Philip McCrone builders tasked us to provide scaffolding access around the Gate of Virtue within Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. Philip McCrone builders would use this access to chemically clean the stone façade and chimney stack. To enable them to complete their chemical cleaning, Philip McCrone Builders commissioned a drawing alongside a brief providing scaffolding access to the front, rear, and sides of the Gate of Virtue with a provision that no scaffold could be supported from the stone roof of a Grade 1 Listed Building.
The drawing below shows the requirements for suspended access over the lower roof, slung from 450mm alloy beams installed from the front to rear elevations. This method was the only safe way to provide the required access and, at the same time, protect the Grade 1 listed building. As soon as the drawings were issued, we convened a site meeting to assess the risks of scaffolding such a prestigious building and ascertain the safest possible method to erect and dismantle the planned works.
It soon became evident, one of the biggest challenges would be manually handling the materials from the only access point in the college to the work site, approximately 50m away. As the company Health and Safety Advisor, I was responsible for reducing the manual handling element of the contract to a minimum. To achieve this, the Office Manager was tasked with sourcing and purchasing a V-trolley, which could be used to manoeuvre the materials from the entrance to the job site. The V-trolley was the only viable solution to the manual handling issue, and was estimated that this would reduce the carrying and walking time between truck and job (therefore, the handling of materials) by approximately 50%.
The next concern was public segregation. The scaffold was erected during the day when the college students and professors needed to access the gate. We arranged for an alternative route to be provided, and a clear transit route was identified and marked out with barrier tape. This gave the college members and us the perfect solution; a safe passage for materials and a safe pedestrian route.