MABUK was contacted by the client to assist in the restoration of bathroom pods at the London School of Economics residence on Northumberland Avenue, Westminster.
Once the project had been outlines by the client MABUK immediately arranged a site survey to assess the scopes of work.
It was determined that there were 151 basins needed full resurfacing and 30 shower trays needed cosmetic repairs in order to restore them. The restrictive parameters where as follows:
- The work needed to be completed over a 2-week period with a hard deadline to allow the students to return for the new semester.
- The rooms were undergoing complete strip outs including new decorating, furnishing, flooring etc, thus there was a lot of messy works which is inconducive to spraying and a multitude of crews and stake holders onsite.
- The site was slap bang in the middle of London a mere 150 meters from the iconic Trafalgar square, with all the logistics and congestion constraints to consider.
- The colour of the basins was bespoke and would require mixing at our dedicated factory in South Africa. The shower trays were white.
Mendabath deployed a team of 6 technicians to tackle this project. It soon became apparent that the initial project plan which was to remove the basins and spray them in a purpose build booth setup in one of the stripped rooms, was not going to be effective. Thus, the team where able to come up with an alternative approach on the fly to deliver our part of the restoration project.
By developing effective lines of communications with other crews on site, e.g. the floorers, porters, decorators etc, the team was able to work around the site and where able to find corridors that could be sealed off, allowing multiple rooms of basins and shower trays to be prepped, sprayed and restored without disruption.
Once the process had been perfected it was merely a case of rinse and repeating the process, with everyone empowered to pull up quality issues which created a healthy amount of competition to see who could deliver the best quality.
On or round day 7 the team faced another challenge, one that had been discussed over pre-contract beers as was almost certain to come up as some stage, that’s the issue of contract fatigue. After living with each other for 2 weeks in a hotel and working together for long hours in a pressurised environment inevitably results in sparks of friction. However, having already identified the issue we were able to quickly move forward with the ultimate goal of completing the project.
On the 10th and final day the crew had a relatively easy one, just finishing off one or two things and packing up our stock room and equipment ready to ship back to our stores.
Despite having a slow start to the project and falling almost a full day behind after two days, the team, showed why they are a highly efficient team and completed the works with almost a full day to spare. Mendabath UK is proud of the work our crew did on this project, and to finish as the only crew on site to complete the works on budget and within time is yet another feather in our crews caps.