West Gorton Regeneration, Manchester

The project involved two phases of work. The initial phase was to soft-strip, demolish and remediate over 220 properties comprising over 15,000m² of buildings, 30,000m² of land to soil and seed with an additional 2,200m of knee rail around the sites. The second phase involved the demolition of two adjacent 15-storey residential tower blocks.

We had several soft-strip teams, demolition teams and remediation teams, working in conjunction across the site. The soft-strippers would prepare a block of properties for the demolition team, who would, in turn, demolish and clear the site. The final stage was for a remediation team to follow on and lay down the topsoil and seed and erect the knee rail, kerbs and bollards required on each block. Towards the end of phase 1, one of the soft-strip teams commenced on the tower blocks, preparing them for demolition. This also involved installing sacrificial props to most floors, as instructed by our structural engineer, to ensure no premature collapse of floors or balconies during the mechanical demolition process.

Our new Komatsu PC800 high reach excavator was able to demolish the tower blocks remotely with additional protection provided to adjacent residential homes from a tall boarded scaffold protection frame. We also hung a demolition curtain alongside the block at sensitive sections to eliminate debris falling on adjacent properties.

Throughout the project we monitored vibration and dust to ensure we were not impacting our neighbours too much and kept in regular contact with them via door to door calls from our site management team.  The project was completed early and to the satisfaction of the client.