Refurbishment of School Kitchens
Airedale Group
The scope of the contact involved planning and designing schemes, project management of the works, building works, installation and final handover and snagging management. The needs of the service can vary and the authority needed an approved contractor that would listen to the various operational ideas, offer advice and guidance and most importantly listen and suggest innovative ideas and ways to achieve the customers’ vision.
Airedale had to work within very tight timescales to accommodate school closures during the summer holiday period. These time scales can place extreme pressure on the contractor to complete part and full refurbishments for multiple sites a 4-5 week period/the summer holidays. Airedale are expected to be on-hand to offer advice and guidance on all schemes when required. Further, it was a prerequisite of the Council that Airedale needed to have all the appropriate qualifications for Asbestos.
Airedale’s service is all year round, offering advice, one-offs of replacement kit, extending even to marketing services for the promotion of healthy eating across all of their schools.
The four schools we completed are as below:
Deri Primary School: £15,775
New entrance door created to kitchen, plus refurbishment to storage and dish washing area.
Aberbargoed Primary School: £67,475
Upgrade kitchen facilities including storage areas and new servery and overcome the lack of ventilation and no mechanical air input while cooking with gas.
New design kitchen layout which included a new ventilation system which was DW172 compliant, the design was also done which enable the client to reuse existing equipment, thus saving the client money.
Trinity Fields School: £73,410.
Upgrade servery counter in main kitchen, design and build new coffee shop in school entrance.
This school is a special needs school for young adults. The concept of the new coffee shop was to give the pupils a chance to learn to learn to cook and then sell their products within it.
There were several issues to address on this project, one being the design so the pupils could work and use the equipment in a safe environment; the other being the school was live while the works were carried out and noise levels had to be kept to a minimum.
Heolddu Comprehensive: £246,000
This project was a complete re-design and build, not only was the design for the use of the school, but had to incorporate being able to feed the local community and surrounding areas in a case of emergency, the other major factor in our design was the lack of electrical power to site and not being able to be upgraded.
Overall view
With all the projects completed over the summer of 2019 for Caerphilly Council, the 5 projects had to run concurrent with over 25 tradespeople throughout. Each site had a site manager who would not only be looking after the site and its progress but making sure that they were compliant with Caephilly’s H&S remit along with our own H&S safe systems of work. Overall value of these projects was in excess of £402,000.
Client Satisfaction
The following is from Marcia Lewis, Catering Manager at Caerphilly County Borough Council:
“Airedale were the successful contractor approved to undertake kitchen refurbishments within Caerphilly County Borough Council. The scope of the contact involved planning and designing schemes, project management of the works, building works, installation and final handover and snagging management. The authority has over 80 school kitchens, which includes special schools, secondary schools, primary schools and corporate and sheltered housing sites. The needs of the service can vary and the authority needed an approved contractor that would listen to the various operational ideas offer advice and guidance and most importantly listen and suggest innovative ideas and ways to achieve the customers vision.
“Airedale have to work within very tight times scales to accommodate school closures during the summer holiday period. These time scales can place extreme pressure on the contractor to complete part and full refurbishments over multiply sites over a 4-5 week period. Airedale are expected to be on-hand to offer advice and guidance on all schemes when required.
“I feel Airedale should win the award as they are an innovative, reliable and professional in the service they provide at all times. The standard of work they deliver is second to none and they are able to provide that personal touch via the project management team which is difficult to achieve from a national company.
“The company has excellent systems and procedures in place to ensure that a high standard of workmanship is achieved every-time and provide the customers with a visual and factual story board of the refurbishment program so the customer can follow progress and achievements throughout.
“They have the infrastructure and skills to manage on the front-line whilst keeping the senior management team abreast of all developments and progress made.
“If any issues are identified they have excellent communication structures in place to keep the clients informed and always have a solution at hand to resolve the issues if required.
“I have full trust in Airedale in achieving high quality, modern, practical solutions every-time that meet the service needs of the customer.”