The brief
To refurbish the exterior of 7-storey 192 year old towermill in Norwich city centre.
The solution
The Construction Co were awarded the contract to work on this historical building. This was no ordinary restoration commission though. Given the shape of the structure, typical scaffolding construction wouldn’t have been of much use. Given this, extensive scaffolding platforms were designed and installed by scaffolding specialist to allow a safe working environment above the Norwich landscape.
All of the existing windows were removed and replaced with new purpose built windows that had been made off site ready to be installed at their point in the schedule. The joiners were instructed to start producing the windows months before work had started on site to minimalise time on site carrying out the job. Given that the building is in a conservation area, the new windows were constructed out of timber and were created to match the existing design and glazing specification.
Once the new windows were installed, all the affected internal window reveals were repaired with thermal insulation board to help the buildings thermal efficiency. Specialist external decorators were contracted to remove all the existing covering and replace with a liquid plastic covering which is guaranteed to last for many years to come. The complete commission was programmed to start from top-down to allow for both the windows and covering to be completed alongside one another. This meant that the scaffold could be removed behind the working progress, allowing for each level to be removed as the commission moved down the structure.
