What We Built
A gantry across the pavement carried on standards set along the kerb line, finished in high visibility yellow with warning lamps, so it is obvious to anyone walking past after dark.
Two working lifts above the gantry deck, sheeted rather than only netted, so a strip-out does not put dust across a public footway or through the open windows of the flats either side.
Brick guards along the gantry fascia and a first aid box fixed where the crew can reach it.
And no more scaffold than the phase needed. The structure covers one section of the elevation and stops a long way below the roof, because a programme working through the building does not need the whole frontage wrapped at once. Sheeting the lot would have been simpler to draw and considerably worse for everyone living behind it.
A Façade You Do Not Drill Into Casually
Albert Hall Mansions is Grade II listed. The red brick is a large part of why, and every fixing into it is a permanent mark on a protected building.
That changes how the scaffold is designed rather than whether it can be built. The gantry carries the load from the pavement, the structure is braced to stand on its own account, and ties into the façade are kept to what is genuinely needed and agreed rather than what is quickest. A scaffold that comes down and leaves a grid of patched holes across a listed elevation has cost the client a repair bill and a conversation with the conservation officer.
The Pavement Is Public and the Road Does Not Stop
Kensington Gore runs past the Royal Albert Hall and carries traffic, buses and a constant flow of people on foot.
That makes the gantry a licensed structure on a public highway, not a site decision. It has to leave a clear route underneath, stay lit, and stand hard against a live carriageway with no lane closure protecting it. The yellow finish and the lamps are not decoration. They are what stops somebody walking into a steel tube in the dark outside one of the busiest venues in London.
If you have works coming up in an occupied block, we can look at the access with you before the programme is set.
Kensington is central London. Most of our work sits closer to home, across Kent and the South East London boroughs, where we run the same gantries, hoist access and commercial scaffolding from our Sevenoaks yard.
