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Veterans in the demolition field have joined hands to bring down the Supertech twin towers on Sunday. The task is being carried out by Edifice Engineering, a Mumbai-based firm, which has partnered with South Africa-based Jet Demolition. The Central Building Research Institute, headquartered at Roorkee, has also played a key role by approving the demolition preparations. A look at the key members at the helm of the mega project:
Joe Brinkmann: A trained mining engineer from the University of Missouri-Rolla, USA (Masters in Mining Engineering), Brinkmann specialised in explosives and blasting and has been working with explosives since the 1980s. He established Jet Demolition in 1994. In India, the company completed three projects at Kochi about two and a half years ago. It was in charge of demolishing three buildings falling under the Maradu Municipality in January 2020.
On the scale of this demolition, Brinkmann said it is probably one of the tallest buildings being imploded in the world – the 100-metre club as he likes to call it. On the day of the demolition, around six people will be on the site, he said.
“I have been working with explosives since 1980 and have been doing demolition work since 1991… so I can’t tell you the number of buildings I have demolished… too many to recount. We have ironed out and perfected our measures many years ago. All preparations have been completed; checks have been carried out… All is well and we will see a good show tomorrow at 2.30 pm,” Brinkmann said on Saturday at the demolition spot.
Utkarsh Mehta: He is a partner at Edifice Engineering, a Mumbai-based firm which has been in the business of building and concrete demolition since November 2011. Mehta completed his Bachelor of Engineering (mechanical) and went on to pursue a post-graduation in Foreign Trade & Diploma in Marketing Management. He brings an experience of over 11 years in the demolition industry.
On the kind of explosives used in the charging process, Mehta said, “The explosives used in this exercise are known as shock tube explosives, which resemble a plastic tube containing a powder of sorts. Roughly 3,700 kg of explosives is what we expect will be used for the whole exercise, which will be placed in 9,640 holes drilled in the towers.”
According to Mehta, beginning Thursday, a final round of checks was carried out, which included checking column to column and floor to floor connections of explosives.
Mayur Mehta: He is a B.Com graduate from Mumbai University and has been working with Edifice Engineering since the last 10-11 years and is the project manager for the Supertech project.
According to him, this is different from the demolition of the three buildings in Maradu executed by the firm. “The quantum of drilling, dismantling of internal and external brickworks, wrapping of the buildings, the process of charging – everything is more than what we undertook in Kerala. The work we did there was about 20% of this. In Maradu, we had to take care that no debris falls into nearby water bodies. But this area is resident-heavy, which was not the case there. The Aster-2 tower of neighbouring Emerald Court is only 9 metres away. The height of the towers is also a factor – in Kerala, the tallest building was 65 metres; here it’s 100 metres. This project is unique,” Mehta said.
Chetan Dutta: He has been in the blasting field for 20 years. A commerce graduate, Dutta began studying to become a chartered accountant but left it midway and got into the business of trading explosives. He worked as a blasting helper in Khanak Stone Mines in Bhiwani, Haryana, before he acquired a certificate of competency (as a blaster) from the Directorate General Mining Safety in 2012 after sitting for an exam.
“Edifice Engineering contacted me in March. In July, Mr Utkarsh Mehta told me to get ready, and I sent 10 of my men to the demolition site for charging the twin towers. Once the Supreme Court gave the clearance in August, my boys began charging the building with explosives,” Dutta said. He runs a company called Chetan Enterprises and has carried out blasting exercises at Mount Abu, Panipat, as well as Uttarakhand. “This is a very prestigious project for me as it will create history and will be remembered as one of the biggest demolitions ever seen. I’m hoping that everything goes well tomorrow,” Dutta said.
Dr D P Kanungo: With an M.Tech and PhD degrees (engineering-geologist) from IIT-Roorkee, Kanungo has been serving on the council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Central Building Research Institute (CSIR-CBRI) since 1994. He holds the position of a chief scientist at CBRI and has been entrusted to lead his team in the demolition exercise. His team comprises structural engineers, geo-technical engineers, mining engineers and blast experts.
“A lot of details will be monitored and taken into account – the structure of the towers, the vibration generated from the blast, the effect of the vibration on neighbouring societies. This data is extremely important for the scientific community to conduct further research. We have deployed instrumentation monitoring equipment worth Rs 2 crore, and will be visually capturing the entire event. We have also placed 10 black boxes – 5 in Apex and 5 in Ceyane – to analyse the data on velocity and acceleration, rotation and fall of the blast.”
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