Good morning! Let me chat scaffolding just for a minute. I don’t want to bore you, but seriously this has been the bane of my life this week, hence why I am coming to you later in the morning than I usually would.
If you didn’t know, another string in my bow is protect management. I know ‘NC, how do you do it all?!’. I’ll be honest it’s skills that I have picked up through years in the industry, you learn it with the more projects you do.
However, you are never ever prepared for everything as I have just found out.
Project management is all about understanding what you’ve got to do and then scheduling it and running things to time.
At the moment I’m working on a 2 bed flat in Earls Court. The owner is out of the country and wants the property refurbished. That’s absolutely fine, no issues there.
Apart from ONE! Scaffolding.
So I need scaffolding for 1 DAY, a tower scaffold that will go up at 5am and come back down at 7pm (yes that’s right we are going to have everyone done in less than 24 hours). All we’ve got to do is install a new boiler flue and cut a hole for the new kitchen extractor system.
Here’s the issue. I applied for a scaffold license from RBKC, which is standard. It’s a few weeks turnaround and then you are good to go. Except, I’m not, because the location of my scaffold is on a ‘red route’. It’s not RBKC that I have to apply through it is TFL.
I know they have to do their due diligence, and I know I am wanting to use their land. However, with TFL the application time is twice as long, they require drawings and they will only allow certain scaffolding companies (luckily mine is one of them).
The drawings they require are elevation with details of how the scaffolding will look outside the building, from the side and face on. As well as ground drawings of the area of pavement the scaffold will cover. Of course, I’m doing all of this, because I have to (self-drawn drawings are fine). But, it’s put the project 5 weeks behind and I am still waiting patiently for them to grant permission.
So, I wanted to write this blog and let you know 1. that property is a journey and you always learn something new and 2. make sure that no matter what, the minute you get the instruction you are onto who ever needs to provide you with a scaffold license. It will be super useful in the long run.
I’m lucky that I factored some extra time into the length of my contract (that’s necessary as well!).
Was this blog post helpful? Has it alerted you to the need to get a scaffold license sorted ASAP? Leave your comments below, I’d love to hear from you.
NC
