The demolition industry has been around since the dawn of the mechanical age of manufacturing. The moment that modern architecture came about to address the growing need to maximize allocated land and resources, demolition engineering was right behind it, waiting for a signal to enter.
Demolition is the process of imploding a structure to clear a space for another structure to rise. Often, old buildings and structures are imploded to give way to new concessionaries or investors. In the city space, urbanity and modernity both require demolition to maximize use of land and to make sure that social utility of structures are also maximized.
Solid wastes during demolition
According to Sung Kin Pun in an engineering journal from the University of Sidney:
“Conventional mechanical building demolition produces numerous solid wastes, most of which are sent to landfill directly that severely degrade the living environment. Just-in-time building demolition has been developed recently with a management strategy to facilitate waste reuse. Procurement management plays a significant role in just-in-time building demolition. In particular, the demolition tendering selection needs to consider contractors' environmental performance in addition to project costs.”
Chunlu Liu, a co-author of the journal article A Framework for Material Management in the Building Demolition Industry clarifies the process of production and its reverse relationship to demolition engineering:
“Since building demolition is the reverse process of building construction, the issues involved in a demolition project are fundamentally identical or similar to those in a construction project. Yet they are different in context and implementation strategies, particularly the project contracting and waste material supply chain management (Liu et al., 2004). Although construction procurement concerns the purchase of building materials while the waste material chain is to market the waste materials, the management strategies and models in the building construction process can be adopted into the procurement management of building demolition projects.”
New technologies in the demolition industry
Because of the depletion of natural resources in all parts of the globe, there is a need to increase the effectiveness of technologies employed during demolition. Waste management is just one faltering matter to deal with. The sum energy expended during demolition is another. Juridical steps are also necessary, as expounded by Liu:
“In particular, increasing landfill tipping fees and compulsory high recycling rates on demolition wastes impose strong legal incentives for the construction industry to allot attention on environmental issues (Ling et al., 2002; Merman et al., 2004). A growing interest in deconstruction and material reuse is forming within the industry (CSC, 1994).”
The labour intensive nature of demolition
Demolition is labour intensive for the simple reason that it required selective handling of materials. The value of the waste produce after demolition should also be high, because demolition industries aim for high recyclability and reusability, in keeping with the global agenda of sustainability.
To address the problem of management during demolition, Liu expounds on a particular approach to improve facilitation during demolition projects:
“Keeping in mind that waste reuse is one of the most significant objectives of a building demolition project, Just-In-Time (JIT) demolition was developed as a management strategy to facilitate reuse of building materials (Pun & Liu, 2003). JIT philosophy is a mature management approach nurtured in the manufacturing industry. The main concepts of JIT include reducing the inventory of raw materials and products, and speeding up the manufacturing process by decreasing the manufacturing batch size.”
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