Education Projects

Hillsong Church

Warehouse Project

Hillsong Church London are a group of vibrant modern Christian churches with 4 campuses throughout London and the South East, part of the larger Hillsong worldwide church. Due to growth of the church in London beyond all dreams they have set up their latest campus in a warehouse in Bermondsay. More information on the church and the “Warehouse project” can be found on http://hillsong.com/london/bermondsey

For the first few months the church was serviced with portaloo trailers but a more permanent solution was needed. The church has two Sunday services seeing a capacity of 600 plus at each with plans to add more services soon so portaloo’s just wouldn’t cut it! We were invited to tender for these works and were accepted as the lowest tender. The church have a real desire to work to a standard of excellence in everything they do and from the start we knew that this project needed to be special.

Description / Scope of Works
The existing warehouse only had a drainage capacity to accept waste from 5 cubicles, 2 upstairs and 3 on ground floor. To provide the number of toilets needed for the church congregation the architect had proposed a design that took an existing large office area and converted it the new toilet layout. Our works consisted of the following

• Full Mechanical and Electrical design
• Installation of new internal manhole and inspection chamber to existing mains run to provide drainage capacity in old office space.
• All Mechanical and Electrical services including new Titon ventilation system.
• New vanity units and sinks
• New walnut cubicles and wall panels (12 female and 3 male)
• Demolition and complete layout reconfiguration
• All finishes , plastering , decorations, mirrors and flooring
• Installation of staff shower room.

Challenges
The main challenge with this contract was the total absence of any previous O&M information. This was a particular problem when it came to locating the existing mains drainage run. We basically had to set out a line between the road manhole and the last known SVP internally and then site where we wanted to locate the manhole chamber. The concrete floor slab turned out to be over 1 m deep so at times through the dig we doubted whether we were in the right place, all we could see was more concrete! Eventually though we located the old clay pipe and could breathe a sigh of relief. Locating and installing this took longer than expected, the client also requested that if possible we could bring forward the handover date by 3 weeks so this then became a very intense project. In the end we hit the new handover date and had a very happy client. Great job and looking forward to the next one.