work, buildings were taken down and the resultant materials hand loaded into excavator buckets, all the work was very labour intensified and of course accidents were a regular occurrence. It was whilst I was with W.E.S ltd that I had my first experience with explosives. At the time we were taking down Hemsworth Colliery and one part of the work consisted of taking out the base tank of the washing plant. It was a concrete tank structure and one must remember this was well before the days of machine mounted breakers; we had no ball and crane so the only option open to us was hand held breakers. The work was hard and very slow and one day the colliery mechanical engineer came up to us and asked us if we had thought of using explosives. George Hoult, the guy who I was working with said he had had experience of explosive work as he had worked in the mines so the engineer supplied us with explosives and detonators and we set to work drilling all the holes (hundreds of the buggers). George and I set to work stemming all the holes with the explosives, probably about three sticks in each hole, we wired up the system and the engineer sent for a shot firer out of the mine. He checked all the system electrically and found it was ok, he had no idea how much jelly George and I had put in, he was soon to find out. The immediate area was cleared and I had positioned myself safely, as I thought behind a nearby wall and the charge was detonated. I can only describe what happened next. The charges went off with an almighty bang and what appeared to be a cloud of dust rose probably a hundred feet in the air, it was only went it came back down to earth whistling like a banchee that we discovered it wasn’t dust but bloody big lumps of concrete. Lots of it landed in the colliery car park, cars were well and truly peppered, plenty went through the colliery office windows, a lump the size of a football went through the winding house roof. We were never given explosives again on that job and the shot firer got the sack poor bugger. Whilst there, my sister Margaret became a £10 Pom and emigrated to Australia at the ripe old age of 19 and she has been there since. I stayed with the company for a couple of years but after a time I got sick of working out in all weathers without any proper equipment so I got a job with National Smokeless Fuels, again via my uncle Al who by this time we had

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made up and were friends again. Unfortunately the wages were very poor and I didn’t stay all that long. George Hoult, the guy who I had had the explosive incident with and another friend who worked with us at WES, Brian Baldwin contacted me, they were working with a company which was then unknown to me called Ogden’s of Otley, they asked if I fancied a job with them, really they were after someone with a car as the job was in Goole and they didn’t like staying in digs. The money was good so off I went into demolition again and stayed in the industry until I retired. The job at Goole was a gas works, it was the full works plus a couple of gas holders up the road from the site. The site foreman was Graham Holmes, I never thought at the time that one day we would end up in business together. It was whilst working on the Goole job we were transferred to a job at Rawcliffe, just up the road, it was the partial demolition of a paper mill and we were sent there to cut up some scrap, the foreman was a guy called Jack Kirkby, fondly known as Jumping Jack because he was always jumping about, particularly when he knew that Victor Ogden was going to make a visit. Part of the job involved the demolition of a large brick chimney with a large cast iron water tank situated at the top. The method of demolition was to chop out the bottom of the chimney and put in timber props as the work proceeded. Once this was all completed the timber props were to be set fire to and as they burnt out the chimney would collapse. Unfortunately once the work was completed the site manager informed us we were not allowed to have fires on a paper mill site!! After much discussion the job eventually went ahead and the chimney fell successfully. I travelled with Ogden’s to jobs all over the country and was made a foreman with them after about a year. To be honest they had very little experience at the time of large scale industrial dismantling, there basic work was town centre demolition and stone sales so although young I got on with them very quickly. As a foreman the wages were £40 per week plus £10 cash in hand and lodging allowance of £1.50 per night (by this time decimal coinage had come in), to be honest it was a fortune in the late 60s. My forte with Ogden’s seemed to be Gas Works and Gas Holders, I got on with the client well and was always asked for by them and I did many Gas works whilst with them. The first full works I did was at Todmorden on the boarders of Yorkshire and Lancashire and it was whilst there that I first came into contact with Charles Moran of Controlled demolition fame, our paths were to cross many times in the coming years. Charles was a machine operator at the time (Cat 951), and a very good one I have to say. During the demolition of Todmorden gas works I had my next experience of explosives, again a tank base. The guy that came out to do the work was a strange fellow, can’t remember his name but he arrived on site in a chauffer driven

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car with his man. Again we had previously drilled all the holes before he came to site and his man set about stemming the charges. The area was cleared and the charges were detonated, again a dust cloud went up into the air and distributed itself around the surrounding area, when the dust had cleared I went to view the area for any damage. Now the entrance road to the gas works had a row of terrace house on the way in and the explosion resulted in a lot of broken windows, I looked up the road and the site that greeted me was not a pleasant one, at the door of every house stood the owners who were not very pleased, I decided that this was not a job for me and fortunately we had a director on site, Cyril Thorpe so I told him he had better go and make the peace, don’t now what the cost was but it was sorted amicably. Cyril and my path with Ogden’s were to cross many times. It was whilst at Todmorden gas works that I had my first crawler crane fitted with magnet, what a boon, no more hand loading scrap into excavator buckets. The largest Gas Works I did was at Scarborough and I was there all summer, again I was in heaven, working by the seaside, it was like a holiday all the time. Again I came into contact with Charles and whilst there I gave him the rudiments of operating a crawler crane, a Smith 21 crawler crane with demolition ball, he also became a very good crawler crane operator and was excellent with a demolition ball. Whilst working on the contract I had my third experience with explosives but this time on a more professional basis. The explosives engineer we subcontracted the work to was Reg Turley of Northern Explosive services; Reg was one of the founders of the Institute of Explosives Engineers and was very good at his job. I believe he had been a Captain in the pioneer core, he was also a founder member of the institute of explosive engineers. It was at a later date that I found myself working with Reg, Ogden’s wanted someone in the company to learn explosives work and I was the one that was chosen, got to say I got pretty sick of continually drilling holes in concrete and decided it was not for me. At the time we had a young transport clerk called Mike Perkins who took on the roll, to say Mike was rather a brash character would be an understatement but he was young and full of enthusiasm and took to the job like a duck to water. He ended up as a main board director with Ogden’s but left later to join the South African company, Wreckers. It was probably Wreckers explosive demolition of Saint Mary’s Tower block in Glasgow that resulted in the changing of some of the explosive regulations when a woman spectator was killed but more of Mike later. I travelled around the country quite a lot with Ogden’s, one particular job that sticks in my mind was in Middlesbrough, the demolition of the Corporation hotel in the town centre. I had been sent up there to take down a fire escape from the side of the hotel. We had a labourer working with us, a bloke called Terry Grady who for some reason kept vanishing. I was sent to look for him one day and found him on the roof peering over the apex, I shouted out to him and he gestured for me to come up and look at what he was watching.

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There was a camera shop on the opposite side of the street and Terry was looking straight down into the second floor window at the proprietor and his assistant engaged in an act of shall we say of a sexual nature. The rest of the team was called up and when the two had finished we gave them a rapturous applause, they got an even bigger one at the end of the working day when all the guys were out in the street to clap them out of the premises. Voyeurism must have been one of Terry’s favourite occupations because I caught him again doing the same thing whilst we were demolishing the old Yorkshire post offices in the centre of Leeds, Terry had found the ladies toilet window which was open and every time it was used a bare behind could be clearly seen. I was there at the beginning of this particular job and on the first day I found the stripping crews extremely well dressed, some in dinner suits, and others in fancy suits and frilly shirts. Apparently, Brills the men’s shop hadn’t been fully vacated and the blokes had dropped down through the under drawing and helped themselves to what was there. Another incident which didn’t go down to well at the time comes to mind. Whilst stripping out the buildings the men had found some very realistic dummies all fully dressed, these were taken to the top of the building and thrown down into the street accompanied by loud cries, the passing crowds weren’t impressed to say the least and probably one or two were close to heart attacks. I was moved from this job back up to the north east to do a large scale contract for the then ICI in Billingham works, it involved taking down an overhead monorail system which carried a stone like material all around the site, the stone, I believe it was called anadrite and was used in some chemical process, it was the first job that Ogden’s had done for ICI and it was rather a prestige contract. The job involved a lot of heavy crane work and we were working in close confines of working chemical plant. One particular section of the job involved the lifting down of two large scale conveyor type structures and I had to organise crane companies to give us their bids for the work. I had had various companies to look at the work and was about to award the contract to what was then British Crane Hire and they were going to use a large strut jibbed crane requiring 140 foot of jib. One of the companies, J D White ltd was late with their bid and their representative apologised and asked if he was too late to still offer a quote. I told him I was going to award the contract that day to British Crane Hire and he asked me what crane they were going to use, I told him it was a strut crane with 140 foot of jib, his next question knocked the wind out of me, he asked me how were they going to get the jib up, on looking around I realised what he meant, the area was a mass of overhead pipe bridges and there was no way they could have put the jib up to do the work. I asked him what they would use and he said a mobile tower crane, they got the work, it would have been a great source of embarrassment to me if we had got the original crane to site and not been able to get the jib up. J D Whites got all my crane hire work in the north east after that and their rep Mike Simpson became a very

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close friend of mine for many years. The company was eventually swallowed up, firstly by Grayston, which became Grayston White and Sparrow and then finally many years later by Ainscoughs. The contract went very well and I spent a number of years in ICI Billingham and I was asked to move up to the north east on a permanent basis. Ogden’s had opened a northern office in Bowburn, just outside of Durham. I moved up to the North east and my Manager there was Graham Holmes, my first Ogden foreman. The director was Cyril Thorpe the guy from the Todmorden contract. After a while I was promoted to Contracts supervisor with responsibility for work from Teesside to southern Scotland. As work increased in the new region I was again promoted to Contracts Manager and Graham was promoted to Demolition Manager. During my time there I again came across Mike Perkins, we were doing a gas works just outside of Newcastle at the time, Redehough Gas Works and part of the job was to demolish a concrete bunker, nothing extraordinary by today’s standards, just a matter of knocking the front support legs out and letting the thing roll over but it was Mikes first explosives job on his own and he was a bundle of nerves, the job went fine and I think it gave him renewed confidence in his abilities. I dealt with Mike on quite a few occasions in the North East not all of them good I have to say. I called at a job that he was preparing at Easington Colliery, it happened to be lunch time and Mike was sat in his van. Running from the van was a stretch of detonating cable, at the end of the cable was a slice of bread which contained a detonator, Mike thought it was quite funny blowing up seagulls as they came for the bread, I wasn’t impressed. On another occasion I was at Spennymoor Night club on a night out, Mike happened to be there at two in the morning with his van loaded with gelignite and detonators ready for a job the next day, again I wasn’t impressed, how he survived with us and to become a main board director was always a source of amazement to me. During my time with Ogden’s I was given a job to do which involved taking down a crushing plant on the construction of the M62 Motorway, the crusher was to be taken down for re-use at a site in Wales, although the crusher was for re-use the out loading conveyor wasn’t that important to the new project so I was told if it was a problem just scrap it. It was whilst carrying out this contract that I had my first experience of a telescopic crane, this type of plant was new at the time. The crane arrived on site and I gave the operator the weights of the conveyor and told him to position his crane so that he could safely lift it down. He set the thing up and it appeared to be miles away from the lift and I asked him if he was sure he was positioned correctly, he confirmed that he was. The crane was one of the early types with the operating area being inside the actual lorry driving cab, the operator just swivelled the seat around to get at the lift controls. I spoke to the driver before the lift commenced and told him that the conveyor wasn’t important

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and if there was a problem then to just drop it, something I found you couldn’t do with a hydraulic crane. We cut out all the bolts holding the conveyor to its support structure after suspending the section to the crane. I then stood at the side of the crane to give the operator instructions, I gave the order to lift which he commenced, as soon as it came free there were bells ringing and lights flashing, it was obvious the load was too heavy for the crane. I continually shouted at the driver to let it go but he just froze on the controls. When the front wheels of the crane were about my head height the crane rapidly rose and finished up sat on its back end with the cab about 20foot from the ground. At the time it was raining heavily and the body of the crane was all steelwork and very slippy, it was a job and a half getting the poor bloke out of the cab, particularly as he was rather large. The later enquiry revealed that he wasn’t a crane operator, he was the company bowser driver and he was sent to do the job because they were short of operators. After I had finished the work I was told that I was going to Wales to install the crusher on its new site, I objected strongly as I had had little experience in this type of work but it was all to no avail, I was on my way. The site for installation was the Llyn Brianne dam five miles west of Llantwrtyd Wells. A natural reservoir was being created in the valley and it was to be constructed using natural materials such as rock and clay, the crusher was to be used to crush rock which had been blasted out on the site. It was only a small stream that ran through the valley and on completion of the dam it would take five years to fill to capacity. The stream was filled with trout and was patrolled by a security company. There was a crane driver who worked on the site who had a good idea for catching the trout at a convenient time. He managed to obtain gelignite, detonators and cord together with a blast box, obviously the explosive men were in on the deal. His first attempt was rather fruitless, he put the jelly in the water and fired it which resulted in fish spread for miles in the surrounding area, and he finally got it right by just using the detonators. When I got to site, the base for the crusher had been constructed with all the bolt holes drilled for holding down the super structure so I set about putting this thing up. As the structure grew it was becoming apparent to me that the crusher was going to be no where near the face of the loading area, I brought this up with the engineer who told me to carry on, and it would be ok. Famous last words from a professional, when I had finished we were at least six feet from the face. The engineer said we would have to take it down and start again, I thought “not bloody likely” I’d been there long enough. I got some pieces of round re- bar and jacked up each of the support legs independently and placed the re-bar underneath each base. I then got the local Bulldozer driver to give it a push and the whole thing rolled into place, the engineer immediately offered me a job.

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The blasting of rock for use in the project was carried out each night at a specific time, a hooter was set going half an hour prior to detonation to give everyone the chance to clear the area. This particular day I decided I would go and wash my van up in the yard area well away from the blast site. When the blast was initiated rock flew every where, cars were wrecked windows were broken, I spoke to a guy in the area and he told me “It happens regularly” I didn’t stay around on a night again. Another contract which still sticks in my mind and still makes me laugh today was the removal of a timber Dolphin in the middle of the Tyne. We were to take a boat out to the dolphin and saw cut the entire cross bracing to leave all the piles independent so that they could be withdrawn with a floating crane. The day came to start and I had organised a rowing boat but when it came there were no oars so I went into Newcastle where we were doing a large town centre demolition job and picked up some floorboards to use as oars. I took them back to site and set the men away and left them to it. I went back to site some 3 hours later and the men were nowhere to be seen out on the river. Looking around I saw this boat being carried along the river bank. What had happened was that the men had set off in the boat but neither me or my men had made any allowance for the tide, consequently they ended up missing the dolphin and ending up 3 miles down the river. We eventually did get it right and got the cutting done. Come the day of the pile withdrawals I organised a motor boat, I wasn’t having the same performance as the previous attempt. The idea was that the piles would be withdrawn and towed to the jetty side and tide up to be lifted out by crane the following day. The barge crane itself, The Titan, was an experience never to forget, it was a fixed jib unit with a large dial at the helm which indicated what weight was being lifted and you paid on the weight that was lifted. We were told by the captain to go below decks and get ourselves a cup of tea while they got everything ready. We all went down and were confronted by a large tea boiler with a ladies stocking sticking out of the top, investigation of the said stocking revealed that it was full of eggs being steadily boiled for breakfast. The withdrawals of the piles went very well and the piles were all taken to the jetty and tied off and we all left site to return the next day to lift out the piles. The next day came with another shock, again I had made no allowance for the tides and all the removed piles were hanging from the jetty like bunches of grapes so we had to wait until the tide came in before we could get them out. Probably one of the quickest jobs we ever did was the demolition of a bridge at Greystoke, it was part of the modernisation of the A66 which runs from Middlesbrough on the East coast to Workington on the West coast. The

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longest part of the job was getting the piece of equipment we were to use to the site. We had a mobile crane which consisted of a 22RB Crawler crane fitted on the back of a Foden wagon, no power steering or anything fancy and this thing on the road was slow. The guys set of in the morning with the crane and a wagon with the jib sections, I set off some time later knowing that I would soon catch them. I caught up with them around Bowes Moor on the A66 and I knew it was them by the traffic queue behind then, it stretched for miles, as it was then a single carriage way road it was impossible to pass them and there were a lot of irate drivers behind them that morning. They pulled off at a café and the traffic was able to pass and I caught up with them. We finally got to the site and set up the crane, the construction company doing the road had taken all the topping off the bridge and removed the abutment walls. All we had left been a brick arch about 15 feet high and one crack with the ball resulted in the bridge totally collapsing. It was just a matter of packing up and going home all in all the actual demolition took 5 minutes! I spent many enjoyable years with Ogden’s and would not have left the company but for two things, the death of my father at the age of 52 and my wife of two years decided she had had enough of the north east and Obviously me, and left me and went back to live with her parents in Wakefield. I sold my house and moved back to Yorkshire to form my own company in 1974 Most of my early demolition years involved travelling and I think at this time it would be appropriate to tell the reader about some of the accommodation we stayed in. In Goole, when we had to stay due to bad weather we were in a boarding house at the princely sum of 16shillings per night, (80p), bed breakfast and evening meal, six of us were lodged in the attic of this particular terraced property and if you were last in there was no hot water left for a bath. Breakfast was pretty standard, an egg, a piece of bacon and a sausage and lots of toast. The evening meal was the same every night, boiled potatoes a meat pie and peas this was followed by a blackberry tart. If you were ever late in you could turn the plate upside down and the food would remain in place. Whilst in Todmorden we stayed in a pub named the Shannon and Chesapeake, again 4 of us were boarded in the upstairs bedroom in two double beds at a pound per night. The pub was very quiet up to about ten at night and then the local farmers would come in and play cards and dominoes whilst the early hours of the morning. I wasn’t into this so I used to go to bed but the three men who were travelling with me used to stay up and join in. On one particular occasion I had great difficulty in getting one of the men out of bed, in fact I couldn’t budge him, he was out for the count. When he did eventually arrive for work at around 10am I gave him the biggest

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rollicking of his life and told him if it happened again he would be out of a job. It must have played on his mind because in bed that night I heard him get up, he crawled over his bed mate and then over my bed mate to me, he stood at the side of the bed and I jumped up when I realised what he was going to do, yes he was going to pee all over me. The lad was still asleep and hadn’t a clue what he was doing. (I hope you remember this Ziggy if you ever get to read this). When I was first in the Northeast we used to stay on Borough Road at Elsie’s, another terraced property with loads of rooms and loads of lodgers. The Borough road area of Middlesboro was home to a lot of the girls of the night and I spent many a happy hour in the local laundrette listening to the girls talking of their previous nights activities. Elsie, the owner of the boarding house was an enterprising lady, every Thursday night she would have this bloke come in with a cine camera showing films of a dubious nature and at a cost of 50p you could watch. Most of the places we stayed in in the early days were very much the same both in price and content. Probably the most unusual accommodation I stayed in was whilst I was taking my shot firer course with the Institute of Explosive Engineers. It was at Shrivenham, the college of science and technology, it was a training facility for the services and I was in the officer’s quarters. The day I booked in I was shown to my room which consisted of a wardrobe, a desk and an old iron bed. When I asked where the bathroom was I was told “its fifty yards down the corridor” The next morning I was woken at 7am by a lady bearing a cup of tea. What a place it was, the food was magnificent and there was every news paper imaginable in the dining area, Dean Gregory of Gregory Demolition was doing the course with me at the same time and we had a pretty good time of it, so much so, when it came for the time for me to go I didn’t really want to.

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My Motorcycle racing days

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I raced solo motorcycles for a number of years, in 1978 I took on the roll of a passenger in a racing sidecar and rode on most of the major circuits in the UK including Brands Hatch, Donnington Park, Mallory Park, Oulton Park, Olivers Mount in Scarborough and many other smaller tracks. In 1983 I broke my leg which resulted in me spending 7 months in pot so my motorcycle racing career finished. That, and I was getting to old and to fat.

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It was a big move to start on my own, I had no real contacts in Yorkshire as I had spent most of my working life to date travelling to different parts of the country and had lived in the North East for a number of years. The original name of the company was West Yorkshire Demolition, it was at the time when all the boundary regions changed, the West Riding being the original area. My main area of work was subcontracting for other demolition companies, mainly stripping out properties and re-claiming and selling on materials. I took on a partner who was a small established demolition company and we changed the name to Westcroft Demolition Ltd and I traded as that for over 20years. Unfortunately like a lot of partnerships it did not last and I bought out my partners shares. I did a lot of work for the local council in the early days, in the main slum clearance of terrace properties of which there were plenty, it was the days of modernisation. I also did subcontract work for other companies and one of those was Kelsall Demolition Ltd, Ken Kelsall was originally a director with Ogden’s who like me left and started on his own, I was to bump into Charles Moran again who at the time worked for Ken. Unfortunately the company went into liquidation and at the time the company was demolishing Whitby Gas Works. Whitby Gas Works was not the easiest place to reach, situated between the main rail track into Whitby and the river, the only way to it was to walk down the rail track for about a mile. The company had organised a rail closure to take all the plant in to carry out the work and had employed a subcontractor to carry out the work. The job was not going very well and it was easy to understand why, the subcontractors were carrying oxygen and propane bottles singularly along the rail track, eventually they gave up. I was asked to look at the work and their contracts manager John Belton took me out to look at the job. I looked around the site and one of the first things I did was wade into the river, it was tidal and at the time it was low tide. The river bottom was rock and I had no problems getting to the other side. I made investigations into the owner of the land on the opposite bank and he gave me permission to cross his land. I agreed a price with Kelsall’s to complete the work and on the first day we took a wagon load of oxygen and propane straight over the river. We completed the work, all scrap material going out by rail. One thing that Ken Kelsall did was to buy Northern Explosives from under the nose of Ogden’s and that’s how I presume Charles got into the explosive side of demolition. John Belton eventually came to work for me after the demise of Kelsall Demolition, John is still a member of the Institute of Demolition Engineers but is no longer involved in demolition. The company grew, mainly through colliery demolitions, most of them in South Yorkshire.

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One particular job lead to quite a few large contracts, I had received an enquiry for a job for Swan Hunters, British Shipbuilders at Wallsend Admiralty Yard, it wasn’t a particularly large job and to be honest I wasn’t that interested but as Swan Hunter were supplying the burners and Oxygen/Propane, only Boilermakers were allowed to do cutting and welding in the yard, it was part of the yard agreement with the unions, I thought I would give it a go. The price I submitted was not what I would have called competitive and I was surprised when we were awarded the contract, was I in for a big shock ! ! Yes the company were to supply the men and gas but the way it was being carried out I would still have been on site to this day. The boiler maker and his assistant would go to the stores in the morning and take out their burning equipment and one bottle of propane and one bottle of oxygen, place it on a trolley and hand tow it to the site. The assistant would put the equipment together and light the torch and pass it to the boilermaker who would then look at his watch and decide it was break time. The equipment would be dismantled and towed back to the stores. After three weeks very little had been achieved and I was at my wits end. It was in the early days of the liebherr excavators and shears and I just happened to know a company who owned one in Darlington so I made an agreement with them to have the equipment delivered late Friday night and it to be off site by Sunday night. We completed all the demolition that weekend and the excavator was sent off site and I travelled home to Yorkshire. Our first telephone call that Monday morning was from the yard Director who was not in the best of moods and told me in no uncertain terms that I had to be at a meeting with him and the union leaders that day as I had contravened the yard rules. I didn’t make him any wiser and travelled up to Newcastle for the meeting feeling quite pleased with what was about to come. We all sat down in the directors office and the union leader opened the meeting and was quite aggressive, “Had I realised what I had done” he said, I told him yes, I had completed the contract to all their rules to which he replied “no you have used burning equipment contrary to the rules” At that I suggested we made a visit to site and whilst there I asked him if he could find any metal that had been cut using oxy/propane. He and his colleagues search all to no avail and they asked me how I had done it, I just said by mechanical method and left it at that. The yard Directors face was beaming and I knew I had made a friend. There is no wonder our ship building industry went to pieces. I still did work for other companies, one of them being Blair’s of Darlington, who should have been their managing Director? Graham Holmes, my old Ogden Foreman and manager in the north east. We did quite a bit of work for Blair’s mainly steelworks, the first job being a large Gas Holder at Workington Steelworks. When we had completed the work Graham asked me if I fancied

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another Director with the option of being a share holder and I told him yes, it would be a pleasure so he left Blair’s and joined Westcroft. One of the first things he got me to do was to make application to become a member of The National Federation of Demolition Contractors which we successfully did, I was later to become Chairman of the North East Region. The company continued to grow and we opened an office in Barnard Castle above a garage in the main street to service the North east and west coast operations, our first major job was a large part of Workington Steelworks, and then the full Steelworks at Barrow in Furness quickly followed. Some time later I received an enquiry from the Director of Swan Hunters to do a large part of the Admiralty Yard in Wallsend where I had previously outwitted the unions, except this time the whole area was to be fenced off and sold to us for the princely sum of £1 and on completion of the work the land would be sold back at the same price, there would be no union involvement. We were awarded the contract and worked in that yard for quite some time. One particular section of the work involved the demolition of two large dockside cranes. The cranes were situated on a wharf, boarded on one side by the river Tyne and on the other a dry dock which was unused and full of water so the only option to us was explosives. We employed an explosive company, then unknown to us to carry out the work. You have to realise, at the time explosive demolition was still really in its infancy and there was no such thing as shaped cutting charges so the only option was to pre weaken the cranes as far as we dared and then pack the rear of the legs with explosives and then large amounts of sand bags to resist the detonation. At this point I would like to remind the reader that the yard at Wallsend built war ships and in the yard to the rear of the cranes was the new Ark Royal being fitted out and also an Iranian war ship. The Iranian ship was completed but due to the conflict with Iran at the time, Margaret Thatcher, the then Prime Minister would not release the vessel. Because the vessel had been paid for it was in effect Iranian property and it had an Iranian crew, permission was required from the Iranian Embassy if anyone wanted to board the boat. The demolition was due to take place at 5.30 one Friday night and when I reached site that afternoon pre weakening was still taking place. I was not happy at the extent of pre weakening, to me it looked as if a strong wind would blow them over so I stopped that and we set the charges. The detonation took place at the designated time and the cranes came over as predicted and everyone went home. Early next morning I received a call from the yard and we were to get there as quickly as possible. When we arrived part of the Tyne had been closed,

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what had happened was some of the charges had not detonated and had been taken out of the dock on an incoming tide, when the tide went out the charges were carried out into the Tyne and settled around the new Ark Royal. The Iranian crew were taking great interest in this but the yard management were not impressed. It took us quite a time to convince the management that the charges were completely safe as there were no detonators connected. We collected the charges from the river and every one was happy again. The explosive company who I had stopped pre weakening the cranes were later involved in a power station explosive demolition and due to over pre weakening the boilers collapsed with the result of the loss of two lives. We continued with shipyard demolition in the Newcastle area and were awarded the contract to demolish the Hawthorne Leslie Yard, another full ship yard. The North East operations went well and to further expand we needed bigger premises. We purchased an independent small steelworks in Middlesbrough on 40 foot road. The company had been bought out by British Steel for the order book and we purchased the full site from them. We demolished all the structures we didn’t want and left up workshops and the office block for our use. The recovery of plant and scrap metal covered the cost of purchasing the property. We moved the North East operations to this site and were there for many years, much of our work being for the British Steel Corporation, later to become Corus. Down at the Castleford depot we continued with mainly colliery demolition but this all came to a stop with the miner’s strike of 1984. Unfortunately this put untold pressure on the finances of the company, we had bonds down with the coal board for various contracts but were not allowed to work on the sites because of the strike, it was a hard job getting our plant off the sites because of the pickets. The strike went on much longer than anyone predicted and when it was over we tendered for and won the contract to demolish Cortonwood Colliery where the strike first started. Some time later we were awarded the demolition of Orgreave Coke works where some of the most violent clashes with police and the pickets took place. Little did we realise at the time that the purchase of the land in Middlesbrough and the contract at Orgreave Coke works would be the main catalyst of the company’s demise, but more of that later.

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The North East Region of the NFDC’s Dinner and dance at the Blackwell Grange Hotel in Darlington

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We had over 100 guests at the dance including the President, David Sinclair, The London and Southern Counties Chairman Sidney Hunt Jnr and his wife and the Chairman of the Midland and Welsh Region and his wife, I must apologise for not remembering his name. It was whilst I was Chairman of the North East region that I found out about The Institute of Demolition Engineers, until that time I knew nothing about it. I made enquiries as to what was required and discovered that I had to have a sponsor who had to be a full member and write a paper of no less than 5000 words on a demolition topic. Charles Moran sponsored me and I did a paper on the demolition of number 7 rail bridge at Kirk Sandal in Doncaster. The bridge crossed the river Don and was designed as the same approach spans of the ill fated Tay Bridge which fell down with the loss of many lives. I was elected a Member of the Institute on the 15th of February 1984, the President at the time was Sidney Hunt Snr and the Secretary was Ken Seakens. After a while I became a Council Member and Trustee of the Institute for many years. During the Presidency of Peter Lindsell we held an AGM at Oxford University, at the time it was decided that we needed female members to get more involved in the running of the Institute and lots of canvassing went on. The names put forward were Mary Bradley, Ffion Hilliam and Susie Buchner. After the election all three ladies were elected to the Council and I lost my place, I was quickly co-opted back on and remained there for many years. I wrote a further paper in support of admission as a Fellow, the topic was the demolition of a waterless Gas Holder and I was elected as a Fellow on the 22nd of August 1990, the president at the time was Peter Lindsell and the secretary again was Ken Seakens. Sidney Hunt Snr was a great friend of mine during my membership and it was him who talked me into running for Vice President which I did in 1990, My president at the time was Brian Bird of the Bird Group of companies. I was elected President in 1992 and Mary Bradley was my Vice President, Mary was the first and only President the IDE as had to date. In the early days of the Institute lunches and meetings were held every couple of months, we did this to raise money and to conduct business of the Institute, and it was also a chance for many of the members to get together. My first AGM was held at the St Ermines Hotel, which both the Institute and The NFDC used regularly, this was followed by lunch on a boat trip down the Thames, I have to say it was probably one of the best luncheons I have had with the Institute. The boat was the one used by Parliament and I’m sorry but I can’t remember the name of the vessel. Our speaker for the trip was Len Broom who was the Chief engineer for the Thames, his talk was interesting but he did drone on somewhat.

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My final AGM was held in the House of Commons, Churchill Room on the 29th of October 1993 and my Speaker on this occasion was David Mellor MP. I have to say I was rather concerned on the reception he would get because it was at the time of a controversy with a certain lady. The only thing I knew about David was what I had read in the press and to be honest because of what I had read I was not that impressed with the man. It was a pleasant shock to find he was one of the nicest men I had met and he gave a thoroughly entertaining speech, not only that but he donated his fee to charity. It was probably one of the most entertaining days I had whilst being President of the Institute. I had met many notable figures over the years with my involvement with both the Institute and the NFDC, Virginia Bottomley MP, George Younger MP and Lord Snowdon and of course Sir Anthony Durant, but I have to say David Mellor was the most entertaining and engaging of men.

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I completed my term of office as President and remained a council member for many years after and enjoyed every moment of it. Mary Bradley made an excellent Vice President for me and went on to be a very good president. Richard Vann of Richard Vann Associates followed first as Vice President to Mary and then to President and I was privileged to be seated with Richard and his parents at his first AGM, Richard and I were very good friends and remain so to this day. Charles Moran was Vice President to Richard and again followed on to become President. During the time of Charles Presidency he took on the cost of running the Institute as our financial affairs at the time were not that good and he put the Institute on a firm financial footing and we should all be grateful for his generosity because without him we may not have had the Institute we have today. In an 8 year period of the Institute we had 3 Yorkshire Presidents, it’s sad to say we have yet to have a North East Region President of the NFDC. In 1992 my company, Westcroft Demolition went into liquidation, as I previously said the catalyst to it all was the yard in Middlesboro and the contract for British Steel at Orgreave. It all started in 1989, we received a letter from the representatives of Teesside Development Corporation (a government agency), informing us that they wished to go into early negotiations to purchase our property on 40foot road, if we refused they would compulsory purchase the property. We were advised to get the property valued and submit our price to them. We had the property valued and at the time it was worth £650,000, Graham and I discussed the situation and decided to close the Northeast operations down and concentrate our efforts from the Castleford depot. £650,000 was a lot of money in 1989. To cut a very long story short, Teesside Development Corporation strung us along for two years and then kindly told us they were no longer interested in the property. I telephoned them and asked if the compulsory purchase order would be rescinded and was told, no, they could come along at any time in the future and purchase the property. In effect the property was now blighted and worth very little on the open market. This was a great blow to us because both our properties, which were owned outright, were used as collateral with our bank. I gave this much thought and assumed that this surely was not legal so I contacted the local ombudsman for advice on the matter, he told me that as it was a government body we would need the Parliamentary Ombudsman and for that we needed the backing of a member of Parliament. At the time Mo Molam had been voted the MP for Cleveland so I contacted her office and asked if she would support us. She came back to us and said she would. We

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thought our luck was changing. Unfortunately it was all to no avail, after a considerable length of time the ombudsman came back to us and said there was no case to answer so basically the land was worth very little. By this time all our operations in the Northeast had ended and our turnover and profit was drastically reduced. To ease the situation we sold our property in Castleford and rented it back from the purchaser. In 1991 we received an enquiry for the demolition of Orgreave Coking plant from the British Steel Corporation. The contract was quite extensive and would require all our resources. We quoted the work and submitted our tender just prior to Christmas 1991 and were told that we would receive notification prior to Christmas of the successful tenderer. Christmas came nearer and we had still heard nothing so I telephoned the company to ask how we had gone on as we were closing for the two week Christmas break and we would not be able to be contacted. I was told that no decision had been made. Over the Christmas period I received a telephone call at home from the Engineer who had put out the contract, he told me he wanted to give me a good Christmas, we had been successful in our bid for the contract and it would start shortly after the Christmas break. We returned to work with renewed enthusiasm and began to prepare all our plant for the impending contract, other tenders that came in were overpriced as we could not cope with the Orgreave work as well as many more. We were fortunate that we had a few colliery contracts going and this would keep us going while the Orgreave contract was started. Month after month went by with no information coming from the client, I made numerous calls and was told that there were just a few things to iron out. We then received a call telling us they were going to re tender the work. This came as a bolt out of the blue and we realised the dire straights we had left ourselves in, very little work on, an increasing overdraft and the bank breathing down our necks. When the new tender came out we rebid the work at a seriously lower level than the original price, it was just a matter of us having to have the work to keep money coming in, our price would mean us loosing money but we hoped to re coup this with other contracts. After further months of delays and re negotiations we were finally awarded the contract. We completed the contract successfully and we did indeed unfortunately loose money, other work was not going well as the scrap market had taken a huge fall and most of our work was scrap orientated. You have to take into consideration the interest rates the banks were charging at the time were 6% over base, which meant we were paying interest charges of around 15%, the bank was taking us for around £100,000 per year. This of course could not go on and ultimately the company went into liquidation in late 1992, 18 years of hard work all down the drain. Thank you Teesside Development

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Corporation and British Steel Corporation. I did write a scathing letter to the director of BSC at Scunthorpe who had been responsible for the Orgreave work and thanked him for putting 60 employees on the dole. What to do next, I had to earn a living. I used to sell most of our scrap to a merchant in Stockton who had a depot in Rotherham. The company sold the yard in Rotherham to Ron Hull Jnr who at the time had a small yard in Rotherham and wanted to expand the business and after the sale I still sold to the Stockton company and sell small amounts to Ron Hull Jnr. During the liquidation of the company I spoke to Ron Hull on many an occasion and he told me he would be interested in starting a demolition company and if I was interested he would give me 25% equity in the new company and he would finance the project. I had been offered various appointments with other companies but this was by far the best option. Ron and I started the new company in late 1992 and it was a partnership that lasted successfully for 14 years until my untimely retirement due to ill health at the age of 58. Our first contract was the demolition of a tank farm in Wakefield, this was followed by what I believe was the largest contract British coal had let, the demolition of Southside Coal Preparation Plant. Anyone travelling the M1 around the Barnsley area would have seen this huge structure by the side of the motorway, we recovered over 15,000 tonnes of scrap from this our first major contract. Many successes followed and then the demise of the coal fields gave us many years of successful demolition. After trading for two years we were successful again in joining the NFDC. We worked on contracts nationally; mainly scrap based work to feed the ever growing needs of our yard in Rotherham. We won many major awards for our work and one of our Site Foremen, Alan Johnson was the first winner of the Alf Brown Memorial Trophy presented by Terry Brown at the NFDC AGM, we had another foreman some years later that came third at the same award.

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Ron Hull Demolition & Excavation Ltd

Project: The dismantling of a “Goliath Crane” for ICI Billingham

Description of project

Height of structure. 150 feet Weight of structure. 280t Construction date. 1934 Built by. Sir William Arrol

Hazards

Working at height Lift calculations Made up ground

Condition of structure 80tonnes of pig iron in the ballast box

Maintaining balance of structure during dismantling

Solutions Carry out structural survey

Calculate identified sections for lifting purposes Prepare detail-lifting studies

Provide detailed method statements & risk assessments Carry out toolbox talks with operatives on all aspects of the work

Provide full PPE to all operatives engaged in the work Provide man-riding basket suspended to crane for carrying out preparation work and slinging duties Remove pig iron ballast from the ballast box prior to dismantling to maintain the balance of structure

Sequence lifting operations to maintain balance Provide crane mats to reduce ground loading

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Project: Dismantling of an Overhead Travelling Crane for ICI

Description of project

Overhead travelling crane of 80t capacity Weight of complete unit 100t

Hazards

Working at height Lift calculations

Free floating crab Unit to be lowered within its own space

Close proximity of chemical plant & pipelines

Solutions Calculations of lift weight

Prepare detailed lifting studies Provide detailed method statements & risk assessments

Carry out toolbox talks with operatives on all aspects of the work Provide full PPE to all operatives engaged in the work

Provide mobile elevating platform for carrying out preparation work & slinging duties Remove crab prior to removing the main body of the unit

Lift main unit and rotate to enable it to be lowered in its own space Provide crane mats to reduce ground loading

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Project: Dismantling of 1A Ammonia Plant for ICI Severnside

Description of Project

Dismantling of an Ammonia plant, contaminated with arsenic due to a boiler failure. Plant stood since the incident in 1988 which resulted in the plant being closed down.

Hazards Arsenic contamination through out the plant & equipment.

Release of arsine gas when hot processing plant Re-cycling of materials

Working at heights Containing contamination

Arsenic poisoning to operatives Asbestos insulation inside reformers

Solutions Health monitoring of all persons engaged in the work

De-Contamination systems put into place Full PPE provided to all operatives

Water cutting of vessels so that lift down could be achieved Detailed surveys and lift methods devised

Sampling protocol created to enable scrap steel to be blended and recycled Discussions with Environmental Agency, HSE & Steelworks to enable steel to be recycled

Adhere to strict protocol when transporting and loading steel into furnaces Cold cutting methods utilising Heavy equipment fitted with hydraulic shears

Background monitoring of atmosphere; provide results on a daily basis to client due to close proximity of ICI employees and plant

Full time personal monitoring of operatives carrying out the work Site fully segregated with strict protocol for entering and leaving the work area.

Containment, treatment & disposal of contaminated water Scaffold to all high rise structures

Controlled removal and disposal of all asbestos contamination Landfill sites visited and licenses inspected to ensure disposal of highly contaminated materials

90% of all steelwork recycled 100% of concrete and brickwork crushed blended and reused within the site area

Minimum of materials disposed of at landfill Detailed method statements and risk assessments carried out for all stages of the work

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Project: Demolition & Dismantling of Satellite Antenna, Bude, Cornwall

Project Description The removal of a structurally unsound satellite dish on the cliff tops, Bude, Cornwall, structure in excess of 100 feet high, dish diameter 97 feet. 680tonnes of material dismantled and removed during winter months

Hazards Satellite dish structurally unsound

Exposed conditions during the winter months when work was carried out.

Close proximity of sensitive equipment High security site

Lifts of 160tonne capacity performed at lower levels during final dismantling disciplines

High winds due to location of structure and dismantling requirements

Working at heights

Solutions Operatives to be security checked prior to entering site area

Strict protocol for entering and leaving of site Site area fully ring fenced

In depth recording and monitoring of wind speeds on an hourly basis Obtain weather predictions on a regular basis

All work stopped when wind speeds reached 50mph Demolition of dish carried out by remote technique method utilising the companies high

reach excavator equipped with hydraulic shear, no direct operative involvement Planned and coordinated lift disciplines for the removal of the lower sections of the

structure Platforms suspended to separate cranes to allow slinging and preparation work to be

carried out on the structure so that successful dismantling could be achieved Full PPE supplied to all operatives engaged in the work

Detailed method statements and risk assessments for all stages of the work

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Project: Dismantling of a 3000tonne Concrete Headgear for UK Coal Harworth Colliery

Description of Project Preparation for dismantling of structure carried out while the unit was working. During closure period, body of headgear slid out from over the live shaft to allow new Headgear construction to be pulled into place Full demolition of structure carried out in close proximity to newly erected headgear and nearby structures

Hazards Structure dismantled within 15 feet of operational

shaft Live shaft to remain operational through out

dismantling period Headgear constructed in mass concrete, poor

condition of concrete Lifting of suspended loads not to be carried out

over nearby structures Working at heights

Work carried out during winter periods

Solutions Utilise 280tonne lift capacity crawler crane to enable suspended loads to be transported out of confined area, 190 feet jib height to allow rear sections of headgear to be removed

Detailed lift studies carried out to determine safe working load capacity

Cut concrete by pneumatic method and attach lifting eyes

Scaffold in place to give operatives safe working access to work area at all times

Debris net the side of the structure adjacent to the live shaft to contain ejecta from cutting operations

Provide detailed method statements and risk assessments for all stages of the work

Operatives fully equipped with PPE

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Project: Demolition of Sugar Silo’s by Explosive Method for British Sugar Peterborough

Description of Project The demolition of the three sugar silo’s involved the removal of the outer tankage, this was removed by progressive dismantling methods by operatives working from the safety of a mobile elevating work platform. Sections of the outer tanks were hot cut and lifted down. The remaining towers and integral conveyors were demolished using shaped cutting charges to affect collapse.

Hazards Close proximity of a residential area

Lifting of loads Working at heights

The controlled use of explosives Processing of material

Solutions

Provide safe access for operatives during dismantling disciplines.

Provide lift studies for all dismantling work Full PPE protection to all operatives

Manned exclusion zone during explosives demolition Information to residents on timing and dates of explosives demolition, with

particular reference to the aged and pets Evacuation of residents

Contact with social services to assist in evacuation of the elderly Demolition of collapsed structures by remote technique utilising excavators

of sufficient size and capacity to carry out the work safely.

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Transport Hygiene Unit Negative Pressure Units Three stage airlock Tent up live electrical unit The project

Project: Asbestos Removal from Boilers, Storrs School, Sheffield

Description of Project The removal of asbestos contamination from 3 boilers in the boiler house of a school in Sheffield.

Work carried out during the occupation of the school by the

students

Hazards Possible escape of asbestos fibres into the atmosphere.

Work carried out within a live installation

School children in the classroom above the boiler installation

Exposure to operatives carrying out the work

Solutions Exclusion zone created to prohibit entry

Work area fully tented 3 Stage airlock created for entry & exit

Protection to all live installations Rigorous smoke testing of area to indicate

any leaks from the tented area Full provision of PPE & RPE to all operatives carrying out the work Hygiene unit provided to site for

decontamination of operatives engaged in the work

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Through my demolition career I have travelled and worked the length and breadth of the UK and gone to places I would have not normally gone. I have met some very interesting and clever people. I have to thank my fiancée, Christine for putting up with me for the last 34 years, the time as gone by so quickly I have never got around to marrying her. She has had a lot to put up with I must also thank my Contracts Manager at the time, George Brabham, without him my job would have been so much more difficult and to Ron Hull who had the faith to back me when my back was against the wall. Would I change anything ? I could have had a better education that may have lead to an easier life, the answer is no, there has been times of great stress but I have been more than happy and proud to call myself a demolition man. The Institute was a great part of my life and during a 27 year membership I missed two AGMs and last year, 2010 I was made an Honorary Life Member for which I will always be grateful. Tony Hurley FIDE

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