St James House

Colchester, Essex | Demolition, Asbestos, Scaffolding

3 Divisions Involved

145.25 Tons of General Waste Removed

14 Weeks

A project on the main high street to demolish a five-storey building with methods of top down and high reach demolition, which included removal of license asbestos, soft strip throughout, full building scaffold, propping with archaeology watch and brief during slab removal.

St. James House, which was previously insurance offices and shoe world store, was situated on a busy one-way street that was one of the main roads that passed through Colchester town centre. It had been an empty eye sore to the residents of Colchester for the past 20 years, until Colchester borough Council (CBC) got Anglian Demolition & Asbestos Ltd to safely and quickly demolish it.

With a busy road across the front of St. James House and the adjoining building, Roman House, just having been refurbished, protection to the public and Roman House was paramount. Having a scaffold division within Anglian Demolition & Asbestos, the building was scaffolded and wrapped in monocles. Asbestos removal had already started along with the internal soft-strip from top to bottom and propping installed under each floor slab, in preparation for a crane to arrive to site for the machines to be lifted to the rood, to start the top-down demolition process. All lift mechanics, cart and motors to the rear of the building were removed with the aid of oxy/propane hot cutting equipment to utilise the shaft for a drop zone. The lift shaft being full height and strongest structural part of the building, aided us to drop all the rubble materials down, using a skid-steer, into an exclusion zone on the ground floor where we had implemented dust cannons, for an 8 ton excavator to then shift and load lorries to dispose of rubble materials at a suitably licensed facility.

“This was a great project for Anglian Demolition & Asbestos to have undertaken with our client, CBC, being very impressed with our approach in tender and on site throughout the project, Credit to everyone involved, from the management team, to the guys on site.”

Having the building fully stripped of asbestos and all internal general sorts soft-stripped, two 3.5 ton 360 machines, a skid-steer and a Broke-90 was lifted onto the roof to start demolition of the plant room and roof leaving ring beams in situ to avoid building sway. As each level was demolished and carefully separated from Roman House, the propping was being continually re-positioned on each floor and the scaffold was being struck to suit the direction of demolition. The top-down method was used for the top 2.5 levels to reduce the height of the building for the introduction of our high reach machine.

All plant and propping were removed from the building, again with the aid of a crane and a section of scaffold struck from top to bottom to make way for the 40-ton, high-reach machine to the side of St. James House. Working through the building in a systematic direction, the front “cheese wedge” was demolished with the aid of a 24 ton-machine. Four banksmen with constant radio communication lined Queen Street to the front elevation during this very fragile and complex part of the works.

With only the rear sections building left standing, the demolition continued to slab level where we had a watch and brief during the slab removal in which Colchester Archaeological Trust (CAT) were in attendance for. The final task was to temporarily weather proof the exposed party wall from the elements.

Anglian Demolition & Asbestos Ltd
Anglian Business Centre
West Carr Road
Attleborough
Norfolk
NR17 1AN

01953 608050 | mail@angliandemo.co.uk

St James House

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