CASE STUDY - COMMERCIAL
Harris Primary Academy Schools, Beckenham and Bromley
Roofing access scaffold across two primary school sites, designed and delivered inside the summer holiday window
Most construction deadlines have some give in them. A primary school roof does not. The building reopens on the first day of September with several hundred children in it, and the scaffold either came down before that or the school has a problem that no amount of goodwill fixes. The summer holidays are the only realistic window for major roof work on a working school, and everything about how the job is planned follows from that.
Pinnacle was appointed to provide roofing access scaffold across two Harris Primary Academy schools, one in Beckenham and one in Bromley, both requiring roof works over the same summer break. Both are older buildings, brick built with a mix of pitched slate and flat roof sections, and both needed material handling as well as safe access.
The Challenge
The programme is the first constraint and it is not negotiable. Six weeks, two sites, and a fixed reopening date at the end of it. That shapes the sequencing before anything else is considered: which site goes up first, how the erection crews move between them, when each roof is handed over to the roofing contractor, and how much contingency sits in the schedule for weather. A roofing contractor who arrives to find no scaffold has lost days that cannot be recovered later, because there is no later.
The second constraint is the buildings themselves. Roofing work needs materials on the roof, and slate, felt, timber and plant are heavy. A standard access scaffold will carry people and tools. It will not carry the volume and weight a re-roof puts through it. Both schools needed heavy duty loading bays designed specifically to take that loading, positioned where a lorry could actually reach them and where the roofing team could work from them efficiently.
The flat roof sections brought their own requirement. An unguarded flat roof at height has no inherent edge protection, so anyone working near the perimeter is working at height without it. Edge protection handrails had to run the full length of every exposed edge before the roofing team set foot on the roof.
Then there is the site itself. A school is not an empty building over the summer. Site staff, caretakers, holiday clubs and contractors are all in and out, and entrances have to stay usable. On both sites the scaffold had to bridge doorways rather than block them.
Scaffold bridged over a school entrance so the doors stayed in use throughout.
Heavy duty loading bay with a gin wheel rigged for lifting roofing materials.
Our Approach
Pinnacle designed heavy duty loading bays at both schools, built to carry the weight of roofing materials rather than the lighter loading a general access scaffold is designed for. Gin wheels were rigged at the loading platforms so materials could be lifted directly to the working level, which keeps the roofing team on the roof rather than carrying up ladders.
Edge protection handrails were erected along the full perimeter of the flat roof sections at both sites, in place and signed off before the roofing contractor started. Ladder access between levels was fitted with ladder guards where the access ran through areas the school still needed to use.
Where the scaffold crossed an entrance, it was built over the doorway on independent standards with base plates set clear of the threshold, so the doors stayed in use throughout. On the pitched elevations the scaffold was taken to gable and ridge height with boarded working lifts giving access across the full roof line.
Erection at the two sites was sequenced so that neither roofing programme was waiting on the other. RAMS documentation and method statements were provided before work began on each site. The scaffold was inspected at the required intervals throughout. Every operative held a current CISRS card.
Both sites were struck and handed back before the schools reopened.
Edge protection handrails to the full perimeter of the flat roof, signed off before the roofing team started.
KEY CREDENTIALS
What We Delivered
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Read the case studySchools are a particular kind of client. The work is straightforward enough on its own terms, but the window is fixed, the handover date is one that hundreds of families are planning around, and a primary school site has to be left genuinely clean rather than nearly clean. There is no scope for running a week over.
If you manage a primary school, an academy trust, or any building where the works have to fit a fixed closure period, call us for a free site survey. We will tell you at the survey whether the programme is realistic before you commit to it.