Five Acre Wood School in Maidstone is a scheme that we completed for Kent County Council. The works consisted of the refurbishment of numerous rooms, including changing facilities and toilets within the existing school, the extension of the existing school hall and addition of new kitchen, plus the construction of a new reception area and associated offices.

From the outset the project has proven to be logistically challenging due to the numerous phases in which the works have had to be undertaken, all under a very tight programme.

Five Acre Wood School is a school which represents a wide range of additional education needs and as such it was critical that these works were completed as programmed to avoid any disruption to the normal day to day running of the school. With the sensitive nature of the children involved additional measures were taken to ensure the project ran smoothly from start to finish and communication between all parties played a key factor in this.

The project commenced with a high intensity opening phase which had to be completed during the six-week school summer holiday period in 2015. The refurbishment works were spread over various locations within the school at both ground and first floor levels. Typically, with any refurbishment project we faced numerous challenges upon opening up the works but were successfully able to overcome any problems encountered and hand the newly refurbished rooms back to the school in readiness for the new term.

Phase 2 consisted of the hall extension works, plus new kitchen and reception areas and whilst a bit more isolated from the main school, still involved a great deal of liaison with both the clients representative and the school itself to ensure any disruption was kept to a minimum. Following consultation with the school and in consideration of their urgent needs we were able to hand over the reception area of phase 2 ahead of programme.

Phase 3 was the final phase of works which involved the refurbishment of two more existing rooms. Due to one of these rooms being inaccessible at any other time other than ‘out of hours’, we have had to further condense our programme of works to be completed within the two-week Easter holiday period.

Throughout the whole process we were working under strict planning conditions with regards to working hours and noise. Any deliveries were co-ordinated and planned around the schools busy drop off and pick up times.