Case Study:Building Maintenance Services with a Smile Keep High-End Property Residents Happy

This high-end residential property in Central London close to Tower Bridge required various building maintenance services, including façade cleaning, timber repairs/replacement and painting across multiple properties and substrates, including stone, brick, metal, and wood.

Read how the Spectrum team managed this complex and multi-disciplined project across a 4-month period.

The Logistics

A long-serving client from previous maintenance projects contacted us about a building maintenance project after seeing an excellent review from one of our stone cleaning jobs on the Royal Earlswood estate. 

Arriving on-site, we conducted an initial assessment to establish the correct strategy for our external building cleaning and maintenance services. We noticed the following challenges:

• With two facades facing the waterfront, this project would require a hybrid access method involving rope access and a mobile elevating work platform (MEWP).
• As a gated, quiet community, the tenants here pay to live in a relaxed and peaceful environment so extra regard to our movements would need to be considered.
• Our patented DOFF-cleaning poles were the ideal equipment to clean the majority of the property exterior.

While on-site, we liaised directly with the development manager, concierge, porters, and support teams. We needed to be available to the clients in case they had concerns or questions regarding our cleaning services or had any feedback.

The Project  

With the management company and tenants noting how previous scaffolders disturbed the peaceful residential complex on the waterfront, it was vital for our team to be discreet with their work while being open to feedback. It was helpful for us to use the concierge team for area location while gaining insights into the tenants and their apartments.

The loud banging of the scaffolding poles and the talking of the scaffolders led to an unpleasant experience for the tenants. Too often, residents are also exposed to the noise, dirt, and mess of other contractors. At Spectrum, we take the opposite approach and offer additional cleaning and client liaising to ensure the preparation, planning, and finished result always meets expectations.

Unlike scaffolding, rope access allows technicians to work quietly and create far less disturbance to the property and its residents. We began with the most pressing tasks, such as timber and soffit repairs, before cleaning, painting and installing the replacements. The metal features required corrosion and rust removal before priming and applying an undercoat and two coats of specific metal shield paint. 

With team numbers varying between ten to four technicians, depending on the schedule, we could have multiple people on-site at one time completing various tasks. Little things make a big difference in a project like this, requiring numerous jobs to get completed across a large and challenging complex. We ensure all our staff remain as productive as possible so if the rain calls off external painting, they quickly attend to a different task and remain valuable to the project.

Some days, we would need to adapt to the weather conditions. For example, when it was raining, the team was unable to paint external areas of the property, so painted beneath the sheltered underground car park instead. With the car park lines and numbers re-painted, the team moved on to measuring and cutting the wood necessary for the timber replacements.

This adaptability meant zero wasted hours, as we upheld our productivity and application to multiple tasks. Having the flexibility to attend to different duties is part of Spectrum’s strength as a building maintenance provider with rope access capabilities.

The Site

The property is in an affluent area of Central London, housing hundreds of residents within high-end apartments across 11-12 buildings close to Tower Bridge. Two facades are waterfront, with the highest aspect of the residential property being ten storeys tall.

In high cost of living in areas like these, residents and clients expect the highest service standards across every aspect of building maintenance we provide. The development and property management have created a peaceful and relaxing environment for the tenants on the waterfront, which we maintained while on-site.

Challenges

For this large-scale building maintenance project, our first challenge was satisfying the residents without disturbing or interfering with their daily lives. We always like to account for residents as clients. So, a building with one hundred residents equals one hundred clients to us. We see residents equally to our clients, treating them as an integral part of the project. In having this individualistic and sensitive approach, we accept and prepare for extra jobs or requests to crop up during our building maintenance services. 

Beyond keeping the residents and clients happy, we had to manage the various building maintenance services across six months. Therefore, we required a sound strategy with regular correspondence with the development manager across phone, email and face-to-face communication. Having these channels of communication helped to keep on top of all the tasks within this large project.

The Result

Our work at this property is ongoing, with the last finishing touches being completed. Here’s a quick summary of our building maintenance services so far from start to finish:

• The team used specialist DOFF-patented pole cleaning equipment to clean the various facades and external elements of the building across multiple substrates, including brick, metal, wood, and stone.
• We used our rope access capabilities when ascending the facades facing the waterfront.
• We repaired and replaced damaged wooden areas of the building.
• We repainted the underground car park with new bay lines and numbers.
• The team restored the entire complex which has been returned to a “like new” condition.

With around 10% of the project remaining, it’s just a case of minor touches like finishing the metal decoration, timber restoration and signage polishing.

Our direct and friendly approach to the client, management company and residents means we were able to turn a large-scale, complex project into a routine and seamless display of high-quality building maintenance services.

Got a project in mind? Get in touch for more details about how our building maintenance services can support your property requirements.