Commercial Scaffolding – Croydon Presbyterian Ladies College

This month the Stronghold team were asked to provide a scaffold for re-roofing and window restoration at the prestigious Ladies Presbyterian College at Croydon. The Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Sydney is an independent Presbyterian single-sex early learning, primary and secondary day and boarding school for girls, located in Croydon, an inner-western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales.

Overcoming Scaffolding Challenges At Schools

The main work for the project was the re-roof of the turret section of the main building at the school drop off and pick up point. The location of this building gave us our first challenge. With many of the other school projects that Stronghold Hire have completed such as Newcastle East Public School and Manly West Public School, we had to work closely with the school staff to cause as minimum disruption as possible. This was essential as the erection and dismantle stage was to be completed during normal school hours.

A Secure Working Zone and Careful Planning

We were able to establish a secure working zone which was large enough to store materials and far enough to act as a clearance/drop zone. The school children and staff did not start entering the school grounds until 7.30 am each day. As a result, we scheduled in our scaffold deliveries with our 12-ton crane truck to be delivered at 6:00 am each morning. This gave us plenty of time to unload the truck and secure the work zone before anyone entering the school. When working in the vicinity of children, the way that we present ourselves and communicate is of utmost importance. We also need to be aware of our noise levels as students need to concentrate, the way that we manage these levels is often difficult but can be controlled or minimised with careful planning.

Lightweight Aluminium Scaffold To The Rescue

The next challenge we faced was that only one of the elevations had access from the floor, this meant that the other three elevations would require a scaffold to be cantilevered above the lower roof. This was not possible due to the distance so it was decided that we would use our lightweight aluminium modular scaffold and put the weight through the roof itself, using aluminium ladder beams to pick up the ridges of the roof – the strongest part of the structure.

Heritage Building Scaffolding – Not a Problem

Another issue the Stronghold Hire team encountered was that the building was listed as heritage. Scaffolding for heritage buildings in Sydney is different to your typical scaffolding project and so anchoring into the brickwork was not an option which was reiterated by the school and heritage architect. We overcame this by using a buttress support bay to increase the footprint of the scaffold and we were able to box tie around the pillars of the balcony. Once we were over the 12m height then the shape of the turret section (perfect 4.3m square) allowed us to use push ties to lock in the scaffold on all elevations. We gave the client a stretcher type stair access as there was no other way of removing an injured person from the scaffold as per SafeWork NSW requirements.

4 Days to Erect and Certify

Despite all the issues we encountered on the way we were extremely satisfied with the finished product. The project in total was erected and certified in four days which is an incredible achievement by our team considering all the setbacks we faced.

Scafolding for Schools – A Forte

We like to think that supplying scaffolds for schools is a bit of a forte for us, with successful projects of various sizes stretching from Camden to Newcastle. If you’d like to see how we can help you with an upcoming scaffolding project then give us a call now on 02 8985 2020 or contact us online for more info