White Lion Walk, Guildford
Key Points
- Maintaining a good relationship with contractors
- Great project management
- Thorough Planning
Projects are something we at Sowga take pride in and when we acquire a new one, we jump at the opportunity. In this case, the task at hand was the installation of a large generator within the Surrey area, within the White Lion Walk shopping centre in Guildford.
Prior to any installation works taking place, our in-house projects team carried out a comprehensive plant removal in several areas. Including large redundant Air Handling Units, Circulation pumps, electrical panels and associated pipework and ancillaries. Once this phase was completed, this facilitated the installation of the new equipment. This new generator was installed by our specialist sub-contractor the Shenton Group.
The Sowga team installed the new MCC Panels to each plant area complete with auto changeover switches, which enables the life safety critical equipment such as smoke extract fans in the mall and stair pressurisation fans to continue working even in the event of a power failure.
The biggest challenge we faced was due to the city centre location in which there was no viable option to utilise a crane. The consequence of this was that, with both the disassembly and installation, every part had to be dismantled to a size that could be safely manually handled. This of course kept our QSHE team busy preparing the H&S file and working with the project team so the work could be carried out efficiently and safely.
We were given the opportunity to tender this project by Hilson Moran who were selected by the client Redevco to represent them as the consulting team. The works were also closely monitored by the client's project management company TFT. These are relationships we at Sowga are keen to maintain and build on in the future.
When it comes to big projects, with hindrances like the COVID-19 pandemic causing delays in deliveries, communication was a key factor in allowing us to complete the works. For example, parts such as new panels were delayed so the only thing we could do was wait for those.
