WDS to go ahead with 300-plus delegates signed up

Despite the US government’s decision to maintain its Covid travel ban on visitors from countries including the European Union and United Kingdom until November, more than 300 US-based delegates have already registered for the event, which is still four weeks away.

If you have not yet booked your place, you can do so here.

The WDS will be held as an in-person event for the first time since 2019

This means both the WDS technical conference and the World Demolition Awards ceremony and gala dinner will take place in front of an audience for the first time since 2019, after last year’s event was forced online due to the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The US National Demolition Association will host a Foundations of Demolition Risk Management course at the same venue on Friday October 22.

Your host for the WDS will be the experienced event MC and awards presenter Karen Multer.

Speakers include William Sinclair of Safedem discussing the world record breaking Mina Plaza project in the United Arab Emirates and Jet Demolition’s Joe Brinkmann who will talk about the Bank of Lisbon implosion in Johannesburg, which won the overall World Demolition Award (“best of the best”) in 2020.

Also on the programme is a three-person presentation on the Widows Creek stack demolition featuring Brandenburg Industrial Service Company, Applied Science International and the Tennessee Valley Authority, while Kelly Veit, recently appointed CEO of US contractor Veit and Company, will speak on “Perspectives for leadership and positioning for future growth”.

As well as giving their own individual presentations, Tim Barker of Resolute Decommissioning and Demolition Consulting and Devin Bennett from Loss Prevention Systems will take part alongside Joe Brinkmann in a round table on the afternoon of the conference.

In the evening, more than 50 shortlisted entries will fight it out across 14 categories for the coveted World Demolition Awards.

Best of all, the return to an in-person event will allow for the extensive networking opportunities for which the WDS has become famous.

The WDS is organised by Demolition & Recycling International, in co-operation with the European Demolition Association and the National Demolition Association of the USA. Headline sponsor is Volvo Construction Equipment.

For more details, including the conference programme and awards shortlists, please click here.