Renovating a hotel façade is not like façade work on an empty site. The building is usually open: guests come and go, service vehicles pull up, and the work has to finish before the season starts. The scaffold is planned around those three conditions.
The entrance cannot close: the protected walkway
The first problem is the entrance. A scaffold over the main door becomes a structure people walk under. The answer is a protected walkway: standards are set back on the entrance bay, the top is decked over and the sides are protected. The route stays open and anything dropped from above is stopped.
The same arrangement is built for the service entrance, the car park ramp and the fire exit; the fire exit can never be obstructed at any stage.
Working with guests in the building
With the hotel open, the scaffold plan covers two more things:
- Sightlines and privacy: where platforms pass in front of guest windows, netting or sheeting is needed for both safety and privacy. Because sheeting raises the wind load, the tie pattern has to be worked out accordingly.
- Noise and hours: erection and dismantling are the loudest stages. Working hours are agreed with hotel management in advance; that directly extends the erection time and belongs in the quotation.
Phasing
Rather than covering the whole building at once, the work is usually split into blocks: one elevation is scaffolded, the work finishes, the material is struck and moved to the next. This means working with less material but more erection and dismantling cycles. Which suits better depends on the hotel's occupancy calendar, and we discuss it while preparing the take-off.
Whether the material stays with you is settled at the same point: renting or buying is decided by the duration and the number of phases.
From the field
We have erected façade scaffolding and platform systems on hotel projects including Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Güral and Richmond. On this work the most common question is not the take-off but "how long will it take with guests in the building".
Send us your façade dimensions, the number of storeys and your working calendar, and we will work out the phasing and the programme with you.