New World Order by Mark Anthony

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Commentary The demolition industry is at a post-recessionary crossroads. The path it takes now will shape the sector now, and for years to come. This starts as a bit of a ramble but trust me; there is a point to it.

This shift coincided with a wider embracing of new technology. In the union days, copy was handled by countless individuals, all with very small and very focused roles. Each of my articles went from me to a sub-editor who would make sure that my spelling was up to scratch. From there it would go to a designer who would use that article to make up a whole or part of a page. That page would then be sent to a typesetter who would repeat the process to make the whole shebang â&#x20AC;&#x153;print readyâ&#x20AC;?, before being passed to a printer who would actually put the ink on the paper. By contrast, the article that you are reading went from me to the printer, and to you.

When I first became a journalist, back in the 80s, publishing companies were still a union closed shop. I got my first proper job not because I was a gifted scribe and wordsmith but because my father worked for the same company. But all of that changed when Margaret Thatcher set about the dismantling the power of the unions. Say what you like about Maggie, but her impact upon the publishing sector was enormous and it put me on the path to where I am today.

Obviously, this meant job losses along the way. But with a better-educated workforce using technology to write directly into a print-ready design, sub-editors had no reason to doublecheck; typesetters were rendered obsolete. And, most importantly of all, the readers of Contract Journal never knew the difference.

First to go was the theory that nepotism was a sound means of selecting a workforce. I had sneaked through the back door with my college education while no-one was looking. A year after I started on the now defunct Contract Journal, an internal edict was passed that insisted that all future employees should be university graduates. Or, to put it another way, the company now had the opportunity to choose the best candidates out there, rather than the nephew of the guy that swept the loading bay in the warehouse.

And what does that rambling history lesson have to do with demolition, I hear you ask? The postrecession demolition sector is standing at a similar crossroads at which it can either repeat the mistakes of the past or carve itself a new future.

Or we choose an uncharted future in which traditional economic cycles may not apply. So which path do YOU choose?

Why are C&D & different to the rest?

CD To its left is a continuation of the road it is already on. The path is well-trodden, clearly signposted â&#x20AC;&#x153;boom, bust, repeatâ&#x20AC;?; its every up countered with an equal and proportionate down; and it is lined with the corporate corpses of Armoury Group, Border Demolition, Controlled Group, EDS and Lee Demolition.

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To the right, barely visible, is a second road. Few have been here before; it has no signpost to indicate its final destination; and it will require some brave and bold companies to pioneer a path to an uncertain future.

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The choice is simple: we keep doing what we have done for the past 20, 30 and even fifty years, certain in the knowledge that, regardless of what we do, boom will lead to bust will lead to boom.

CD &

C O N S U LTA N C Y TRAINING DIVISION

01902 686363 www.demolishdismantle.co.uk www.demolitiontraining.com john.woodward@demolishdismantle.co.uk jill@demolishdismantle.co.uk

LOOKING FOR WORK? 15

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The Children Demolition must attract smarter individuals into its lower ranks if it is to embrace change, fully address health and safety challenges, and build a sustainable business for the future. In career-selection terms, demolition is like the fat, asthmatic kid with the wonky eye, glasses and inexplicably sour odour when you were playing football at school: Only picked when all other options have been exhausted. Our schools are filled with children aspiring to be David Beckham, Beyonce, Steve Jobs or Oprah Winfrey. Unless they have a father or uncle in the demolition business, very few five, 10 and 15 year olds aspire to a career in demolition. The reason for this are many and varied, but I believe that for some it begins at a very early age when their primary exposure to the industry is one of fear.

Every demolition site – large or small – carries a multitude of warning signs reading Danger – Demolition in Progress. Many of those companies that have embraced community liaison - visiting schools and community centres and interacting with local children – reinforce that theme, asking local children to create their own Keep Out signs. Of course, children SHOULD be aware of the dangers of a demolition site. No-one wants kids using a site as an afterschool playground. But the current tone is so wholly and universally negative that demolition companies might just as well erect signs that proclaim “Here There be Sharks” and “Abandon Hope All ye Who Enter”.

Receptive Minds As an industry, we are missing an opportunity to engage with these receptive and impressionable minds on a positive level, preferring instead to “scare the bejesus” out of them instead. Would it really be so bad if some of that negativity was tempered with some positivity? Is this not an ideal opportunity to inspire a love for big diggers? Could we not explain that the house these children live in almost certainly came about as a result of demolition?

are our Future

That boy who is not too good at science but is a maths whizz - Couldn’t he be moulded into an estimator?

Should we not be telling them that our recycling methods are helping safeguard their future? Construction has Bob the Builder. Where is our Dave the Demolition Man? Having inspired them at an early age, the industry would then need to engage with them before they begin to choose their career paths. And in this area, we have much to learn from the Armed Forces. Careers advertising for the Armed Forces highlights the multitude of roles within each service, not just the one that involves marching into a dusty country you couldn’t previously find on a map merely to satisfy a politician’s bloodlust.

That girl who hates school but is really good at English – Could she not be trained to write bid documents? That kid that loves computers but hates gaming. Perfect for the BIM department that you’re likely to need going forward? And that bookish, methodical kid that is always there, always on time and leaves school with straight Cs – A risk assessment and method statement co-ordinator in the making?

They highlight engineering, IT and administrative roles; jobs that don’t involve danger or risk of death. Demolition has all of these in spades. So sure, maybe we do continue to take school leavers that didn’t bother with further education. But that doesn’t mean that future demolition sites need to resemble the set of Dawn of the Dead.

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N e w Wo r l d O r d e r This is the real answer; not hauling a high reach simulator around educational conventions. If I am 16 years old and I am presented with a high reach simulator, I am not thinking “hi-diddleydee”, a wrecker’s life for me.” I am thinking “Sod demolition. Gaming is cool. I am sending my CV to EA Sports.”

With the benefit of hindsight, was it really such a great idea to invest in a device that – if we’re being exceptionally generous – might benefit less than five percent of the incumbent workforce at a time when site operative tests are being geared to be passable by the semi and fullyilliterate?

Limited Resources

Better and Smarter

The training sector within UK demolition has limited resources, made up of reinvested training fees and grant funding from a Government quango that lives under a seemingly constant threat of abolition. Against that background, surely it should be playing the averages.

During the recession, many companies were forced to lay-off members of their workforce (ironic given that the training group that purports to serve it was actually swelling in size at the same time).

Clever though it might be (and would it really have hurt to put a cab on it) the high reach simulator will impact upon – at best – a few hundred individuals, the majority of whom have been operating excavators and even high reach excavators quite adequately without this technological intervention. There are about 550 demolition companies in the UK at any given time, and not all of them run high reach machines. Let’s say that the simulator might benefit 500 individuals. As a whole, the UK demolition industry employs upwards of 10,000 individuals across a multitude of disciplines. Site operatives must surely outnumber high reach drivers by about 10:1 and, let’s face it, a high reach is of no use whatsoever on a bridge, a top down contract, an explosive contract or a multitude of other site situations.

With the economy having turned a corner, the industry now has the opportunity to rebuild those workforces with smarter, more articulate, enthusiastic, ambitious individuals; technologysavvy young people that have grown up with the Internet and see it not as a threat but as an integral part of everyday life; individuals for whom an iPad is as much a demolition tool as a hydraulic hammer; environmentally-aware young people for whom green issues are the norm, not just the domain of the tree-hugging community; insightful young people that will question the traditional processes and procedures and who might just come up with a better way. And this is not just about young people (although, as Whitney Houston once sang before her ill-fated, one-way trip to the bathroom, “I believe the children are our future.”) Although they have not arrived in the caravan convoy droves predicted by the Daily Mail, the UK is likely to see a new wave of migrant workers from Bulgaria and Romania.

as we want them to be, not to merely accept them as they have evolved. We have the chance to employ better, smarter more switched on staff who will push the company and the industry forward.

We can, of course, choose to get all Nigel Farage about it and bleat about how they will be stealing jobs from British workers, or we can face the facts proven by the influx of Polish workers just a few years ago. In my personal experience, those migrant workers tend to have a better formal education and a better work ethic than many of their British counterparts. Toolbox Talks, site briefings and safety notices might be a challenge at first but let us not lose sight of one irrefutable fact. Polish, Bulgarian and Romanian workers have already mastered their native language and are now applying themselves to learning ours. A good many British workers couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even be arsed to learn their own native tongue, cannot read or write and now communicate in a series of grunts.

Alternatively, we could just call the fat kid with the lazy eye.

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Given the choice between a bi-lingual Bulgarian and an illiterate Brit, I know which way I am leaning.

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In short, if we are to take any positives out of a recession that was deeper and longer than anyone expected, it is the possibility to rebuild workforces

CD &

www.demolishdismantle.co.uk john.woodward@demolishdismantle.co.uk follow us on twitter @johnwoodward

LOOKING FOR EMPLOYEES? 19

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Down Low, Too Slow UK demolition has been uncharacteristically and dangerously slow to respond to an upturn in demand and market sentiment. Now here’s a sentence I never expected to write: “The UK demolition industry is missing a chance to make money.” If ever there was an industry that defined the entrepreneurial spirit, demolition was it. Never mind “where there’s muck there’s brass” – In demolition circles, there’s brass where there’s muck, bricks, blocks, timber, glass, plastic, steel, iron, aluminium and, coincidentally, brass. The sector was the pastmaster at finding profit where none had previously existed; at riding the economic lows before being the first to seize the subsequent highs. And yet, this time around, the industry has been uncharacteristically tardy. The UK economy has been officially out of recession for well over a year now. Fuel prices, insurance premiums, Landfill Tax, employment costs and association memberships have all seen an increase. And yet here we are with tales of suicidal bidding and price undercutting still rife. Even in the midst of a recession, low-bidding is an act of short-termism and desperation. To continue when the market has picked up is nothing short of certifiable lunacy.

Certifiable Lunacy The comments we received upon the demise of both Lee Demolition and Euro Dismantling Services were split into two roughly equal categories. The first category was wishing the workers well and expressing sincere hopes that they would find alternative employment having fallen victim to circumstances beyond their direct control. The second, more vociferous group was the “they had it coming” category that was quick to detail the fallen companies’ reputation for “buying work” and (pardon my French) for “ripping the arse out of jobs”. Whether any of those comments was based on truth is something that only the former directors of each company and their respective clients will know (although Lee Demolition admitted that its downfall had been caused by “inaccurate costing and poor project management”). Regardless, there are certain companies with a reputation – earned or otherwise – for doing things on the cheap.

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We all know who they are, and so do they. So, for them, let me paint a picture using a footballing analogy (and my apologies to any rugby fans out there – I don’t know the first thing about the sport and, therefore, have no direct comparison).

In footballing terms, they are Arsenal under Arsene Wenger. They may not win everything but they will be there or thereabouts and will be a genuine joy to watch.

Those companies that were among the most expensive before the recession were, most likely, the most expensive during the recession and are among the most expensive today.

Then there is a second group. In legislation, health and safety and training terms, they do just enough to get by without fear of prosecution. They do not believe in long-term partnerships, preferring the “get in, get paid and get out before anyone asks questions” style of working.

They have a reputation for doing things well and for doing things right. If the law dictates that they must do X, they do X and Y, just to be certain. They create long-term partnerships with their clients and take good care of their staff through training and ongoing career progression. They invest in the best and are on a course marked “continuous improvement”.

They see their staff as mere commodities that can be picked up, put down and treated poorly because, ultimately, they are all replaceable. And they are quite willing to take a financial hit on the chin in exchange for that one fleeting moment in the spot light. In footballing parlance, they are Blackburn Rovers.

Arsenal vs Blackburn

In the 1994-95 season, backed by a huge personal investment from steel stockholder Jack Walker, Blackburn Rovers won the Premier League title before commencing a slow, inexorable decline. During that same period, Arsenal amassed three Premier League titles; four FA Cup trophies and four Community Shield wins.

There is an entire generation of clients out there now that believe that those prices quoted during the recession are the norm. More worrying still is the fact that there are individuals within UK demolition companies that believe the same.

At the time of writing, Arsenal are at the top of the English Premiership; Blackburn Rovers are 9th in the English league’s second tier. Demolition contractors can choose to take the Blackburn Rovers approach for one shot at the big time; or they can up their game; be an Arsenal; and enjoy long-term success.

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Knee-Jerk In truth, the industry already has its fair share of Arsenals; those companies that do things so well and so right that even their competitors treat them with a grudging respect. Unfortunately, they are greatly outnumbered by Blackburn Rovers companies. And such is the disparity between the two that the industry – even the better parts of it – are being tarnished with a whiff of Rovers. When the recession hit, much of the demolition industry switched into default mode and cut prices without a second thought. That knee-jerk reaction has now come home to roost.

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Name & Shame The demolition industry must embrace openness and transparency if it is to shake off its reputation for cloak and dagger deals and staff too scared to voice their valuable opinion. Over the course of a working year, I am given a multitude of reasons that people within this industry won’t or can’t speak to me. There is the rare “we don’t speak to/trust the press”. There is the (rare outside of Silverdell circles) “no comment”.

I received over 50 emails and text messages and all but two demanded anonymity.

Two even went as far as to start their message with the phrase “without prejudice” to ensure that their words could not be used against them in the future. What kind of industry has its employees so fearful of speaking up that they remain tight-lipped before, during and after fatal accidents? What kind of industry has its employees so fearful that they dare not “rock the boat” for fear of recriminations?

There is the (more common than you might think) “we have been told by a higher authority that we are not allowed to speak to you”. And then there is the biggie – an inability to speak up for fear of reprisals. You might think I am joking but I can assure you I am deadly serious. In the 24 hours following the online publication of an article entitles Demolition is Broken (http://tinyurl.com/pzp7pbt),

What kind of industry repeatedly acquiesces to the unreasonable requests of clients - even though that request is contrary to best practice â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for fear of being blacklisted? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll tell you. That is not an industry; that is a police state.

Speak Up The issue, of course, is one of supply and demand. Although there are exceptions, demolition companies are generally afraid to speak out against clients for fear of being

replaced on a current contract and future works. Likewise, demolition workers are afraid of speaking out to employers who see them as expendable and easily replaced. That such a climate of fear even exists in this day and age is, however, a scandal. It would be even more of a scandal if it were allowed to continue.

N e w Wo r l d O r d e r The time has come to make a stand and to speak up, anonymously if necessary. And since no-one else seems willing to take up the mantle, we (Demolition magazine and DemolitionNews.com) will be your mouthpiece if you wish.

Now I was working with the Federation when the site audit scheme became a pre-requisite of membership and so I know that non-compliance comes in many forms.

If your employer is asking you to do something that you believe to be unsafe, report it to us anonymously and we will investigate it and report it. If your client is insisting that you do a job in a way that goes against best practice and your own gut feel, report it to us anonymously and we will investigate it and report it. And if you have lost out on a contract based purely on price, report it to us anonymously and we will investigate it and report it. For the record, there is no point in investigating lost contracts out of spite and sour grapes. But if a company has won a contract by bidding, say, 20 percent less than the next lowest bid, we want to hear about it.

Cuts Both Ways If the industry is to embrace transparency, however, it MUST be a two-way street; we must engage in the same levels of honesty and integrity with which we would like to be treated. Case in point. I recently had cause to visit the Federation website and was a little surprised to find that around a dozen of its current members were listed as suspended, non-compliant or yet to complete a site audit.

Sure, there are still sites that auditors find to be below par from a health and safety, risk assessment standpoint. But there are also those that do not comply for little more than poorly maintained site paperwork. And there are those smaller companies that fall foul of the scheme simply because they do not have an auditable site in the prescribed timeframe.

That, however, is not my gripe. For while a dozen companies had a black mark against their name for non-compliance. I knew of at least two that were under ongoing investigation over a site fatality but whose name was accompanied by a nice big tick of compliance. And there were even more that I know to be investigation for non-fatal accidents also wearing their tick of quality.

Yes, a system like this WOULD favour the likes of Erith Group and Cantillon, both of which have amassed more than one million man hours without a reportable incident. But if the UK demolition industry is serious about safety, would that be such a bad thing? And if other companies want to compete, then they will have no choice but to invest in training and safety; not the worst imaginable outcome.

If, as the Federation would have its members believe, the website is a shop window for clients and their buddies in the UK Contractors Group, then surely a heads up on a fatality or questionable safety records would not be out of place. As it stands today, the website seems to suggest that a failure to comply with Federation rules is a worse crime than killing or maiming a worker. Of course, the Federation cannot pre-empt or prejudice the findings of a criminal court, and nor should it. But maybe, just maybe, this is a time to accentuate the positive rather than focusing on the negative. Instead of painting a red cross on the entry of a company that has suffered a site accident and declaring them â&#x20AC;&#x153;uncleanâ&#x20AC;?, what about scoring companies on the number of man hours worked without a reportable incident. Of course, any such system would need to be geared by, say, per 10,000 man hours to ensure that smaller companies were playing on a level playing field with their larger, multi-site counterparts.

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Taking Respon And we live in a world in which employees within the demolition industry have become so mollycoddled that they have largely surrendered responsibility for their own personal safety, content in the knowledge that any accident that befalls them will almost certainly be accompanied by a cash pay-out.

A growing blame culture has been allowed to take a foothold in the UK demolition industry. And it has been largely to the detriment of the sector. Mark Anthony reflects.

Why else would they need to be constantly reminded to wear hard hats, high visibility jackets and vests, safety gloves and glasses, all of which are for their OWN personal protection? Why else would demolition contractors be issuing sunscreen to workers during the brief British summer time?

My increasing age has brought with it a growing tolerance. I no longer suffer from road rage; I can usually read the newspaper without the urge to hunt down and kill a politician. And even the latest West Ham defeat is generally greeted with a shrug of learned indifference.

Why else would demolition contractors be investing thousands in on-site health checks to fill the gaps in the medical care of their workers? And what do demolition contractors get in return? They get the kind of loyalty that sees staff heading for the exit if they are offered another £5 per week by a competitor.

There are, however, some things that still rankle. Radio presenters that use the term “the N word” like their listeners are four years old; TV newsreaders that are incapable of tying a tie properly; and – my personal bugbear – the culture of blame in which everything is somebody’s fault (usually so that a financial claim can be made).

If the problems of self-responsibility are bad at the bottom end of the business, they are considerably worse (and Government-backed) at the top where clients are legally absolved from all liability even if they chose to use a “demolition contractor” who is actually a plumber by training and who then causes an accident.

We live in a world where someone stupid enough to trip over a paving slab can blame and then sue the local authority responsible for the path’s upkeep. We live in a world in which, apparently, inclement weather can be attributed directly to some shortcoming at the House of Commons or the Environment Agency.

Clients claim to judge bids based upon a variety of factors, only one of which is cost. And yet by some strange quirk of coincidence, the lowest bid invariably wins. And why shouldn’t it?

sibility

Unfortunately, thanks to the Nanny State in which we now live, this would almost certainly mean a mountain of paperwork, bureaucracy and, of course, cost.

If a low-ball bidder wins the work and then can’t complete it at the price, the client might face a minor inconvenience or time delay. Meanwhile, the demolition contractor that won the bid will be forced to cut corners to make ends meet and could be driven out of business while the losing contractors that were better equipped to do the work are left in the cold.

Can anything done about clients’ willingness to put cost above all other factors? There is a temptation to “name and shame” clients that consistently take the cheap option, but then there is the fear of earning a reputation as a whistle-blower and being blacklisted for future work. But if “proper price” contractors are already being excluded by a skin-flint client, would they really make so much of a difference?

And what if the client’s “price is everything” mantra results in an accident or worse, a fatality? Well, apparently, that is the contractor’s fault as well. I cannot recall a single case in which a client’s willingness to buy its demolition services “on the cheap” have been cited as a contributory factor in an accident. And yet we all know that it can play a key role.

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Somehow, the demolition sector has landed the role as the construction industry’s whipping boy; the doorstep at which all blame is laid. And it is here where the wider industry has demolition over a barrel. If ever the industry were to set aside its differences and unite outside institute and federation lines, it would be accused of collusion. Is there an answer? Well, at staff levels, there certainly is. With the introduction of tighter contracts of employment, demolition contractors could certainly protect themselves – to a degree – from the lack of loyalty and crass stupidity of their staff.

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