Specialised Scaffolding – David Jones, CBD

Last week we were asked to help out with an access issue at the David Jones store in Sydney CBD. Schindler Group Australia were installing monorails to lift in new 16 ton escalators between floors 7 and 8 and required access above the void. The void was fairly large measuring 8m wide x 15m long. The scaffold was only required for a 24 hour hire period.

Limited Movement & Hours

Movement of material was limited with all deliveries only allowed between 9pm and 5am and material would then have to be brought in goods lifts up to level 7.

It was because of this small hire period and limited access for materials movement that it made no sense to erect a fixed birdcage type scaffold over the void. There were also weight restrictions on the level 7 floor void edges.

Mobile Aluminium Scaffold Solution

It was suggested that a mobile aluminium scaffold would be the most suitable solution.

This type of scaffold would be lightweight and only need a fraction of the components of a fixed birdcage type scaffold thus bringing down labour, materials movement, transport and hire costs.

The best reason however, for this scaffold, is that it could be erected and dismantled on the level 7 floor and then simply rolled out over the void. This is obviously a much safer way of working and also meant that we could work through the day shift (working over the void was not allowed in day time hours due to floors 1-4 being open to the public).

Final Obstacles

The final obstacle was that we only had around 250mm between the handrail and the columns for which our wheel castors could run giving us some doubts about the out legs stability. However, after some calculations from our engineer it was confirmed that this would not be a problem.

Tight Turn Around

We were given very little notice for this job but managed to turn it around within the given time frames working around the clock to make it happen.

We also erected a ‘baby brother’ version for level 8 which was only a small span of 5m.