Episode 2 Demolition - The Wrecking Crew

Britain is being destroyed.

Day after day, it's being torn apart.

You're looking at an hour, two hours for a house to go,

and then that's it, done and dusted.

Filmed over 12 months, these are the men

and women taking on the biggest demolition jobs in the country.

Once you've done this job, there's nothing else.

Not for a working lad, anyway.

-Better than sex.

-All right, so...!

KLAXON BLARES

This is the inside story of the billion-pound demolition industry.

Not much of a bridge now, is it, eh?

It's about eight grands' worth of scrap.

It's a world of dynamite and destruction

that's changing the face of the UK for ever.

Here we go! Show-time!

Tonight...

..work starts on one of the most technically demanding

demolitions ever.

We've never done one as high, as close to the railway.

This type of thing has never been done before.

The stage is set for one demo man to bring down the house.

That's the end of the theatre.

There's only one show in town now, and that's mine.

And the threat of history repeating itself looms large.

There's no text books.

So it's finding that balance between putting enough in for the

building to come down and not putting too much in,

that it flies everywhere.

Three, two, one, fire now.

Lovely. Bang on!

There are hundreds of demolition companies

currently operating across the UK, but only a fraction are allowed

to work in the high-profile world of explosives.

Hugely secretive and heavily legislated,

the Health and Safety Executive and the police

govern every aspect of its use, including storage.

What we have, primarily, is nitroglycerin-based explosives.

It's a secret location, incognito, for obvious reasons.

Within these small bunkers, is enough explosives to

bring down the Houses of Parliament, so it's fitted with a complex

alarm system, wired directly to a fully armed police response unit.

Dominic Ogden is a card-carrying explosives man

and a member of one of the most trusted families in the business.

There is probably about ten of us

in the UK that do these sort of works.

I think we've got a good name in the industry.

My father was certainly well known in the industry.

We used to go on jobs at the weekend blowing bunkers down,

coal bunkers down and things like that.

That's all I ever wanted to do from leaving school, go into demolition.

If I blow it there and there,

it's liable to crack up there.

Do you understand what I mean?

The brothers will soon take on one of the most precarious

jobs of their careers.

Before then, they need to bring down this water tower.

So, if I leave them in and blow them out, it is going to

pivot about there. That's the plan.

All right?

We still get a big buzz out of it,

get a big kick out of bringing something down.

I think that should be just about hitting floor by the time

that second one goes off.

Or it's already moving. Once it's moving, it's moving, isn't it?

Everybody's frightened of explosives,

but when you're used to using it,

it's very safe, in the right hands.

That'll get rid of it, won't it?

It's a team effort.

We need eyes and ears on the site, he can't do everything.

-I trust my brother with my life.

-And vice versa.

We get on well.

Like I say, it's given us a good living, so it's been all right.

Four decades on from blowing up bunkers with their dad...

KLAXON SOUNDS

..the company is now in demand across Europe,

turning over £3 million a year.

-But their business relies on achieving the same result.

-Fire.

Brilliant.

Fantastic.

We're getting better.

Now the Ogdens are taking on one of the most demanding jobs

in 40 years as professional demolition men.

This '60s office block was recently vacated by Doncaster Council.

A municipal park is planned for the site.

So, their team are going to explosively

demolish its 12 storeys of reinforced concrete and steel.

But it's bang in the centre of town.

Neighbouring buildings are just 10-15 metres away.

We've got some vulnerable people there in the Beechfield Centre.

They're getting evacuated.

And then we've got our Sikh temple at the bottom here.

They've had to push back a wedding for us, the Sikh temple,

because, apparently, Sikh weddings go on for about three or four days.

He's been very accommodating, the Sikh temple man. Very accommodating.

It's a lot to pull together. It's a big high-profile job for us.

A lot of contracts will ride on this in the future,

so, you know, it's very prestigious.

The Ogdens have carried out hundreds of demolitions.

Don't stop. You're doing a cracking job.

You're a belter, you're doing a belting job.

But despite their many years in the business,

with such a huge structure to detonate

so close to other buildings,

reinforcements are needed.

OK, so you're all right on this floor? Finish the wrapping.

-Happy, happy?

-Happy, happy, happy.

-Happy, happy.

They've enlisted an internationally renowned explosive veteran,

Captain Dick Green.

I've been doing this now... I was 25 years in the military

working with explosives.

In the last 20, I've been doing tower blocks.

I don't get excited about it and I don't get complacent.

Dick wants 800 holes to be drilled

and filled with explosives in the walls and columns of the building.

This is your old-school plastic dynamite.

He'll handle the majority himself.

It's nitroglycerin-based explosives,

so you get it pooling in the bottom of your body

and you end up with what they call a "jelly head"

-which is a stinking headache.

-You've had that?

Have you ever had it, John?

Jelly head? Just about every job.

Dick's plan is to blast columns on four of the 12 floors.

The rest of the building should collapse under its own weight.

But the strength and timing of the explosions

will determine success or failure.

The front and central part of the building will be blown first,

followed by the rest of the columns on the blast floors.

If all goes to plan, the whole building will collapse inwards

and fall forwards into the target area.

If not, it could fall backwards, crushing the buildings behind.

A lot of the people that come to watch these blowdowns,

come because they want to see things go wrong.

Many years ago, we did a building that was

similar in construction to the offices in Doncaster.

The same in shape and size and column size.

It was called St Vincent's Hospital and it was in Dublin

and we did everything we thought was right and we fired the button.

It started to come but before it came over,

it stopped before it got to its centre of gravity,

so, we had what we call a stand-up, in the industry.

You can imagine, in the middle of Dublin,

the sort of banter that was coming back at us from the crowd

when the building didn't come down as predicted.

Dick had to send in the excavators

to pull down the remains of the building.

An expensive and potentially dangerous delay.

If it doesn't come down, it's egg on your face

and it costs you a bit of money.

If it does come down and it damages a property,

it's hard to accept, it costs money, but you can rectify it.

At the end of the day,

the main priority of every explosives engineer,

is to bring it down safely with nobody getting hurt.

If things go wrong for Dick and the Ogdens,

they could make headlines for all the wrong reasons.

KLAXON SOUNDS

Fire now.

But for every firm like theirs, grabbing attention in the noisy

and spectacular field of explosive demolition,

there are 100 more, often ignored by the public,

working on small jobs behind screens on our streets.

Don't be skidding about on there because there's wire

-and you'll pop them

-BLEEP

-tyres.

Paul Johnson has worked in the industry for over 30 years.

In this massively competitive market,

he built up his Preston-based firm from nothing.

Now, it's worth £3.5 million.

The recession's made things very difficult.

The price of plant machinery has gone up by 40-odd percent.

Diesel has gone up by, you know,

diesel has gone up about 20% in the last three or four years.

There's not as much work about.

The last thing a demolition bloke wants in his yard, is his diggers.

Your diggers want to be out on-site, working.

We're being squoze,

we're squoze on every front.

Rates need to go up but they won't,

because if you don't do it, the next man will.

That's the bloody circle we get in sometimes.

We've got to do jobs with hardly any money in them just to keep going.

With jobs hard to come by and pressure on margins,

contractors have to look for other ways to make money on the job.

Sometimes you'll get a bit more scrap,

so you're better off with that.

I think that is one of the good things about demo,

there is always the chance of a few extras

or a bit of scrap and a bit more scrap.

In the last few years, the price of copper went through the roof.

That's worth about 1,500 quid a tonne.

In that crate there, there'll be a good tonne.

All demo men like a bit of copper, let me tell you, lad.

A bloke once said to me, "You might not end up a millionaire,

"but now and again, you'll live like one."

When you find a little bit of treasure that everyone has forgotten

about and you get, that's a good do. But it's not all treasure.

It's not all jet skis and bum jobs.

It's day one for Paul's team

and a five-acre school site in Croxteth, Liverpool.

Two months ago, he viewed the grounds and tendered for the job.

He won it by putting in an offer that could make him a loss,

gambling on finding enough valuable scrap to make the job pay.

Belting! Knocking a school down! Who liked school, really? Come on!

Everyone would love to knock a school down, wouldn't they?

I've knocked loads of them now. I've done 70.

Now, he's got 20 men and three of his biggest excavators on-site

and they all cost money.

We're getting paid £190,000 to demolish the school.

You've got your labour, you've got your plants.

The biggest thing, though, is the rubbish.

There's plenty of rubbish on this job.

I estimate there's 80 40-yard bins at 800 quid a time,

so I'll have a 50-grand rubbish bill.

Scrap steel is what Paul hopes will save him from losing money.

You can sell it on for up to £200 a tonne.

There are 15 buildings on-site to demolish,

built over the last 50 years, each constructed differently.

But Paul has pinned his hopes on the theatre

where he believes a big chunk of his steel is hidden.

I need to get, out of this job, 300 tonne of steel.

This theatre building is steel,

so I'm hoping intuition and experience tells me,

balls on the line, with a bit of luck and a fair wind behind me,

I just might scrape 100 tonne out of this one.

The rest of the job, this is only part of it,

there'll be another 200 tonne of bits and pieces.

I'm hopeful that the steel will pay the waste bill,

then I might make a little bit of money

and it will only be a little bit.

-Do you think we'll get 100 tonne? Truth.

-No.

Oh, be a bit positive!

-No, I'm positive.

-What do you think we'll get?

-60.

To reveal Paul's treasure,

the excavators need to do their work. Every penny counts on this job

and he's not going to let them stand idle.

I have two drivers off, so I'm going to have to jump on the digger

and do a bit. I've got to say, I'm a bit rusty.

-You're a

-BLEEP

-tool, aren't you? You!

How am I going to get in there now?

-I'm fifty

-BLEEP

-two!

You park it so you can get out on the track.

He's holding the job up now, in his own little way

but I think he's having a bit of fun.

If you're on the job and you say,

"There's plenty of scrap on here, Paul, there is never enough,

"there is never enough." That's in our heads, there's never enough.

But, it's Paul's reputation and bank balance that are on the line.

And, as the building comes down and more

and more of its construction is revealed...

-Doesn't seem as much...

-BLEEP.

He's spotted what he hoped he'd never uncover on this job.

They are worst girders known to mankind.

Bloody great big bloody holes in them.

Castellated bloody girders!

What a load of bloody crap!

For each one of them circles, I'm losing kilos

and I need kilos on this flipping job.

If the first day is a sign of things to come

and the remaining buildings reveal scrap of equally poor quality...

Where's all that copper gone? There?

..this job could end with serious losses for Paul.

In Battersea, south London, one of the biggest

companies in British demolition is preparing to begin work

on one of the most technically challenging jobs it's ever tackled.

Straight in without a problem, mate.

Paul Cooper, project manager for Birmingham-based Coleman & Company,

has had his team on-site since 5am

waiting for a mobile crane to arrive.

It's worth £2.5 million,

weighs 96 tonnes and is only allowed to drive on London roads at night.

It has to have the traffic route planned with the police

and it needs to get in before, well,

before seven o'clock in the morning,

because of London traffic.

A lot of planning gone into it. Months and months.

We've had approval from Network Rail to lift next to the railway line,

so we just want to get on with it, really.

It's going to be a long day.

Supporting Paul is site manager Clive Shearing.

His job is to take his boss's master plan

and communicate it to the team and contractors.

First, he needs to get that crane in position.

If you do your work right and make sure there's no underground services

he's not putting his jacks on and the ground is solid,

then there won't be a problem.

No good getting all uptight.

Just gives you heart attacks and at my size,

I can't have a heart attack.

He puts everyone at ease but I'd rather be a little bit nervous

because it keeps you on your toes then.

We do need to make sure we can be as spot on as possible.

Precision is going to be key as the team tackle this.

The 90-metre-tall gasometer has towered

over Nine Elms habitants since 1932.

It once helped power London, storing fuel from the local gasworks.

Now, National Grid plans to capitalise on the valuable land

and has submitted planning for a new development of more than 800 homes.

But because the derelict gasometer stands metres

from main line rail routes on two sides, pulling it down is going to

require some ground-breaking new techniques and complex engineering.

These are the bespoke rooftop cranes that we've manufactured

specifically to take down MAN holders.

They have been built in Birmingham,

tested and commissioned, and now, they're good to go.

These cranes are extremely lightweight

but capable of carrying three tonnes of steel.

They're key to Paul's plan

of working from the top of the gasometer.

But first, they need to get up there.

I put the radio on when I'm in there. Radio 2, usually.

I like Steve Wright In The Afternoon.

Seat cover, that's my mate's.

1970s porn star, he is.

When he gets in there, it suits him. Same as his underpants.

Some people have orgasms over them.

-Andre does.

-I like cranes.

It's taken three hours, but now fully extended,

the crane's six-part telescopic boom

has a 125-metre reach.

Go on. Again.

Do all the engineering in the world, but a hammer solves everything!

All right?

Now they're fully constructed,

the cranes are ready to be put in position on top of the gasometer

where they'll become a fundamental part of its complicated demolition.

The process will exploit engineering that the gasometer

used to function for 60 years.

When it was operational, a piston inside the cylinder moved up

and down to push gas through the pipes and into the network.

They aim to cut off the 300 tonne roof, rest it on the piston

and use that as a platform to work on,

moving down the tower, dismantling it layer by layer

and winching steel panels

to the ground using the two specialist cranes.

They need to go 90 metres up to get into position.

Ready when you are.

And now that London has burst into life

and trains are running every two minutes on the main line railway

just metres away from the gasometer, conditions need to be perfect.

How is the wind up there?

'There's nothing. It's sound.'

OK, so, we should be clear for that, then.

Yeah, it's lifting just right. Nice and square.

The next very important point for us, is now to make sure

that all the weight of this crane is transferred onto the roof

and it is strapped back to the central pivot point.

It can't tip backwards because we've got that jockey wheel,

as we call, but it can tip forwards.

If it tips forwards, it'll fall off this holder

and that's a 100-metre drop,

so, not good.

'Hold it there. Drop on your right, please, mate.'

It'll only just rest on here in the middle.

Track down.

Track down.

The first of the two cranes has made it onto the roof

and the team are a step closer to demolition.

But the next phase is going to be even more difficult.

Lower up there.

There's more engineering on the jobs that I've done for Colemans

than there was when I did civil engineering,

because building roads, bridges,

they've all been done before.

This type of thing has never been done before.

We've taken down gasholders, but we've never done one as high,

as close to the railway, where we've had to land the cranes

on top of the gasholder before we can start demolishing,

so, it's completely unique.

Brothers Dominic and Simon Ogden are hard at work

at the ex-council office block in the centre of Doncaster.

Four floors of the building have been packed with nitroglycerin

and in less than 24 hours,

the button will be pressed that should bring it safely to its knees.

We're just doing the last final wrap of the building.

It's just an extra precaution.

You can never, ever put enough protection on. The more the better.

We don't want nothing to escape whatsoever.

The wrapping is made up of multiple layers of steel chain-link

and geotech fabric, designed to contain

as much flying shrapnel as possible.

It's vital for this blowdown, where neighbouring buildings

stand just ten metres away.

Are you going to put another chain-link on there, then?

Put plenty on.

And don't bust my bloody light down there.

Inside, under Dick Green's control,

the blast columns have had the same treatment.

Dick has had help from a third-generation Ogden.

This is my son, Samuel, who's just finished at Newcastle College.

He's going to have to start earning a living now,

paying me some money back, I hope.

He's just filling in time now.

He's sending plenty of CVs out to different companies.

I'd like him to try and do a bit of travelling

with a big international multinational company.

This is a bit dusty and mucky for me, type of thing. I'd rather be...

I don't know, a bit more sat behind an office desk

or something like that,

doing something to do with the environment,

maybe get in the Environment Agency, something like that, I'm hoping.

I'd rather not follow in my dad's footsteps in this sort of thing.

I'd rather do my own thing.

Don't get me wrong, I can't fault him for what he does.

He loves it, he absolutely loves it.

Knocking buildings down is just his thing.

He's that good at doing it now, he knows what he's doing.

It's been in my blood ever since I was 12 years old,

even younger than that.

I used to go to work with me dad when I was nine, back in the '60s.

I wish me dad was here.

He'd have loved this job. He'd have loved this one.

Yeah, times like this when you start thinking about him.

I've got his ring on. Lucky ring.

Put some slack on this corner!

The actual blowdown, my dad's always a bit nervous.

My Uncle Dominic's always a bit nervous in case things go wrong,

but I'm not worried at all.

I think it's going to be a good blow tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm looking forward to watching it come down, definitely.

The date of tomorrow's blowdown

has been public knowledge for some weeks,

but the specific timing has been kept under wraps.

It's standard practice within the industry.

Explosives can be unpredictable,

so no demo man wants a blowdown to become a public event,

but Doncaster's residents are becoming increasingly curious.

Many years ago when I was a telephone engineer,

I used to go in there and repair the telephones, believe it or not.

Quite a big place it was indeed.

It's very historic because this will be the last day

that this now stands. Tomorrow, gone, after all those years,

and I can actually remember it being built, as well.

So, I remember its construction, so I'm hoping to see its destruction.

It's just finding out when.

We're firing this building at 8.30.

When I've been going to the cafe, walking round the explosion zone,

people are saying, "What time are you going?"

I've been telling them 10.30,

because I don't want them here because it's another headache for us.

They just turn up and they're wanting things to go wrong

and things like that, you know? It's just an added pressure.

It's just extra pressure what we can do without.

Dick is controller of the blowdown, so he's responsible for its success.

800 sticks of nitroglycerin have been positioned exactly

where he wants them, as well as 600 metres of detonating cord.

At this stage, it's too late to start worrying.

You've done everything so you can't change anything anyway.

All you've got to do is make sure that you check it

and everything is connected up,

so everything will go off.

There's no textbooks on it.

There's nothing that tells you any of the information,

so it is finding that balance between putting enough in

for the building to come down and not putting too much in

that it flies everywhere.

With all concrete being different,

all reinforcing being different,

it's interesting.

Dick can't accurately predict how the explosive will react

in the columns, so he has to rely on what he CAN control,

the timing.

He's run detonating cord, like a spine, throughout the building.

Come blowdown, a single electric spark from the detonation box

will ignite the cord travelling at over 7,000 metres per second.

Shock tubing will then carry the charge out into the columns

and through a delay device that is embedded

in the nitroglycerin itself.

With this system, the chain of events can be measured

to the millisecond, giving Dick more chance of controlling

the way the building should fall.

If you're in here when it fires, I don't know,

nobody has ever actually been in one and lived to tell the tale.

What would happen, firstly, this would go off

and you'd hear a loud bang.

You wouldn't see anything, you just hear a loud bang,

and that would probably, apart from deafening you,

it'll probably kill you.

This would set off this tube, and if you were still around,

you'd see a flash of light going through the tube into the columns

and then 300 milliseconds later,

you'd see the building start to shake and come down.

There's just time for one final briefing

for the Ogden brothers and their team.

Dick has charged all the explosives

and the building is locked down and ready.

Blowdown is due in 12 hours' time.

INDISTINCT CONVERSATION

At times like this, there's only one person

even the hardiest of demolition men can turn to for support.

My mother is going to church tomorrow, praying for us.

-That'll be afterwards, won't it?

-Aye, she'll be praying afterwards.

-Should have told her, she'd have gone today.

-Gone to early mass.

Light a few candles, aye.

We don't allow her to come cos she's a bit of a bad luck omen, so...

She's been to a few that haven't come down before,

so she's now banned, isn't she?

I'm going to get off in a bit and have a few beers

and see if I can get a good night's sleep.

And then the butterflies will start tomorrow morning.

We've ticked all these boxes

on me nice check sheets

and we've done everything we can do.

So, now it's up to the big man upstairs now and gravity.

In Battersea, the team are nearing the end of the complex preparation

needed to begin demolishing the gasometer.

They've been tirelessly cutting around the roof of the structure

in an effort to use it as a movable platform for the team to work on.

It's a pioneering technique created by the Colemans engineers.

I bet Paul's a bit anxious, more than any of us.

No, 100% confident.

We're on the final day of cutting the roof

from the surrounding structure.

Once we release the roof, we'll be able to get on

with the deconstruction of the MAN holder and the shell plates

and the stairs and the lifts that you can see on the outside.

We need the roof released to do that, so it is a big milestone.

It does seem simple but we are releasing 300 tonnes' worth

of weight onto the piston.

Once used to force gas out of the tower,

the piston will now be used to support the roof.

Work has already been done.

Saws have cut around the roof of the gasometer like a baked-bean tin.

And now only one of 20 steel trusses attach the roof

to the body of the tower.

When the final truss is cut, the roof will rest on the piston

which, in turn, will sit on a bed of nothing but air.

Two huge blowers will work 24 hours a day

pumping air into the gasometer, controlling the level of the piston

and the working platform on top.

The piston's underneath the roof now,

supporting the majority of it except for one steel truss.

-One left, gents.

-Yeah, I see that. That's about ready to go.

This is another first for the project.

Traditionally, blowtorches would be used to cut the steel

but sparks here could ignite flammable materials in the tower

and fall onto the railway line below.

So, Paul is using a diamond-encrusted wire-saw system

for the trusses.

It's cold cutting, minimising sparks.

'Right, Lee, pressure is 1,190, 1,190.

-'OK.'

-This is the very anxious time,

we're about halfway through the last truss, so I guess in the next

15 minutes, we'll know how successful we are, but I'm quite confident...

..he said.

The air blowers are now the single most important part of the job.

If the air pressure's wrong when the roof is untethered

and sits on the piston,

it could come crashing to the ground yards from the busy railway lines.

How far are we through?

'Just under three quarters of the way through.'

Just four inches of steel to go until Paul and Barry know

if their engineering strategy is going to work.

Torture.

RADIO CHATTER

OK, mate, thank you.

The wire's broken, so we just had to refeed the wire through again.

Almost there.

'OK, the saw's going again, the saw's going.'

'The saw's snapped, the saw's snapped.'

There's an inch to go and the saw's broken.

So the whole roof's being held, at the moment...

by a one-inch piece of steel.

'Just to let you know, we're recipping the last little bit now.'

OK, mate, thank you.

What did he say?

They've just... Using the recip saw on the last bit now.

'Yeah, that's fine, we've got less than a quarter of an inch

'to cut through and this plate is still level.'

RADIO CHATTER

Say again, Lee.

'No, she didn't move.'

It's held level.

Success.

The blowers are taking the strain, the roof has dropped onto the piston

and the only thing supporting them is air.

Top of the world.

Dead stable, you wouldn't even know it's floating on a bit of air.

300 tonnes just not moving at all.

Looks exactly the same as it did a few hours ago.

The steel roof of the gasometer has been turned

into a fully height-adjustable working platform.

We'll start taking the shell plate down.

Anyone from over there, all the way around,

will notice it coming down a few metres a day as of now.

Now the demolition can begin in earnest but, with it,

comes the constant risk that one false move could spell

disaster for the railways below.

Paul Johnson's team are halfway into their demolition job

at the old school site in Liverpool.

What he's being paid won't cover his overheads,

so Paul needs valuable scrap to have any hope of making money on the job.

What the team has unearthed up to now isn't enough.

But when Paul won the contract, he reached a deal

where he not only legally owns the scrap he finds,

but also the fixtures and fittings left behind when it was abandoned.

How many parts have we got on here, Andy?

He's going to send anything valuable to the reclamation yard

that he set up six years ago

to help him survive in this cut-throat industry.

The demolition, historically, has made the most money

but rates are pretty low at the moment,

it's hard to make a good living, so we do some buying and selling.

So I try and sell all the stuff that I get off me jobs

out of this yard and I'll buy off other people as well

and sell that out to this yard. This yard turns about 1.5 million over.

So it's becoming about 30% of our business.

-They are the dog's danglers, these here.

-Yeah.

Blackburn Cathedral, cherry tops, cathedral-grade.

They've had thousands of people walking over them,

so they're footworn smooth

and they become oxidated and go that lovely browny colour.

I've about 300 yard of them.

About 40 grand's worth there.

What you'll find in London, they're not really bothered about the price,

they're more bothered about the quality.

And, let me tell you,

quality always sells.

This is a doorway I've just bought,

-what do you think of that doorway, Joanne?

-Very nice.

I just think, entrance to a garden or a wine cellar,

I want three grand for it.

It's nice.

Paul's girlfriend, Joanne,

has seen his reclamation business start from nothing.

-I gave 300 quid for it.

-Where from?

Antique centre, they don't know what they've got in that antique centre,

they're a bit thick, I think, these so-called antique dealers.

She's seen the ups and downs as Paul's empire has grown.

He has his good moments and bad moments, don't you?

I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of him.

It's going Paul's way

and if it's not going Paul's way then he's grumpy.

I get irritated, you know, it's like these politicians.

They're bloody useless.

They won't get nowt sorted out, there's too much

messing about, aren't they? Getting votes.

I think we want a dictatorship, really. That'd be a lot better.

There's plenty of work to do, let's be getting on with it.

Paul's lads are cracking on but the scrap's still scarce.

Before winning the contract,

he'd only had a quick look around the site.

MUSIC: The Thieving Magpie by Rossini

But now, back on location, and with full access to the remaining

buildings, Paul's heading inside.

Perhaps what he can find here will make money in the reclamation yard

and help balance the books.

Well, I've not been in this gym.

A little bird's told me I can sell the '70s gym equipment.

Pirates, that's what we used to do in t'gym. Whey!

I'll have all these ropes, though, mate.

Just a few of these for the yard, I think you'll sell them, Andrew.

-Can do, yeah.

-Climbing frames for kids. I'll tell you what it is now,

we're not short of filing cabinets, Andrew, are we?

-No, we're not.

-What's in kitchen, Mick?

What's this device? Oh, bloody hell, it stinks in the fridge.

I don't think you'll sell much in here, Andy.

-Look at all the

-BLEEP

-they've left behind.

There's not much salvage for the reclamation yard...

..so Paul's focus returns to finding enough steel for scrap.

I think what's happened here, Mick,

they've extended this school.

I don't think it's all steel, I just think it's top floor.

They're only babby girders, them.

Might make 30 tonnes, though, with a fair wind, eh?

To make things worse, the price of steel has fallen £80 a tonne

since he started the job.

Paul's gamble looks like it might not pay off.

Not making any money on this job.

All I'm doing, me, is running around to keep people employed.

That's all I do, really, isn't it?

It's been four months since Paul Cooper's team created

a floating platform from the roof of the gasometer in Battersea...

..and demolition started immediately after.

There's nine blocks that's currently proposed, erm,

in the planning application.

Sort of four, four and then one right at the end of the site.

So some fantastic views from these apartments over here.

Paul is under pressure to get the job done as quickly as possible.

His client has been busy making plans for the site once cleared.

How many metres are you doing a week, do you reckon? In terms of...

It's variable at the moment,

because of the weather interruptions that we've had.

And so, from start to finish, this'll be, what? 12 months?

-Proper on-site work.

-Slightly over 12 months, yes.

-Slightly over.

It's a high-profile job.

Trying to pull off a technically ground-breaking demolition

and, of course, it's all happening

metres from the major London rail route in the middle of winter.

I think the weather's held us up significantly, I would say.

Over the period since we cut the roof, we lose...

Anything between a day to two days a week.

It's frustrating as well as annoying as well as a few other things.

It's not the ideal season to take it down, erm...

But we're still making progress and that's the main thing.

Paul can't control the weather but the engineering, he can.

The air-cushioned working platform that they created

from the roof of the gasometer has held steady for the last 16 weeks.

We're still floating on the piston of air.

I can't believe it myself, to be honest.

We're kept up by a couple of hairdryers blowing some air below us

and that's it.

It keeps us all up here.

Because the roof's so stable, the lads can cut and transport

panels with a weight of over two tonnes around its rim

but the steel is coated in decades worth of black tar that was

used as sealant when the gasometer was in use.

The tar is highly flammable.

Up here, oxyacetylene-burning gas axes are a dangerous option.

It all still cold cutting because of the same...

The same problem of ignition of the tar.

If you've got the gas axe, you've got sparks of molten metal flying

potentially near the railway, near passengers,

potentially into areas that we can't see,

potentially onto the piston, the timber roof,

it's very hard to control.

Especially in weather like this when you're cutting with a gas axe,

the sparks will be going everywhere.

These guys are generating no sparks whatsoever.

This hasn't been done before, this is a first.

They can rig, cut a panel, drop it to the ground, back up again,

all within 35, 40 minutes is our best time and that's not bad going.

And the lads are getting better the more they do.

Once cut free, the eight-metre-wide panels act like sails

becoming dangerously unstable in even moderate winds

and work has to stop.

It's a constant headache for Paul.

There's over 400 of these to come down in total.

We've got a system for taking them down,

we just need the good weather now

and we can make a big dent in this.

We need to get this job finished as soon as we can

so we can hand over the site to our client.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah, we need just seven.

OK, ladies and gents, good morning.

This morning, at about 8.30, 8.15, 8.30,

we're going to demolish that with explosives.

Four nitroglycerin-packed floors within one of Doncaster's

major landmarks are charged and primed. It's blowdown day.

Dick Green is briefing his 30-strong security team.

The block stands 40 metres tall and regulations demand that

an exclusion zone of over three times its height must be enforced.

What we have to do is make sure that there's

an area of about 150 metres around the building with nobody in.

The time for detonation has not been released to reduce the crowd size

and to allow the demolition team to focus on evacuating

the 19 residents living on the street

just metres behind the blast.

Today, you are the most important people on this site.

The search for members of the public started at 5am

-in the building itself.

-We've checked the building this morning,

we've checked the basement area, we've checked all the rooms, so...

It's all right, I'm just looking at them people

over there in that bloody civic theatre.

They should be evacuated out.

Dick will be sorting them out now.

Me and Dominic are the last people on-site.

It's always a little bit eerie when you're walking round and...

It's usually hustle and bustle here but, yeah, it's very eerie.

Control to sentry number...six, over.

For blast manager Dick Green, the next hour will decide

the success or failure of eight months of meticulous planning.

And all in a very public arena.

The quicker we do it, the less crowd we'll have,

so I'm just waiting to confirm that all the residents are out

and then all the DSR guys are out and then we can come up with a time.

Hopefully, we're looking at about quarter past eight

-but I just need a few little checks before then.

-See this Catholic club?

There's a family living there,

do you mind just knocking on these doors and seeing if

-they're still in there?

-Yeah.

-Thank you.

In charge of evacuation is the demolition company's

Health-and-Safety officer, another member of the Ogden family,

Dominic's niece, Emma Thompson.

So, I just need to make sure that they're all definitely out.

People are usually pretty amenable, especially when you give them

a free breakfast, which we're doing.

If she can't account for every resident,

the demolition will be called off.

Empty?

No response from any door.

Right. I'm going to go and count everybody up in the cafe now

because I know who should be out.

Me nerves are starting to build, the stomach is in knots.

But it's usually perfect course this time of day.

I am confident.

Everything is set in place, it'll do what it's going to do.

So, hopefully it's going to do what we want it to do.

Emma started preparation eight weeks ago with

questionnaires for every resident

so she knows exactly where everyone should be ahead of the blast.

You're number ten, Yvonne is number six.

I ain't seen anybody from flat eight yet.

We might be missing flat number eight.

And he promised me that he'd be up,

so I'm just going to give him a ring.

No answer.

Right.

-All DSR guys out?

-Yes.

The site is now on lockdown and under watch from security guards.

Only the rogue residents are delaying demolition,

allowing time for spectators to together.

The pressure's mounting, in fact, it's getting time

for another cigarette, like he does.

Just to let you know, there's people still inside the cordon.

They've just told me it's empty.

-It's not empty.

-'Control to Emma, over.'

Yup, I'm here, Dick.

'Hi, Emma. Can we say now that the homeless shelter's empty, over?'

We don't like crowds. We don't like crowds at all.

It's another hardhead headache.

So...

Don't say a lot for no smoking, does it?

The public are safely behind the security cordon

and there is no wind, ideal conditions to press the button.

-Are you Michelle?

-Yup.

-OK.

-Oh, are you Ben?

-Yeah.

That's everybody, then. Yes!

Evacuation complete.

For the Ogden brothers and Dick Green,

a split-second chain of events will soon decide

whether the tower block will collapse as planned

or leave surrounding buildings and their reputations in pieces.

'Control to all radios, Countdown from ten.

'Ten, nine, eight,

'seven, six, five,

'four, three, two, one.

'Fire now, fire now.'

CRASHING

Oh, look at that!

That's amazing.

Lovely, bang on!

-That's

-BLEEP,

-has it!

'Stay in your positions, stay in your positions.

'Well done, everybody,

'but stay in your positions while we check the pile.'

50 years of Doncaster's history

has fallen perfectly into the target area,

leaving residents and nearby buildings standing in safety.

-Now you can kiss me.

-Mwah!

-Are you all right?

-I'll give you an 'ug!

-What do you reckon?

-Oh, spot on.

We've only gone forward maybe ten metres

and there's nothing at the back and very little at the sides,

maybe five metres at each side so it's kept it compact.

I would think within 45 minutes, life should be back to normal.

Everything's gone wonderful.

Better than sex.

-All right, so...!

-So it is.

In Battersea, the demo team has been attempting to bring down

the gasholder using a technique that's never been tried before.

Slicing the roof and using the piston as a working platform,

then cold cutting the panels and winching them to the ground.

But working at height means their cranes can only operate

in low winds and they've fallen well behind schedule.

It should have taken four months of cutting to bring it down

but six months in, it's only halfway there.

Today, once again, the wind has picked up,

and demolition work has been called to a halt.

Project manager Paul

has had to become something of a meteorological expert.

I'm a wind geek. Definitely.

I'd check it every day,

through the night if I wake up.

I'll check the weather just to see what it's going to be like.

You're constantly looking at the wind speeds to see how you can get

a head start or try and plan as best

you can around the wind speeds so, yeah, I've never been as interested

in wind speeds before as I am now.

It should be gone, we are not where we want to be,

that's due to the weather. There's not a lot we can do about that.

That one factor is outside our control,

the method is affected by the wind,

but the method in itself is extremely safe so that's why we go for it.

The rest of the site has been cleared to make way

for a proposed new high-rise development

of up to 800 apartments.

Progress on the main gasholder has been much slower than planned

but it is continuing to shrink, gradually.

The last time we were here we were about another 25 metres

higher in the air and we were actually looking

almost at the top of those chimneys from Battersea Power Station.

Now you can see how far we've dropped.

We're below those chimneys so, for me,

that's where I can see the progress.

That's the benchmark.

With the job so far behind schedule,

Paul's throwing in the towel and trying something else.

We are continuing with the cranes at the moment,

we have got a plan to be less affected by the wind

and that's that when we get down to about 40 metres,

we can bring in an ultra-high-reach machine which is an excavator

with a very long arm and that will be able to nibble away at the structure.

The machine does work quite quickly

but obviously you cannot have that working 90 metres in the air,

so there's a limit on how high these machines can go

and the particular machine that we're bringing in does around 38 metres.

That will do the business for us.

Unaffected by the elements,

the high-reach machine will be able to tear through the remaining

panels much quicker than the cranes

and without the concern that a gust of wind

could cause a disaster below.

There are some spectacular views from here on a clear day.

As you can see, everything's laid out in front of you across London.

That's the flip side to it.

It's a nice view from up top but I'll be happy

when I'm looking at London from the ground.

With a high-reach excavator plan in place,

the site should be completely clear in three months' time and the

land can be handed to the developers who hope to start building soon,

replacing the once iconic gas towers with hundreds of apartments.

In Liverpool, the old school buildings have gone.

After 14 weeks of demolishing and sifting, Paul Johnson's drivers

are tidying up before leaving the site at the end of the day.

The final fragments of valuable metals they've salvaged from the job

have been sold and are ready to be collected

from Paul's yard in Preston.

Yes, there's a nice bit of scrap off that school.

I must have, like, two tonne of brasserie there,

three tonne of brasserie.

Eight grand.

Yeah. This is really good stuff.

Copper plate buzz bar.

Out of the generating room.

I've had some of them in my time. On and off.

Machinery, fuel and waste disposal are huge running costs

for demo men like Paul so, his hunt for 300 tonnes of scrap steel

became critical to make any profit from the £190,000 he was being paid.

I reckon I've spent about 165 grand. To do t'job.

It was a huge financial gamble and to add to his stress,

the South Americans decided to join the game.

The price of scrap is falling like a bloody stone.

Gets back to iron ore.

Iron ore is half the price it were 12 months ago

so scrap's going to come down because scrap competes with iron ore.

Apparently, these Brazilians have made these bloody big ships

that will carry 300-odd thousand tonne.

So I'm bloody moving iron ore now, cheaper than it were in 19-bloody-80.

Bloody no good to me!

I don't think they're really bothered about me, are they?

With a downturn in the value of steel,

and a slow start on-site, Paul reached into his own pocket

in a desperate attempt to salvage the situation.

Well, I decided on this one to pay my main machine drivers

some good bonuses to push the job on.

Try that bit harder.

And they have done. So, if we finish the job a bit earlier,

a bit more scrap than we thought, a bit more work than we thought

but we've done it a bit quicker.

So we've ended up with about 360 tonne off that job I reckon.

20 grand of nonferrous or something like that. So, I've done all right.

It's made better than what I thought it would do.

More than what I expected.

They still have a cheap job done though.

I've had to work like ten men.

The final figure is £90,000 profit

but that wasn't without risk,

and he's put it straight back on the table for his next contract.

Scrap! Scrap! And more scrap!

It seems gambling £165,000 on finding 300 tonnes of steel

on the school job wasn't big enough for Paul.

Now, there needs to be 3,000 tonne of steel

in this factory to make it pay.

I'm up to 1,700 tonne at the moment.

I am up to my nuts in this job.

In demolition, you always thought there's a bit more scrap,

you find a bit of copper, you're never going to win a race

unless you enter so once you've done this job, there is nothing else.

There is nothing else. Not for a working lad anyway.

Demolition till I die, eh?

Next time... A city's tallest tower block is brought down to earth

bang in the middle of a packed housing estate.

The closest one from this height looks very close.

A marathon makeover puts commuters

and deconstruction on a crash course.

Here, we're almost surrounded on every face by people

so it makes our job a million times harder.

And one demo crew are forced to down tools

when they come face-to-face with their nemesis.

You mention asbestos to me,

I hate the stuff, it's a bloody nightmare.