PROJECT DETAILS
Project:
Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview.
Scaffolding System:
Commercial Scaffolding
Client:
Building Owner
Period:
Jan 2022
Commercial Scaffolding at Saint Ignatius’ College
Last month Stronghold Hire was once again asked to provide a scaffold for a school. It seems that we have gained a reputation of being one of the more desired scaffold contractors for these types of projects. We might have to self proclaim ourselves as the “King of School Scaffold”. This month’s project was inside the beautiful grounds of Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview. This prestigious school was founded back in 1880 and has become known as one of the best schools in Sydney.
Required Cladding Changes
Most of the buildings are original and are impeccably maintained. The building that we were engaged to help with was one of the new buildings that require the cladding to be changed under new laws (like thousands of other buildings across Australia now).
In recent times Stronghold Hire has provided scaffold for many of these types of buildings that require the cladding to be changed, and we know exactly what to expect. When we undertake these types of jobs, we try to provide a solution that is cost-effective and saves time. Part of this solution often means producing a design that allows the scaffold to have very little or no ties/anchors in the areas of cladding.
Complete Open Access to All Cladded Areas
The design can either involve the use of buttress bays or altering the basic design pattern to pick up other anchor points, away from the cladded areas. For this project, we were able to install buttress bays on one side of the building and then use plan bracing to attach to vertical columns that ran every 7m on the other side.
With the help of our engineers, we were able to submit a proposal that gave the client complete open access to all cladded areas. This meant that no time or money was wasted in us sending scaffolders to the job to move anchors around to suit the cladding replacement. With this proposal, although there was extra scaffold involved to make it happen, it worked out cheaper for the client as we were able to dismantle the whole scaffold in one stage, rather than multiple visits.
Minimum Interruption to School Lessons
As the scaffold was inside school grounds, the usual high level of communication and planning took place to ensure minimum interruption to school lessons and to provide a safe environment for the children and school staff. Part of this was achieved by scheduling the works around the Christmas holidays. This means we had to meet a very tight handover date deadline and ensure we had enough resources to do so.
An exclusion zone was set up for works and on this occasion, the client installed their own plywood hoarding to the base of the scaffold. This is the first school project we completed for this client but we have a strong suspicion it will not be our last, another successful project and happy client!
Another Project Completed on Time
The scaffold was erected on time, even with inclement weather doing its best to interrupt us. On the final day of erection, we hired our drone photography specialist Michael from HLH Marketing to drone the project. He did an incredible job at showcasing the full size scale of works, and we definitely recommend him to any construction companies looking to add some unique angles to their project portfolio.