Winter Environmental gets busy with bids

A leading US demolition contractor is experiencing its highest bidding volumes in 15 years, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

And Winter Environmental, the demolition arm of the Georgia-based Winter Construction Company, has even used its expertise to develop business in Covid disinfection.

Executive vice president and principal Jim Graham told D&Ri: “Bidding is at an all-time high for us, but the award process is not quite as fast as the bid process, unfortunately!

“Probably one of the busiest demolition sectors is utilities, which has many fossil assets that often cannot be repurposed.

”There are over 400 sites across the US coming down. An example is Google, a household name which is going to be build a datacentre on a former site in Tennessee.

”Not everyone is going to get a Google out of the power plant they are decommissioning, but for the owners there is still an operating expense, and the sooner they can get that off their books, the happier their shareholders are.”

On Covid disinfection, Jim added: “A year ago none of us knew what Covid was, but we are extremely fortunate to have on the staff here one of our vice presidents, Bucky Thompson.

“Following the tragic 9/11 incidents in 2001 he was heavily involved in the disinfecting of two large postal distribution centres contaminated with anthrax, so he had a working knowledge of biological contaminants.

”We got all those different chemicals and then scrambled to get the equipment to train our people to provide a service to our clients. We don’t want be profiteers in terms of the pandemic, we want to keep our people engaged and employed.”

The full interview with Jim will be available with digital issue of D&Ri, which is published next month and will be downloadable from www.khl.com