“Courage to change, courage to innovate!”

The FACHTAGUNG ABBRUCH with record attendance

Europe’s largest industry event awards prizes for innovations in recycling of construction materials

More than 1,100 participants, 127 exhibitors and over 1,000 square metres of exhibition space:
The FACHTAGUNG ABBRUCH 2020 at the end of February in Berlin showed once again why it is the most important annual event in the industry. Every year the Deutscher Abbruchverband (DA) gathers more and more visitors in the capital with its mix of professional lectures, industry exhibition and network exchange. In view of the increasing challenges in the recycling of construction materials, DA managing director Andreas Pocha demands on “courage to rethink and courage to innovate”.

Man and machine – who programs whom?
Ranga Yogeshwar also demanded courage to rethink in his keynote. The prominent physicist and science journalist demonstrated the rapid speed with which digital innovations are changing the present and the possibilities that artificial intelligence already offers today. Yogeshwar’s thesis: “Everything that can be digitally transformed will also be digitally transformed”. Germany must increase the pace of innovation. However, this requires us to confidently seize the opportunities offered by digitisation without jeopardising social stability. “The world has gotten better; my grandchildren’s generation has a bright future.”

DA Innovation Prize awarded for the third time
The DA (German Demolition Association) has been promoting the courage to innovate by awarding the DA Innovation Prize since 2018. The prize is awarded for outstanding research work on demolition, dismantling and recycling of construction materials. This year, the first prize went to Daniel Rank from the Technical University of Munich for his research about the possible uses of mineral recycling construction materials using the example of the former Bavarian barracks in Munich. Here, in cooperation with the company Ettengruber, it was possible to construct a model building with 100 percent recycled aggregates from the demolition material of the barracks. Since such an aggregate is not permitted by law, in this case a building inspection approval was necessary in individual cases, as Michael Weiß, managing director of Ettengruber GmbH Grubenbetrieb, explained in his technical lecture. The participating project partners proved that the use of secondary raw materials in the sense of a circular construction industry is not only possible and sensible in road and path construction, but also in building construction.

Professional lectures show the industry’s performance
The total of 15 specialist presentations covered the range of topics relevant to the industry, and also showed how innovative and international the industry is. Alix Reichenecker from the Dutch cooperative PolyStyreneLoop, for example, presented how EPS and XPS insulation materials can be recycled using a novel process. The corresponding demonstration plant is currently under construction and will go into operation in 2021. Lectures on the latest developments in TRGS 519 and the Industrial Safety Regulation brought the audience up to date on the latest state of normative knowledge.

Examples from construction site practice made clear under what difficult conditions dismantling often has to be carried out, for example, when it is necessary to train the personnel for special construction machines such as a spider excavator themselves, because otherwise it would not be possible to operate the machine. Of course, examples from blasting practice were not to be missed: Members of the Blasting Technology Committee of the DA showed the precision with which buildings can be blown up under the most difficult conditions today.

Outlook for 2021
Interested parties can already save the date of the FACHTUNG ABBRUCH 2021, which will take place on 5th March 2021.

Information on the FACHTAGUNG ABBRUCH as well as a lot of more photos of the event can you find on our event website https://www.fachtagung-abbruch.de.

 

Press Images: Jens Jeske/www.jens-jeske.de