The boss of demolition firm Coleman & Company which was in charge of taking down Didcot Power Station has defended the company's suitability to carry out the demolition.

Mick Collings died and three other men are still missing following the collapse of the boiler house last Tuesday.

Emergency services staff have been on site since to search the rubble using hi-tech equipment including army robots in the most dangerous parts of the structure.

In an interview with Construction News, managing director Mark Coleman said that not having previously worked on a power station made his team even more conscious of the risks involved.

He added: "That knowledge and experience that comes out, good, bad or indifferent, has to be brought into best practice.

"I’m not a newbie to the industry. Through the 50-plus years of the development of this business, clearly on day one we’re not knocking down power stations.

"You use your expertise, your experience and you grow the business. And that’s all we’ve ever done.”

Mr Coleman spoke out after earlier paying tribute to the workmen lost in the disaster, saying hearts "went out to the family and friends of those who have died, or are still, tragically, missing".

He added that the company had set about winning power station work as a strategic business objective before beginning work with client RWE on detailed proposals for the demolition of Didcot A Power Station in March 2012.

He said the firm had picked up knowledge and expertise by pricing other power station demolition jobs before being appointed to the Didcot project by RWE, with a two-year staged procurement process also helping to manage the risks involved.

Mr Coleman added: "We had an early works agreement, an eight-month contract to carry out full-time management, investigation, planning, safety, development of systems and procedures, design, analysis, checking, testing – on site, on that power station,” he said. “It was unprecedented – I’ve never heard of that before, for that type of work.”

Mr Coleman admitted he was worried about reputational damage following the disaster, but said clients have rallied round to express support.

One major client has even awarded Coleman & Company a “multi-million-pound high-profile complex job” in a “safety-critical industry” since the incident, he said.

National Federation of Demolition Contractors chief executive Howard Button said the firm’s lack of previous power station experience, as highlighted by other sections of the media, was “totally irrelevant”.

He said: “They’ve carried out precision work at Birmingham [New Street], taking out huge concrete beams over live tracks, they’ve taken down various other major structures.

"To say that they can’t handle a power station because they haven’t actually done one before is a bit silly.”

Part of the boiler house at the former Didcot A power station collapsed just after 4pm last Tuesday.

The cause of the collapse is still unknown.

The boiler house was being prepared for explosive demolition at the time of the incident, with a blowdown originally scheduled for March 5.

The team was “pre-weakening” the structure, according to Mr Coleman, and “preparing the legs for putting the explosives in”.