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Down-time in a busy out-of-town shopping centre is expensive - very expensive when you consider that trade in four department stores, 291 smaller shops and restaurants and a seven-screen cinema might be affected.
This was the challenge at Lakeside shopping centre at Thurrock, Essex, when owner Capital Shopping Centres decides to embark upon an ambitious internal refurbishment project last year.
The project involves extensive repair and replacement of internal finishes, including a great deal of plaster mouldings and an upgrade of all lighting.
Lakeside was one of the pioneers of large-scale out-of-town retail development during the early 1990s. With 130,000mē of retail and leisure space, it set a new standard in retail and helped make shopping a leisure activity for the whole family.
Now, more than a decade later, Lakeside has had its first internal refurbishment. Capital Shopping Centres awarded the contract to contractor Clark & Fenn Skanska, a specialist in plasterwork.
A significant requirement of the contract was that the centre's normal operations should not be affected and that customers could continue to use the facilities unhindered by the refurbishment work. This meant that all work has had to be done in the evenings.
Because most of the plasterwork is at ceiling height, Clarke & Fenn Skanska required constant access to high-level areas and overhanging soffits at first and second storey level. Scaffolding might have proved an economical solution over the course of this 12-month contract - but that was out of the question. During the day, Lakeside Shopping Centre had to remain fully operational, with no hint of the construction work that was being carried out during the night.
Consequently, Clark & Fenn Skanska relied heavily on the use of powered access equipment to carry out the refurbishment work. Throughout most of the contract, Nationwide Access has supplied the vast majority of this powered access fleet, with the total number of machines on site at any one time reaching 30.
Work commenced in June 2003, but Nationwide Access did not become involved until March 2004. The access contract was initially awarded to another company, but Clark & Fenn Skanska became increasingly concerned about machine maintenance as the hire service became more and more erratic.
Nationwide Access' sales manager for London East, Steve Holland, explains how the company became involved: "We have worked with Clarke & Fenn Skanska on previous projects, though never on anything as big as this" he says. Alert to the problems Clark & Fenn was experiencing, Steve spoke to his contacts at the company and arranged a meeting. "I wouldn't say they bit my arm off - it took some hard sales work - but I convinced the contractor that we could deliver what they needed" says Steve.
Nationwide has supplied up to 30 machines at a time to cater for the contract. Nearly all the machines are electrically-powered scissor-lifts. Twelve UpRight X26 machines, with a maximum platform height of 26ft, and 16 Genie GS1930 scissors, reaching 19ft, make up the bulk of the Nationwide presence on site.
"We have also supplied a Genie G30/20N, an 11 metre electric boom lift to help with long outreaches", says Steve Holland. "The scissors don't have much lateral reach."
Nationwide has also supplied a Haulotte HM10P vertical mast platform which, at just 1 metre wide, can get through most doorways. "Also it weighs only 3 tonnes which means it can be used on balconies and other areas where floor loadings are fairly light" says Steve.
Clark & Fenn's working day at Lakeside started at about 10 p.m. on most days. The access machines - all of which were electrically-powered for indoor use - were parked up during the day in three muster stations located around the site. "The rule of thumb is eight hour's battery charging during the day for eight hours' working during the night" says Steve.
The access contract was co-ordinated from Nationwide's East London centre in Erith, Kent which handles orders from an area embracing the whole of Kent and Essex south of Colchester. The machines were supplied by three depots in this region: Erith itself, Chelmsford in Essex and Ashford in east Kent.
As with every customer, Nationwide delivered each machine to the person who would be operating it, providing a familiarisation and hand-over briefing to ensure the user understood the machine and its capabilities.
"Under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (PUWER) we have a duty of care to our clients' employees and we discharge that duty through a thorough hand-over briefing", explains Steve. "It is the responsibility of the company hiring the equipment to ensure that its operators have been adequately trained, and Nationwide routinely goes beyond its statutory duty of care to provide training services on behalf of its customers" says Steve.
In fact, at Clark & Fenn's request, Nationwide has provided on-site training for the contractor's staff during the course of this contract. "Our training staff have spent three nights at a Portakabin at Lakeside training Clark & Fenn staff", says Steve. Each course can accommodate four trainees and so Nationwide has trained 12 operators on this contract alone.
Clark & Fenn's contract to refurbish the Lakeside Shopping Centre was completed in July, by which time Nationwide's machines were all gone and working on new projects. "This has been a very successful contract for us", says Steve. "Of course, we know Clark & Fenn, and we have experience working on several other shopping centre contracts. But the measure of our success is that I doubt any Lakeside shoppers ever noticed our machines or the work that Clark & Fenn was carrying out. It all went very smoothly indeed".
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