Project Description

Introduction
In late 2015 and early 2016, Hawthorn Estates were commissioned to complete some renovations works on a grade II listed building on princess street in Manchester City Centre.
This grade II listed building is an old warehouse construction, with four floors of office space; the client chose these three floors to have renovations.

Customer
The commissioned work consisted of reducing sound transfer between floors, removing utilities and media blast timber, and brick and steel features. In addition, sitting tenants cause an issue between the floors as the landlord could not relocate them during the works.

Health and Safety
With much of the works being on an elevated level, precautions had to be made. Hawthorn Estates used a scissor lift for the process of delivering the acoustic floorboards. Open windows were accessed to get grit blast equipment up to the correct floors, with staff wearing full harnesses and PPE.
The high pressure of the grit blasting nozzle requires protective clothing to limit the risk of damage to skin, eyes and lungs. Due to the danger of sand, that exposes the operator to copious quantities of dust, which can cause silicosis. We chose to use recycled ground glass; not only is it safer for the operator, but it can also be softer on the materials that needed cleaning. There is a range of media available, e.g. walnut shell, baking soda.
While the grit blasting was being carried out, Hawthorn Estates notified the fire brigade, and they installed extractors to reduce the dust within the building. Fire alarm/smoke detectors were disabled throughout.

Tenant
The problem we faced while grit blasting was the occupation on the first and half of the third floor in the building by tenants.
The tenants did not wish to be relocated, so Hawthorn Estates then put precautions to ensure that little or no damage would be caused to the tenant’s equipment while the works were undertaken.
During the scheduled grit blasting work, we had to arrange out of hour access to the offices, knowledge and use of codes and keys were kept to a minimum. This allowed us to place protective dust sheets over the equipment and servers to reduce the possible risk of damage. Staff was also positioned in the offices to check for leaks of dust and seal accordingly.
The grit blasting work was arranged for consecutive weekends to limit disruption for the tenants, 10 in total.
Once the work was complete for that session, Hawthorn Estates arranged a cleaning team to remove and collect any dust that settled overnight, leaving the offices in the state (or better than) they were found.