Building work taken in areas, so the premises never shuts
One team, engaged directly. The joiner, electrician, plasterer and groundworker on your job are engaged by us and take the day’s instructions from our site agent. No subcontract chain stands between you and the people holding the tools.
The premises keeps trading. One area is screened off, worked, cleaned and handed back before the next is opened. The unit keeps a door, a till and a fire exit at full width throughout.
Yard: 336 Albert Royds Street, Rochdale OL16 5AA Sites across Greater Manchester Go to the stage programme
01.1 What lands on this team
NORTHSIDE SOLUTIONS LTD builds inside and onto small commercial premises: shop units, offices, workshops, a unit on a trading estate.
Three kinds of job come out of the yard. A fit-out, where a shell or an occupied unit is stripped and rebuilt to a layout. An extension, where floor area is added at the back or the side of a building that stays open. A structural alteration, where an opening is formed and the load above it is carried another way.
We deal with the tenant or owner, the managing agent, the landlord’s surveyor and the engineer the client has appointed. Before a start date goes in the diary we want the drawings, written consent where the lease asks for it, which services may be isolated and on whose authority, and the route goods and waste may take through the building.
We do not design the structure. Beam sizes, bearings, padstones and temporary works come from the client’s engineer and we build to that drawing.
01.2 The unit with the work still in it
Everything on the drawing below is there so a customer can walk in, buy something and walk out while a wall comes down behind a screen. Waste goes out of the back, never through the shop.
- Work zone, waste route
- Customer, escape routes
- Screen line, zip door
01.3 How the four stages lock on one another
One team cannot run two stages at once, so this programme reads across the page and not down it. Strip-out finishes before the frame is touched; the engineer inspects the frame before services are chased in; services are tested before the finishes close them up. That is the price of one team, and the reason the dates hold: there is no second firm whose van failed to turn up.
The chart is the shape of a twelve-week single-unit job. The dashed line is the progress line, moved at the Monday walk-round.
An illustration of the sequence, not a quotation. Durations come out of the survey, the drawings and the hours the premises can give up.
Open a stage below to see the opening: the works on the left page, what is yours to settle or keep clear on the right.
01.4 Strip out and protect Weeks 1–3 · first opening
Off the walls and out of the back door
The screen line goes up before anything is cut: a sheeted hoarding or a zip-door screen on a floor-to-soffit track, taped at both ends. Behind it come out the ceiling grid, the old shopfittings, redundant trunking and the floor covering. Cutting is water-suppressed or on-tool extracted. Waste leaves by the service door after close, with a licensed carrier and a transfer note. The area is swept and damp-wiped every shift, not every stage.
Signed before we lift a sheet
- Written consent or licence to alter, if the lease asks for one.
- Skip standing agreed with the agent, plus a permit if it stands on the highway.
- Which circuits and which water may be isolated, and who authorises it.
- Service yard clear on the programme dates; staff told which door is theirs.
01.5 Structure and frame Weeks 4–6 · second opening
Props up, steel in, loads back down
Temporary works go in to the engineer’s drawing — props on spreader plates, needles where the drawing calls for them — and nothing is struck until the engineer says so in writing. The opening is formed, the beam set on its bearings, packed and fire-protected, and the new studwork or blockwork follows. Heavy breaking stays in the out-of-hours window. Where the drawing asks for monitoring we record the readings and stop if one moves.
Nothing underneath, nothing above
- Stock and fittings out of the bay below the opening, and the bay above it.
- The engineer available for the inspection the programme names.
- Building control notified where the alteration needs it.
- The day of the loudest breaking agreed, and who tells the neighbours.
01.6 Services rough-in Weeks 7–9 · third opening
First fix, and the holes it needs
Containment, cable, pipework and ductwork go in on the agreed drops. Builder’s work holes are cut, fire-stopped, and the stopping photographed before it is boarded over. Dead legs on the old installation are cut back and capped. Isolations are taken out of hours, tested, and the premises handed back live before it opens. Test sheets are filed as they are issued.
Isolations, meters and the agent’s word
- Permission for each isolation in writing, with the window it may happen in.
- Access to the intake, meter cupboard and riser, and the key for it.
- Your equipment unplugged and flagged before a board goes dead.
- Which tills, alarms and shutters stay live overnight.
01.7 Finishes and handback Weeks 10–12 · fourth opening
Second fix, make-good and the snag walk
Boarding, taping, plaster, second-fix joinery, flooring and decoration, in that order, all of it behind the screen until the paint is hard. Then the screen comes down, the floor is cleaned, the lights and sockets are proved in front of you, and we walk the area with a snag list. Snags are cleared before handback, not after. The last shift on an area is a clean, not a trade.
Walking the area at handback
- Someone who can sign the handback, on the date the programme gives.
- Finishes, colours and ironmongery chosen before the stage starts.
- The day you move stock back in, so the clean is timed to it.
- Where the maintenance file and test sheets should be sent.
01.8 Possession and out-of-hours planner
Most of the argument on a commercial job is about hours, not work. The premises keeps the hours it must keep; the lease or the estate rules say how early and how late anyone may be on site. What is left between the two is the out-of-hours window, and the programme is built out of it.
The planner divides it the way we do on paper: the gap before opening plus the gap after closing is one shift; shifts run Monday to Saturday, six a week, Sunday not assumed; the shifts needed divided by six and rounded up is the weeks of possession to allow.
Work out the window and the weeks
Four times and one count. The arithmetic prints underneath, line by line.
01.9 Putting a job in front of the yard
An enquiry is useful to us when it names four things: what the premises is and what trades in it, the hours it has to keep, which area the work falls in, and whether the landlord’s consent exists or still has to be applied for. With those four we can say whether the job is a possession problem or a buildability problem, which are solved in different orders.
If dust and noise are the sticking point — in an occupied unit they usually are — the dust and noise checklist writes your requirements out as a specification and puts them in an email to the yard, so the first reply is about method rather than about what you meant.
The rest is on extensions, structural alterations, programme and possession and the yard.