Case file 0217 · Commercial & facade · Hemel Hempstead
Aldwick Exchange.
A 1960s concrete telephone exchange, repairs on every elevation, a bus route outside and a deadline set by the weather. Nine lifts of designed scaffold, up in four days and struck in two.
/ THE BRIEF
Keep the pavement open.
The contractor needed every elevation reachable for concrete repair and re-coating, with a footway and a bus stop that could not close. We designed a loading-bay gantry over the pavement, boarded every lift and netted the lot against falling debris.
The frame went up in four days on a plan drawn the week before: bay lengths set to the window grid, ties placed to the structural engineer's drawing, a stair tower on the quiet elevation so nobody climbed a ladder with a bucket.
/ ELEVATION A-A
The drawing we built from.
Nine bays at 2.4 m on the frontage, nine lifts at 2.0 m, braces alternating, loading gantry across the two eastern bays.
/ PROGRAMME
Four days up, one plan.
- DAY 1
Set out
Sole boards, base plates levelled to 2 mm, pavement protection down.
- DAY 2-3
Frame and decks
Standards, ledgers, transoms, boards. Gantry over the footway finished first.
- DAY 4
Bracing, ties, netting
Ties drilled to the engineer's schedule, fan-guard and debris netting fixed.
- DAY 4 PM
Handover inspection
Every coupler checked, tag signed and posted at the stair tower.
- WEEKS 1-9
Weekly inspection
Same competent person, same checklist, nine tagged entries in the register.
- WEEK 10
Strike
Two days. Dismantled lift by lift, tubes counted back onto the lorry, footway swept.
/ NEXT