This live city centre six storey building was occupied from the first floor to the sixth by numerous organisations including a busy solicitor’s office. A brief scope of works was for the ground floor of the building (including the reception area), internal courtyard and rear two storey office block to receive a full soft furnishing strip out, partial mechanical and electrical strip out leaving vital M&E services feeding the tenants, structural alterations forming numerous new doorways and removing countless structural walls (including fitting associated steels) to open up the ground floor. Metals and Plant were also commissioned to form openings in three consecutive levels of the rear buildings structural cast concrete floor, enabling a new staircase / fire escape and disabled lift to be fitted so access could be achieved from the underground car park up to the first and second floor. All work needed undertaking by hand due to load bearing issues with the floors in relation to mechanical aids, in turn this presented additional hazards that needed close monitoring such as hand arm vibration (HAV). Due to noise issues Metals and Plant also had to liase with the buildings tenants and public residents living adjacent to the site to find a compromise as to when the noisy works could take place so all parties were informed throughout and kept as happy with the works as possible. The underground car park was also live during all works which again required managing accordingly by our on-site engineers to help avoid incident.
All of the above work needed undertaking during normal working hours with the clients overriding concern being to minimise disruption to the tenants in relation to obvious noise and dust (silica) issues involved in our works. This was made even more difficult with access through the ground floor (reception area) needing to be kept open 24/7 for all tenants, visitors and building security, something that was achieved through regimental phasing of the works and containing all dust (if any after suppression) by building countless sealed wooden hoardings to continually offer safe access / egress to the building for all mentioned.
Another important factor to the client was how to safely manage the removal of the substantial amount of materials involved in our removal works. Due to limited space the proposed compound area for all skips was directly outside the building on the busy city centre road. This again increased the potential for accidents if not managed affectively as direct confliction with pedestrians and motorists alike was inevitable. But due to Metals and Plant having undertaken many complex city centre projects with similar requirements we were as always able to complete the works without incident and with minimal disturbance to all involved.
