ECS Service and Maintenance department have for many years have provided PPM maintenance and service call out support for the DTZ portfolio, and due to the success of this partnership ECS Projects department have been included on the approved contractors list for capital replacement projects, having been successful in tender submissions on several key projects, ranging from cooling plant replacement of chillers/cooling towers through to boiler replacement projects.

On such boiler replacement project was undertaken in the later end of 2009 at Garfield House, Edgware Road, London.

The vacant retail unit on the lower ground floor of Garfield House was due for occupation in the early days of 2010, and our client as part of their ongoing capital equipment replacement programme had highlight that the boilers were in need of replacement, due to age and lack of product support for the manufactures.

ECS projects department were successful in our tender submission for the works to replace 3 No existing 230KW atmospheric boiler with new high efficiency boilers, works to include installation of new flues, modifications to existing pipework, new circulating pumps, associated control panel and complete flushing and new water treatment to the entire system.

Due to the configuration of the existing installation all existing boilers were required to come off line at the same time in order for the new boilers to be installed, and with the pending cold weather approaching a very tight programme of works was submitted for approval, this programme allowed for the overall working time to be cut by half by the inclusion of out of hours works, sometimes running late into the evening and over entire weekends.

In order to carry out the works the site first had to be cleared of remaining asbestos insulation within the plantroom, ECS projects department worked closely with the approved removal contractor to ensure that at no time were the contractor held up in carrying out their phase of the works by carrying out all enabling works at very short notice and having staff present on site to advise the contractors when needed.

Once the site had undergone air monitoring/sampling and the all clear was given, ECS operatives began in earnest to carry out the works as quickly as possible. The existing boilers 20 year old were completely dismantled and removed from site with the new boiler in place within a 24hr period.

In an effort to keep the programme to the shortest period of time, the projects team highlight works that could be undertaken whilst the main pipework reconfiguration works were taking place, this was mainly the flushing and water treatment works to the both the retail and commercial office above, by scheduling these works to take place before the plantroom works where completed this decreased or overall project time by 5 days.

Again looking at how we could decrease the time on site, we programmed the electrical element of the works to take place after the main day shift had finished, again cutting the overall project time down.

A new bespoke control panel was constructed in house allowing full control over the new equipment and interfacing with existing ventilation plant and fire shut down; we also included allowance for future expansions of the controls system to easily allow a BMS system to be installed at a later date.

The boilers were brought on line, fully tested and commissioned a whole week before they were due to be on line, and thankfully so as heavy snow fell just days after the project was completed.