Keith Armishaw, enterprise growth supervisor – North America – at Aquajet, shares his perception into the state of the concrete business and the challenges contractors are managing each day. Concrete Contractor linked with Armishaw over e-mail in June 2025.
Q. What have been the most important challenges for concrete contractors thus far in 2025?
Keith ArmishawAquajet
Q. What segments of concrete development have seen development in 2025?
Proper now, there may be robust funding within the vitality sector, and a part of that funding includes repairing/rehabilitating present constructions. That’s the place our clients are available in, offering hydrodemolition providers for concrete removing. We’ve clients who’re getting ready for main renovation tasks on dams and even some wind farms the place they’re repairing concrete on wind turbine bases.
If you concentrate on a dam spillway, for instance, there may be a number of concrete, and it’s not the simplest to entry with gear. We’ve many various instruments to assist contractors take the high-pressure water jet — and its excessive productiveness — to essentially the most seemingly inaccessible places. Hydrodemolition has been gaining momentum in these areas because of the high quality of the restore and its capability to increase the constructions’ lifecycle, which is a essential precedence for asset house owners.
Q. How are contractors dealing with financial challenges?
With any sort of financial uncertainty, it’s frequent for contractors to proceed cautiously with main investments. Some newcomers enter the business with the smallest hydrodemolition system, which has a cheaper price level and makes use of much less water. As soon as they acquire some expertise and begin constructing a fame for his or her new service providing, they graduate to bigger machines. The Ergo has usually been the product of alternative for entering into hydrodemolition and continues to be an awesome alternative. Nonetheless, now we have another choice now with the launch of the Aqua Cutter 450 collection. The brand new machines share a number of the identical options and advantages because the Aqua Cutter 750V, which introduced all new patented know-how to the business — solely they’re smaller, in a totally electrical bundle.
Q. How have contractors been impacted by tariffs? Are you able to present some examples?
Tariffs are creating uncertainty out there. From a producer standpoint, it’s total tougher to handle the method from level of buy to supply. Smaller firms actually wrestle to soak up these further prices, so in flip, it impacts pricing. Tariffs have definitely had a adverse monetary affect.
Q. What do you count on the most important problem(s) will likely be in 2026 for the concrete business?
For concrete removing, it’s nonetheless pretty frequent to see crews out with jackhammers. Primarily based on a number of metrics, hydrodemolition has confirmed to be a faster method to full this work whereas including years to the lifetime of the restore. One space we nonetheless have to make strides in is educating contractors and engineers who nonetheless look to guide strategies for concrete removing and restore. There are extra productive methods to finish this work that may give them stronger outcomes and take much less of a bodily toll on employees. Given what it does for constructions and for the contractors finishing the concrete repairs, we wish to see it as extra of a regular technique for concrete removing and restore jobs.
Q. What are the most recent adjustments for Aquajet?
Aquajet is continually gathering suggestions from clients and utilizing that suggestions to develop new machines that deal with day-to-day challenges on the jobsite. We had two large releases this yr: the Aqua Cutter 450 collection and Aqua Rail System 3.0. The absolutely electrical 450 takes the identical Evolution 3.0 management system and patented Infinity oscillation discovered within the Aqua Cutter 750V to a smaller, extremely maneuverable and absolutely electrical bundle.
The Aqua Rail System 3.0 is designed to boost the capabilities and suppleness of contractors’ hydrodemolition robots after they’re working in difficult environments. Not each venture goes to be simple flatwork, so this technique equips contractors with an adaptable, ready-to-use setup for areas like tunnels, bridges, silos and dam spillways. All the things within the system is absolutely customizable, so contractors can tailor it to make their distinctive and difficult concrete removing and restore jobs simpler.
These machines open new doorways for what concrete contractors can accomplish with hydrodemolition. Placing our most superior know-how within the compact, electrical 450 collection permits them to take hydrodemolition robots the place bigger machines can’t go. And the Aqua Rail System 3.0 supplies unmatched flexibility for his or her most difficult hydrodemolition tasks.
