Commercial Scaffolding – Roof Restoration, Mary Immaculate Church, Waverley

This month Stronghold Hire was engaged to provide a scaffold for full roof restoration at Mary Immaculate Church in Waverley. The building is a heritage-listed building Roman Catholic Church and Friary built from 1890 to 1929. The scaffold was to be installed in two stages, recycling the material from stage one to stage two.

Scaffold Design for Mary Immaculate Church in Waverley

The scaffold design came with its usual criteria when dealing with heritage-listed buildings:

1. A minimum number of invasive anchors.
2. Secured hoarding base/anti-climb barriers.
3. Pre-approved design by heritage architect.

The scaffold also required the standard inclusions for roof restoration scaffolds:

1. Stretcher stair access
2. Heavy-duty Loading bay
3. Fire retardant mesh attached to working lift.
4. Heavy-duty 5 board scaffold (where possible).

Coordinated Approach to Scaffolding

The church was to remain in operation during the works, so we had to coordinate our deliveries and pickups with the normal services held at the church. Access for the deliveries was very tight but achievable with the skill and experience of our truck drivers.

Preparation Is Key

We were only allocated a certain amount of space for overnight storage of material which impeded the footprint of the scaffold. We were very careful with the set-out and preparation of the material before the scaffold being erected. This ensured that none of the packs fouled with the standards/legs and allowed us to deliver 22 ton into a very small space.

This preparation of set out also allowed us to work within a contained barrier, keeping disruption to the church services to a minimum and maintaining road access to the adjoining accommodation building.

Lightweight Aluminum Modular Scaffold for Access & Edge Protection

A large part of the scaffolding was to be erected over a sheet metal roof. The distance of this was too far to span so it was decided that we would use our lightweight aluminium modular scaffold in this area. This part of the scaffold was only certified as light-duty and was not to be used for storing materials at any point, only as access and edge protection.

Another Happy Scaffolding Client

We were given five days to erect the scaffold and completed it in four, another successful install and a happy client.