With the aid of a scissor lift hired from Nationwide Access, Surrey-based cleaning contractor, P S J Services, felt sure it would complete the annual cleaning of the Great Hall at Rhinefield House Hotel near Brockenhurst in the New Forest in less than half the time previously taken.

The maintenance of the oak panelled Great Hall had previously been carried out by hotel staff; a chore that took two weeks to complete. However, with a season crammed full with weddings and conferences, a two-week shutdown was out of the question. Steve Linnegar, a director of P S J Services was given five working days to complete the task. In fact, the job was completed in just three.

Steve immediately realised that the job would not be completed on time if, as in the past, access to the floor-to-ceiling panelling and mouldings in the 11.3-metre high room relied on a mixture of ladders, step ladders and trestles. From a visit to Nationwide Access' stand at the Cleaning Show, he knew that powered access was the only way to get the job completed on time.

However, Rhinefield house was built in the 1800s and access to the Great Hall was very restricted. Any machine would have to enter the building via the ornate main entrance steps. It would then have to be manoeuvred into position in the small entrance lobby to precisely line up with the 1.2-metre wide carved wooden doorway to the Great Hall. Weight was another consideration, as the machine would be resting on a centuries old timber floor.

So Steve called in an expert from Nationwide's Southampton depot and, together, they agreed that the company's 3246 scissor lift was the only suitable machine. In addition to being the only machine in the UK's largest powered access rental fleet that was compact enough to get into the Great Hall and provided sufficient elevation, the 3246 is electric powered. This meant no harmful emissions that would otherwise cause discomfort to the contractors, staff and hotel guests.

Steve explained: "We constructed a shallow ramp to get the scissor lift up the entrance steps, and had to do a lot of shuffling in the three-metre deep entrance hall to line up the 2.5-metre long machine with the doorway to the Great Hall." He continued: "Even then, getting the 11.7-metre scissor lift through the 1.2-metre doorway was no easy task, and we had to make a few on-the-spot adjustments to the machine to enable it to miss a couple of projecting wooden scallops."

Once inside the 15.8-metre by 7.5-metre Hall, the scissor lift was elevated to its full working height providing Steve's team with easy access to the ceiling. Its 1.14-metre by 2.13-metre platform also provided more than sufficient room for cleaning materials.

The 3246 scissor lift hired to P S J Services is just one of 6,000 machines available for Nationwide's 50 depots. The company is part of the publicly quoted Lavendon Group Plc and is headquartered in Lutterworth, Leicestershire, and the Group is European market leader in the powered access rental market, trading under the name Zooom in Germany, France, Spain and Austria. Full details on the Nationwide offering of booms, scissor lifts and truck mounted units can be found at www.nationwideaccess.com.