PROJECT OUTLINE

In 2018, Pembrokeshire County Council allocated £15 million to upgrade existing teaching facilities at the Ysgol Bro Gwaun Comprehensive School in Fishguard. The original school buildings were constructed in the 1950’s and consisted mostly of steel framed structures with masonry infill panels, pre-cast concrete plank floors and external curtain walling. The condemned buildings had significant quantities of asbestos awaiting removal. The school is located close to Fishguard town centre and immediately adjacent to a leisure centre and residential areas.

After a competitive tender process, Walters were successful in securing the demolition works on the ‘live’ school site. The project was highly sensitive requiring a high degree of pre-contract planning and considerable skill and expertise during the on-site phase. Walters worked collaboratively with the school management team, keeping them informed at all stages and scheduling certain tasks to take place outside of classroom hours.

PROJECT DELIVERY

At the Pre-Contract stage Walters attended numerous planning meetings with Pembrokeshire Council and the school management team to discuss the control of environmental nuisance factors (noise, dust, vibration and infrastructure contamination), traffic and pedestrian management, service disconnection strategy and deconstruction methodology.

Walters worked closely with the clients appointed ecologist under an European Protected Species (EPS) licence issued by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to ensure that bats and their roosts were suitably protected throughout the course of the works.

The deconstruction works included the removal of licensed and non-licensed asbestos containing materials in strict accordance with the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. Walters engaged the services of an HSE licensed asbestos removal contractor to ensure the safe removal of all licensed asbestos containing materials under fully controlled conditions from inside the structure. The building was then soft stripped entirely back to brick and block prior to structural demolition in order to minimise the propensity for dust and flying debris. Piecemeal hand demolition was undertaken to divorce the condemned buildings along party walls close to ‘live’ learning areas to limit transference of vibration to the remaining structure. Targeted dust suppression was applied to ensure that dust was controlled at all times. Water canon spray units were used site wide to emit a fine mist spray across the site to drive dust particles to ground.

All waste streams arising from the Works were segregated and removed from site to recycling centres. Hard arisings were crushed on site by Walters own crushing plant working to a strict WRAP Protocol to control the recycling of waste into re-useable aggregates. The Works at Fishguard Comprehensive School were completed on time, to budget, with minimal disruption to the school and without any public complaints leaving a very satisfied Client.