Demolition and structural engineers

One of our serious concerns at a USAR incident is the need for expert engineering knowledge of collapsed structures.

Local authority building control staff or local structural engineers rarely have the knowledge or experience of large collapsed structures and have very little if any understanding of our USAR role.

Attempts have been made nationally to solve this without success. We are however trying to come up with local solutions and we are in contact with our local building control and private structural engineers to improve this understanding but there are limitations to how successful this might be.

Partnership with local demolition company

We have however established an excellent link with a large local demolition company, Hughes and Salvidge Demolition (HSD). This has proven to be highly valuable, the expertise and experience they have in demolition is proving to be extremely relevant to USAR.

HSD have been highly supportive providing staff to help with our training, giving us access to demolition sites for training, familiarising us with their heavy plant and other tools and even provide a 24 hr call out service to get a demolition expert to an incident.

They will advise on any heavy equipment that is available and mobilise it if necessary. The company also has access to a specialist consulting engineer, Peter Lindsell, who is helping with engineering advice and training.

We are helping to educate HSD staff and Peter Lindsell about the role and capability of our team and USAR in general, they attend our exercises and two have attended courses in the US.

A written partnership agreement has been drafted and is currently awaiting input from insurers and legal departments before being signed. Once this has happened it will be offered as a model for other teams to use nationally. HSD will also assist with making contact with similar companies around the country to help initiate similar local relationships elsewhere.