Industry News

Some World War II rubble is getting a chance at a second useful life thanks to a restoration project being led by Anthony Bird, the immediate past president of the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR), Brussels.

Bird is the chairman of a charitable trust that is overseeing the $15 million restoration of Stoneleigh Abbey and its surrounding 690-acre estate in Warwickshire, U.K.

At the end of World War II, an area of the estate where the Avon River widens and gives the appearance of being a lake was used as landfill for the remains of a U.S. military camp and for concrete rubble and other debris resulting from bomb-damaged buildings. Efforts to restore the "lake area" have proven costly, but Bird has received assistance from Case United Kingdom Ltd., which has agreed to provide equipment and personnel to remove some 30,000 cubic meters of material from the landfill.

The concrete, brick and stone removed from the landfill will be put through a crusher and used as base material for roadways and paths on the estate. Soil, silt and clay that is removed will also be used elsewhere on the estate or marketed and sold.

Bird credited Case with making the restoration and recycling project possible, saying, "Without the help of Case, it could have been several years before we had the necessary funds to restore this part of the river in front of the house to the proportions of [Humphry] Repton’s beautiful design, which made the river appear to be a lake."

Stoneleigh Abbey was built by Cistercian monks in 1150 and has been added to intermittently ever since. For nearly 500 years the estate has been owned by the Leigh family, with the current Baron Leigh having lived there up through the mid-1980s. The estate has served as a vacation home for notables including Queen Victoria and writer Jane Austen. The Abbey will be open to visitors this Spring.

An Internet website specializing in connecting contractors with projects to bid on has reported being pleased with the activity generated at its site in 1999.

National Contractors.com, Mesa, Ariz., reports that "for the year, over $390 million in upcoming construction projects were submitted online through the National Contractors.com website." The site is geared toward connecting contractors with light and heavy commercial projects.

"We feel our firm will dramatically change the way a significant portion of construction projects are completed in the future and we are thrilled about our opportunity to capitalize on this market as a first mover," says National Contractors.com fonder and CEO Terry Lynch.

Lynch says the focus of the website is the "business-to-business commercial market that at the present time is not being capitalized on."

The F.W. Dodge Division of McGraw-Hill Inc., New York, has also made most of the construction plans it possesses and offers to contractors available through its website, www.fwdodge.com.