16

Dec

2015

The housing development at Chairman’s Arch, Cathedral Square, in Waterford recently won the 2015 Irish Council of Social Housing Award for Regeneration.
Declan Fitzpatrick, Contracts Director with Clancy Construction, spoke about the challenges faced during the project:
“This development is located on a historic site in the heart of Waterford city in an area known as the ‘Viking triangle’.
We encountered numerous challenges from the start of the project namely the location of the site within the city centre and adjacent to both public buildings and a busy commercial area with some residential also in the mix coupled with the usual congested traffic that you would expect in any city centre.
Careful and detailed planning was required from the start for deliveries with weekly schedules prepared well in advance of each element of work. The site is small in scale therefore provided very limited storage for materials, ‘just in time’ delivery was used to alleviate this problem.
The nature of the site being in a ‘zone of archaeological potential’ in Waterford city brought its own challenges and to this end we worked very closely with the client, design team, conservation consultants including the archaeologist’s whom attended site on a daily basis for a period during the project to ensure that the works were carried out within the strict guidelines for works of this nature.
In addition the condition of the existing structures which had seriously deteriorated over the years was a serious concern during the early part of the project and strict health and safety measures were put in place during the various phases to ensure all works were carried out in a safe environment for the operatives whilst carefully removing parts of the existing structures and rebuilding to the required details.
Overall this was a very challenging project but our experience site management team delivered a high quality finished project, which was completed within the timescale and most important of all with zero accidents, this project is a testament to our dedicated management staff and site workers including subcontractors.”
Project: Chairman’s Arch, Cathedral Square, Waterford
Contractor: Clancy Construction
Architect: C.J. Falconer & Associates
Client: Waterford City & County Council

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