Amey Secure Infrastructure, a provider of critical services for the public sector, is working in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions to enhance the user and staff experience at its site in Leicester.
Amey has worked with BJF Group to undertake a full fit out refurbishment of the site. This is part of a wider drive to encourage members of the public and employees back into assessment centres and office spaces.
Following a strip out of the 1,500m2 space, the team refreshed the kitchen, meeting rooms and main assessment centre. The upgrades included the installation of power assisted doors to improve the building’s accessibility, CCTV and air conditioning, a new suspended ceiling with LED lighting and new flooring. The space was also reconfigured with new partition walls and corridors.
Nick Holgate, DWP Programme Manager, said: “This is one of my sites and if you look around, it looks fantastic, bright, and airy. It’s what we’re doing to lots of our job centres around the country. The collaboration has been great, by working with Amey’s project managers and the team onsite we’ve been able to deliver the project on time.”
This is the first project Amey has delivered as part of the DWP framework and during the planning phases a new health and safety initiative was put in place. During the initial assessment working at height was identified as the most critical risk, due to the large amount of works being carried out at ceiling height and above, and so the decision was made to ban traditional ladders. Instead, manual platform lifts and platform steps were used to avoid unsafe ladder use.
Karen Davies, Head of PMO for Amey Secure Infrastructure, commented on the health and safety initiative: “For this project we agreed new working at height controls, eliminating the use of traditional stepladders. It was important that we worked with our client and our supply chain to ensure they supported our solution and that it was implemented effectively. During the works no accidents were reported, showing just what we can do when we work together.”