The Civil Engineering Contractor August 2018 | Page 33

PROFILE
and it is exceptionally arduous work,
involving 12–18 hours a day of laying
dangerous charges. Because of the
paucity of skills — and the dearth of
demolition projects in South Africa —
Perkin describes it as a dying domestic
industry. Consequently, much of the
work won by Wreckers Dismantling is
outside of South Africa.
Veterinary’s loss
Demolition was not Perkin’s first
choice. He had planned on being
a vet but was discouraged by the
seven years’ study, as he wanted to
work and earn a living immediately.
Though he never initially sought out
the demolition profession, he has
remained in it for over 50 years due
to the satisfaction it offers. “You get
enormous gratification from planning,
executing, and bringing off the
destruction of some infrastructure
without causing damage.”
When pressing the ‘go’ button, he
gets as nervous today as he did on
his first-ever implosion. “Working
with explosives and detonators is
not something you can ever take
for granted, as there are still many
unknowns.” He has had a couple of
occasions out of the hundreds he has
carried out when towers or buildings
only partially collapsed — usually
because there were water pipes or
ducts within concrete columns he
had not been aware of and that had
misdirected the blast. The first time
took him by surprise (and Africa is the
only place he has ever heard of that
has pipes within columns), but he has
since learnt to check. One of his most
recent projects in Abuja, Nigeria, had
a similar problem. The solution was to
locate the pipes during drilling, which
were then filled with concrete, and
then had to be re-drilled — something
that took additional weeks.
“We had to fly up two tons of
explosives — but seeing the structure
collapse with no damage at all made it
all worthwhile,” Perkin says.
Where his heart is, is filling holes
with explosives; work so dangerous
that the only other person he allows
to touch it is his son. That is because
he trained his son Kyle himself,
who is now the youngest qualified
explosives engineer in South Africa for
demolition. In the Abuja project, there
were 10 000 such holes.
metres up a tower manually. I prefer
implosions to be kept low-key. Making
a public spectacle of demolition
increases the safety and crowd control
risks. Explosives are just another tool
available to the demolition engineer.”
Apart from bringing down all types
of structures, Perkin says his other
passion is teaching others the fine art
of wrecking. In an industry suffering
from a debilitating skills shortage, he
has trained 10 of his key staff members
to be the top of their trade. nn
Because of the paucity of
skills — and the dearth of
demolition projects in
South Africa — Perkin describes
it as a dying domestic industry.
No crowd pleasing please
Internationally, demolition has become
something of a TV and Internet
spectacle, but Perkin says imploding
structures and any form of explosives
work is only 10% of the work in
demolition. “For the rest, most of the
work is out of sight, often done 50
CEC August 2018 - 31