Kent County Council

Our head of CDM Co-ordination services has been providing this service to Kent County Council on a number of schools both under Dearle & Henderson (Keegans sister company) and more recently as Keegans for a number of years;

Sussex Road Primary School - New two storey extension to existing Victorian School. Project value £1.39m.

St. James the Great Primary School - The construction of a new build primary school & Nursery on an existing green field site. Project value £2.9m.

Broughton-under-Blean School - Construction of new build school extension. Project value £1.23m.

Other schools include:

• Northfleet Youth Centre
• Dymchurch Primary School
• Hawkinge Primary School
• Hopewell Primary School
• Sandgate Primary School
• New Youth Centre – Ashford
• Mundella Primary School    
• Woodview Campus
• East Peckham Primary School
• Leybourne School
• St Anselms Primary School
• Fleetdown School
• Maidstone Girls Grammar School

The above projects were a multitude of DDA works, roof repairs, new build, expansion works, boiler replacement, redecoration, fire damage, demolition & asbestos removal.

There were a number of health and safety technical issues that arose on the above projects which were as follows; major design issues, underground air raid shelters, theft, vandalism, convoluted ingress and egress, shared access, unwanted influx of seagulls, improper and unwanted use of scaffolding, man-handling of large steels due to access restrictions, working on sites with disabled persons (young and old) and asbestos.

As CDM Co-ordinator we were actively involved on all issues raised above, working closely with the contractors and design team providing health and safety technical advice when implementing design changes, method statements and risk assessments even down to confined space training and gas testing in order to overcome these issues.

On one of the projects, in our role of CDM Co-ordinator we had to intervene on the initial design of the school to reduce the steelwork size as the initial design was not buildable from a health and safety perspective. Works also included advice on the input to scaffold design and site set-ups and compounds to make the site safe.

To ensure the flow of information was maintained throughout the project, as CDM Co-ordinator, we interactively worked with the design team and site managers with a hands-on approach to rectifying issues rather than stopping procedures under health and safety legislation.