Demolition Safety

Health and safety is vitally important to anyone who works in public places or in ways that can affect those around them. It is especially important in the world of demolition as the impacts can often be extreme.

It is important when dismantling dangerous or dilapidated buildings and structures to protect everyone that is in contact with the area. This includes the workers on the site and the public that are near by. To protect the public the demolition company need to make sure that the area is adequately shielded from any danger. Workers must wear hard hats, high visibility vests, steel toe capped boots etc.

Often in built up areas, a building will be dismantled by hand rather than using machines. Whilst this is more expensive for the contractor, it is sometimes the only way to dismantle the building safely within the existing environment. While machine demolition is more effective, there is less control over where parts of the building will fall. The extreme of this is with explosive demolition where on occasion a building will fall somewhere other than the designated drop zone.

Demolition is often rather dangerous as the structures that are being demolished are often unstable. Therefore it is the job of skilled experts to reduce the risks to the public. This is so they can continue with their everyday life without disruption. Companies now have to wet the building before demolition. This reduces the dust creation and works effectively to control dust generation, however this method will not eliminate the dust completely.

Demolition can be difficult to perform in built up areas, as often they will need to negotiate power lines and phone lines with large equipment which will disrupt the lives of local residents as often the only way to get equipment to site is to disconnect the phone lines.