Building inside a facility that cannot stop.

Most industrial work is not greenfield. It is a mezzanine going into a working warehouse, a dock being widened while trucks still arrive, a cold room being added to a food facility under audit, or twenty-year-old services being replaced without stopping production.

The construction methods are ordinary. What is not ordinary is doing them beside a live forklift fleet, inside a building whose stock cannot go anywhere, on a site where an hour of unplanned downtime can be worth more than a week of construction.

Warehouse office and amenities

Two-storey inserts, mezzanines, meeting and training rooms, lunchrooms and end-of-trip. A small commercial fitout with a warehouse’s access constraints and an operating floor below it.

Re-racking and reconfiguration

Changing the rack layout changes the sprinkler design basis, the aisle widths and often the floor loading. It is a construction project with a fire engineering component, not a furniture move.

Dock and hardstand upgrades

New dock positions, leveller replacement, canopies, pavement repair and drainage. Almost always staged, because the dock is the part of the building that cannot be closed.

Cold storage and controlled environments

Insulated panel, floor heating, condensate, defrost and hygiene detailing. Food and pharmaceutical facilities also bring an audit regime that construction has to work inside.

Plant rooms and services replacement

Compressed air, process water, trade waste, switchboard replacement and lighting upgrades. The programme is written around isolation windows rather than around trades.

Compliance upgrades

Fire system upgrades, accessibility works, essential safety measures brought back to certifiable condition. Often driven by an audit or an insurer rather than by choice.

• A separate site entranceConstruction traffic and operational traffic do not share a route, a gate or a dock. Where the site cannot provide two, the programme changes rather than the rule.
• Traffic management written by the operatorYour team knows where the forklifts actually go, which is not always where the plan says. We write it with them and reissue it every time the work front moves.
• Rated hoardingHoarding in a warehouse frequently has stock stacked against the other side of it. It is designed for that, not just for sight lines.
• Isolations booked and permittedEvery isolation is scheduled with operations, has a named person on each side and a written permit, and is restored and tested before the shift that needs it.
• Fire systems never quietly impairedAny impairment is recorded, time-bounded and notified to whoever holds the building’s fire safety obligation. This is a hard rule.
• Hot works with a watch and a stand-downIn a building holding combustible stock, hot works is the single highest-consequence activity on site.
• Housekeeping to the operator’s standard, not oursIn a food or pharmaceutical facility the site tidiness standard is an audit item. We work to theirs.