case study
boohoo, burnley

PROJECT VALUE: £1,200,000

DURATION:   22 weeks 

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 The international online retailer Boohoo have expanded their business year on year, having acquired various properties on the Heasandford Industrial Estate in Burnley to support their continued growth. Emchia were appointed as Principal Contractor to undertake the asbestos removal, demolition and enabling works across their recently purchased 128,000 ft2 warehouse.
 

Works Delivered
The site was partially occupied by Boohoo throughout the project which had to be carefully planned and managed to ensure their operations could continue without disturbance from our works. We erected internal partitioning and signage to ensure both the Boohoo employees and our construction site staff remained safe and segregated in accordance with our phasing plan and agreement with Boohoo on working areas and operational timescales.

As principal contractor we were responsible for managing six different subcontractors including; demolition, scaffolding, M&E, gas engineers, tree surgeons and asbestos consultants. With daily meetings involving all contractors, we successfully managed the project safely without any accidents or issues despite a very busy construction site with up to 25 asbestos personnel and 15 subcontractor personnel working collaboratively on a live occupied site.

We prepared a Construction Phase Plan and worked under F10 notification as well as ASB5 asbestos and Section 80 demolition notices. We held daily briefing meetings and carried out internal and external audits regularly, including audits of our subcontractors.

The asbestos removal accounted for ~75% of the works and including the removal of sprayed coating, thermal insulation, insulating board, cement and various other products internally and externally across the site.

Challenges faced and how the contract was delivered successfully

Additional ACMs were discovered by the demolition team who were stripping out internal walls, ceilings and floor coverings. After our asbestos team had completed shot-blasting the boiler room, the demolition team were stripping out the M&E equipment including the large boilers. Once the boilers had been removed, they discovered some sub-floor ducts which contained thermal insulation to pipework and debris throughout the ducts. Our site manager took immediate action in halting the works in this area and instructing out operatives to carry out a localised emergency clean of the demolition team’s equipment and the surrounding area. Our appointed independent UKAS-accredited analyst ran air monitoring in the near vicinity of the discovery and took a sample of the materials identified. As a precautionary measure we assisted the demolition team with personal decontamination giving them access to our hygiene unit and providing a briefing of good practice when decontaminating.

We worked with Boohoo to come up with a solution for the contaminated floor ducts; some were decontaminated by our team, and some were filled with concrete under controlled conditions to seal them off permanently – this was more cost effective than decontaminating all the ducts. Following our reactive works, the demolition team were able to continue with their works with minimal delay due to our responsive actions which mitigated any significant delay in their programme.

Managing the shared areas on site was challenging but well-controlled. We had banksmen present on all crossover points to ensure Boohoo employees remained safe when any of our site-staff needed to move through the Boohoo zones. Any plant or equipment movements, deliveries or collections, and movement of hazardous waste was undertaken out of hours to prevent any crossover points becoming congested. This significantly reduced the risk of injury or harm to both Boohoo employees and site staff. We ensured all areas of the site were well-illuminated, site signage and hoarding panels were moved around as required to determine segregation zones. Service isolations and temporary supplies were installed out of hours to reduce the impact on Boohoo’s operations. Externally, we had site traffic using specific routes away from Boohoo’s access and parking areas, and pedestrian walkways were established to segregate Boohoo employees from our site staff.