The building is being demolished by specialist contractor Burnfield Demolition Ltd who will be retaining the facade through use of rapid metal developments (RMDs).  Burnfield have extensive knowledge and experience of erecting RMDs and of demolition within listed properties. See images below.

After completion the building will be partly used as a centre of excellence for Amateur Boxing Scotland where their elite athletics will train in the run-up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The rest of the building will be used as a state of the art public library and learning centre with an attached cafe run by Glasgow Life. The top floors will be let out as office space. See below for the proposed building visual.

Argyle Street, Glasgow is one of the UK’s busiest shopping precincts and is currently the project destination for a 8 storey office block hand demolition project being completed by Burnfield Demolition for the client NFU Mutual Insurance Society Ltd.

Being situated in the city centre means that safety is paramount due to the high numbers of general public passing below in the surrounding streets and the immediate proximity of operational, adjacent buildings presents a number of hazards. Other problems include creating a safe access point for deliveries and ensuring the general public can also access offices, bars and shops which remained open during the demolition.

The specialist scaffolding was erected by a local contractor Clyde Scaffolding Ltd who are highly experienced in dealing with projects of this scale.

Our new fleet of vehicles have been branded with the Burnfield Demolition logo and website. All transits have the added safety feature of scotch lite chevrons which will make the vans highly visible. The reflective chevrons will be of particular benefit when attending late night, 24 hr emergencies – a service that Burnfield Demolition specialises in.

See some of our new fleet below -

Burnfield Demolition were appointed by Patton Construction to undertake the partial demolition of a former Woolworths store. The works would allow for the construction of a new retail to be occupied by Tesco stores.

The demolition consisted of the removal of the rear of the building which was formally a cinema. Adjoining buildings caused restraints which forced all the debris to be removed by small plant through the existing shop front. All the demolition was completed by hand from mobile elevated work platforms (MEWPs) following removal of asbestos from the building.

Our six week programme was met and this included additional structural works necessary to maintain the integrity of the building which remains.

The historic nature of the former cinema became apparent when former Strathclyde University lecturer Dr Alistair Goldsmith appeared onsite to record images and physical evidence of the cinema for the National Library of Scotland/Scottish Screen Archive.

He has since emailed us :

 ”Thank you to your men at the locus for their time and trouble (assisting him) and for their courtesy and civility. This sounds pompous, but their friendliness and willingness to chat to a total stranger who knows nothing about the considerable skills involved in the work (demolition) was very much appreciated.”

Members of the public were extremely lucky to escape death or serious injury from the falling sandstone blocks, some of which slid down the roof onto to the street below where a car was badly crushed. See the below image.

From the images you can see the extent of the damage to both the roof, footpath and road which Strathclyde Police had closed off. Our emergency operatives who are extremely experienced in these situations, quickly secured and cleared the area of the dangerous unstable stonework and added weatherproof panels to protect the remaining building.

A local woman narrowly missed serious injury when her car was obliterated by the falling masonry. Read the full story here as covered by the Paisley Daily Express.

Click on the images below for a larger view.

All of our operatives have extensive experience of using specialist protection equipment and the use of sympathetic machinery to ensure no damage is made to the building. We work closely with the local council building control officers and the client throughout each project to safeguard the building and it’s interior. Main works include the investigation of ceilings and walls for load bearing calculations as often buildings are altered significantly for different use over an extensive timescale without any specific plans being left for interpretation.

A project we are currently working on for one of Scotland’s largest house builders is the conversion of a Convent into luxury flats. The building was originally a Franco-Scot Renaissance lodge built in 1862 and owned by Alexander Bannantyne Stewart an extremely wealthy and successful businessman of his time who was famous for his art and stained glass collection of which the glass still remains, see images. The lodge was converted into a Carmelite Monastery in 1918 and has remained so to this day.

As you can see from the images the fabrication went to plan, albeit after the severe weather had cleared.

Burnfield offers a variety of services outwith demolition -

• Asbestos Removal
• Brickwork
• Roadworks including bitumen MacAdam
• Joinery

This year our audited site was in Cambuslang, Glasgow. The clients for this particular site were the Campbell Construction Group and West of Scotland Housing Association.

Although the project was small in terms of contract value it involved many complex elements including

• asbestos removal
• fly tipping
• buried fuel tanks

Having improved and implemented our own site audit systems this year there has been a definite improvement in our performance on site, achieving high standards of safety throughout all of our sites. This has indeed been demonstrated by the successful completion and attaining of the Quality Assurance certificate shown above for the Accredited Site Audit Scheme for the second year in succession.

Firefighters from throughout West Central Scotland tackled the blaze for hours before finally bringing it under control. The fire destroyed the two storey wing to the rear of the hotel and Burnfield Demolition carried out the immediate demolition of this dangerous section of the building.

Following discussions with the owners they agreed it would be prudent to demolish the remainder of the building asap, which, it had already scheduled to demolish in 2011.

The building was demolished, superstructure and foundation debris crushed and stockpiled on-site all within the eight schedule.

Demolition could not commence until large quantities of Asbestos Insulation Board was removed, this had been used as fire protection to the steel frame of the structure. During this process Burnfield Demolition’s technical team produced drawings and detailed method statements for lodgement with Aberdeen City Council for the granted Demolition Warrant.

Demolition involved the careful separation of the structures to be demolished from those which were remaining for refurbishment, this was completed by hand with steelwork being cut with spark free reciprocating saws in sensitive areas and oxygen/propane flame cutting equipment used for the larger steel sections.

Although the site was over 150 miles from our headquarters our Project Managers ensured timely site visits and our in house safety audit system ensured no incidents occurred whilst works progressed on this extremely busy site.