History

After years of successful rock blasting in the private sector under the name Burnbrae Incorporated, the name of the company was changed in 1960 to Controlled Demolition, Incorporated (CDI) to better reflect the direction the Loizeaux family intended to take its explosives operations. Today, CDI is internationally recognized as the pioneer of and leader in explosives demolition technology.

CDI’s founder, John D. “Jack” Loizeaux, demolished his first structure with explosives in 1947.  Jack’s wife, “Freddie”, took over the administrative aspects of the business in the 1950s, including an intensive, media and public relations effort which put the Loizeaux Family name and their new and innovative “implosion” methods on the global map. Over the years, Jack continued to bring down increasingly diverse and larger industrial structures until 1957, when he imploded his first three urban buildings to clear for construction of the US Department of State Headquarters in Washington, DC. Jack and Freddie’s sons, Mark and Doug Loizeaux, entered the business in the 60s and early 70s and in 1986 they took over management of the company as President and Vice President, respectively. Mark Loizeaux continues to be the President and Owner of CDI and another Loizeaux generation has joined the CDI team to ensure continuity of service to the industry.

Over the past seven decades, CDI has demolished thousands of structures across six continents using explosives. And, while explosives operations are the most visible portion of our work, CDI has evolved into a broad-based demolition group that also provides engineered services to public and private sector clients in the areas of conventional demolition and dismantling operations, off-shore/marine demolition, nuclear facility demolition and weapons elimination.