41
d
&
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MARCH-APRIL 2014
IN ACTION
Town skyline to
dramatically alter
considered necessary because of its location
close to the Metrolink and other buildings in
the town centre, as well as because of the need
to keep the surrounding roads open to both
vehicles and pedestrians.
According to Steve Balyski, Connell
Brothers Ltd operational manager: “We have
a wealth of experience working in restrictive
city centre environments throughout the
UK. The team who will be working on the
Rochdale project has been responsible for the
virtual re-modelling of large parts of the city
centre of Manchester including Mosley Street
where we successfully demolished Elisabeth
House, the former Royal Bank of Scotland
and Eagle Star House. This experience means
we’re in a really good position to make the
huge changes required in Rochdale while
minimising disruption for the public and
keeping them safe.”
■
U
K contractor Connell Brothers Ltd
has started work to demolish some
of the UK town of Rochdale’s more
dominating structures in that town’s centre
as part of a £100 million (US$166 million)
regeneration project. Three structures are to
fall to make way for the Genr8’s proposed
mixed use retail and leisure development close
to the new Transport interchange that opened
at the end of 2013 and the new town centre
Metrolink station that is due to open early this
year.
Connell has already started work on the
demolition of the city centre bus station and
the municipal office building, known locally
as the ‘Black ‘Box’, will follow once the former
is brought down.
Once the two structures are gone, the
company will move on to complete the
demolition of Telegraph House on Bailie Street
and a new entrance to the Wheatsheaf Centre
will then be built on the street to complete
the remodelling of the town’s skyline. Connell
Brothers predicts that the work will take 34
weeks to complete.
Mechanical methods will be used to bring
down the reinforced concrete structure of
the bus station, at which point the Black Box
will be engulfed in scaffolding and shrouded
by a protective screening. It will then be
deconstructed from the top down – a method
Adamo Group, based in Detroit, USA,
was tasked with the demolition of a
six storey car park topped by a two
storey office building covering an area
of 23,412 m
2
(252,000 ft
2
) attached
to the Methodist Medical Center of
Illinois, located in a commercial district of
downtown Peoria. Adamo primarily made
use of a Cat 385 B equipped with a MP40
multiprocessor to bring the structure down.
The resulting debris was trucked off the site
for recycling by local steel mills, scrapyards
and concrete recyclers. The whole
demolition took around two full months to
reach completion.
One main feature of the project was the
minimisation of the effect of dust generated
by the work on the nearby hospital and
other businesses in proximity to the site.
“We’ve always been extremely diligent in our
efforts to prevent the migration of fugitive
dust off-site,” explained Project Manager
Rick Cuppetilli. “Containment is a component
of virtually every project.”
Dust management was achieved with
a DustBoss DB-60, positioned according
to the work area and wind direction.
Developed with a series of 30 specially-
designed brass nozzles to atomise the
water supply, the DB-60 uses a powerful 25
hp electric motor that generates nearly 850
cubic metres per minute (30,000 cubic feet
per minute) of air flow to launch millions of
droplets per minute into the air.
Controlling dust on the site was a key element for
Adamo during the demolition of the Methodist Medical
Center of Illinois
Clean air act in Peoria
Rochdale city centre – from left to right, municipal office, bus station, multi storey car park and Telegraph House
