Olive Morris House

Top down demolition to ground floor slab of the building formerly known as Olive Morris House in the heart of Brixton, London. The building was a former civic block and child services support centre and was primarily a reinforced concrete frame of 4 storeys with a timber roof structure and brick external cladding.

Following the asbestos removal and soft strip activities, scaffolding was erected to all elevations and demolition plant was then lifted onto the floor below the roof by mobile crane. O’Keefe begun demolition internally to facilitate the plant being delivered by creating an opening in the roof. As a floor was demolished, all waste was moved via dedicated well hole within the building to the ground floor before being taken off-site for recycling. All demolition was carried out as per BS 6187 methods and once cleared the plant moved to the floor below to repeat the process.

Given the close proximity of residents, and works starting during the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown, O’Keefe provided a full time liaison officer on site to manage the interface with the local stakeholders and act as a conduit between the client, site and local community. All pre-start meetings and regular update meetings were attended and a notice board was provided at the site entrance, with detailed updates and letter dropped the local community when significant works were planned. As part of quality procedures, O’Keefe have a site complaints register on every site which is managed by the liaison offer to ensure all complaints are dealt with in a timely manner.

O’Keefe were later novated to the follow on main contractor to complete the demolition of the ground floor slab, basement and install temporary works within the foot-path for a basement extension. This required a submission of an AIP to the local authority and detailed design for the King-post wall to be installed in the foot-path via a specialist supply chain member. Further bulk excavation was required following installation and a new temporary sub-station was installed for the main contractor.

• Contract: Olive Morris House
• Client: Muse Developments
• Location: Brixton, SW2 1RD
• Value: £800K
• Duration: 18 weeks
• BREEAM RATING: Very Good
• Scope: Asbestos Removal, Soft Strip, Top Down Demolition, Temporary Works Design & Installation