RECOVERING 4 WEEKS ON A TURNAROUND PROJECT

LOCATION: Sydenham, South London · PROJECT: School · TRADES: Dry-lining, with labour services and site management

THE CHALLENGE
This school project in Sydenham had slipped behind in several areas at once. Labour was short, item specifications had changed, and the deadline had been brought forward. A subcontractor was already on site and needed support to get the programme back on track.

WHAT WE DID
We came in alongside the existing subcontractor with additional dry-lining teams. Some areas needed changes made, others needed pushing forward, so we split the teams between them and worked each area separately. Our labour services prepped each area and cleaned up after our teams, and our management coordinated with the other trades on site. We didn’t just send bodies on site and leave the client to sort it out.

To keep the pace up, we:

• increased labour

• worked weekends

• carried out daily progress checks

• set weekly targets and measured ourselves against them

THE RESULT
We recovered around four weeks on the programme. By the end, dry-lining was ahead of the trades we weren’t managing, and the programme was back on track. The client saw the value of flexible labour, and of how quickly a project suffers when trades fall out of sync.

WHAT TO ASK ANY CONTRACTOR
Ask what they do when a project is already behind. Look for specifics: how they split the work, how they resource it and how they measure progress, not just a promise to “add more men”.