Cornwall Gardens, Kensington, London, SW7
Thames Valley Scaffold were invited to tender on the scaffold package by a main contractor we work for on a regular basis. This residential property in West London underwent a full external refurbishment, access was needed to all elevations for window repairs, rendering cleaning and decoration. A temporary roof covering was also required to allow the critical roofing works to be carried out in a dry environment.
When erecting scaffolding on townhouses like this one in London, a familiar obstacle to overcome is how to erect the scaffolding on the rear of the property. This particular property is split into individual flats with tight and narrow corridors linking the various flats, none of which had a clear line of site to the rear of the property. This ruled out any possibility of taking materials through the property via the communal areas. The only option we had was to erect the front elevation first and manually chain the scaffold up onto the flat roof area, we then rigged up a hoist on the flat roof and lowered the scaffold down to operatives at the basement level on the rear elevation, although labour intensive it was the only logical option available, a crane hire would have meant a road closure for several days on a busy London thoroughfare. Thames Valley Scaffold have worked on many of these townhouses in West London and are very familiar with this “up and over” method of installing scaffold to the rear elevations.
We worked closely with the main contractor to ensure all the lift heights were at the optimum levels for the works they had to carry out and that the temporary roof had the required height clearance for the roofing elements of this project.
During the pre-start meeting with the main contractor and the resident’s management representative we set up the schedule of works, working hours and site rules that were to be strictly adhered to.
The main contractor required a gantry for welfare facilities to be situated and a landing area for the hoist that was installed. This required a street licence from The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Thames Valley Scaffold handled all the licence applications along with the parking dispensation for the lorry to be parked outside the property, this allowed us to operate and exclusion zone around the area in which we were to erect the scaffold.
This project ran smoothly from start to finish. The main contractor was also nominated for an award for the quality of their work on this project.