Oakwood House

Appointed by Kent County Council, our Clerk of Works team provided a quality inspection service at Oakwood House in Maidstone. The Council opted for a major revamp of an existing Victorian mansion, dating back to 1869, which had previously been used as a training facility, conference centre and reception centre for Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children. The property is now home to the Kent Coroners Service, the Kent Register Officer, the Kent Adult Education Centre and Adoption Partnership South East.

Client
Kent County Council
Contractor
GTCI Ltd.
Contract Value
£2m
Duration
80 weeks

The project faced a number of challenges including that much of the construction work took place whilst COVID-19 restrictions were still in place. This meant there were limitations around the number of staff allowed on site as well as the distances in which teams could work from each other. The COVID-19 pandemic also resulted in the design for the ventilation being amended which caused delays to the programme.

Additionally, bats were found in one of the big roof spaces on the Kent Register Office of the building and the Kent Adult Education Centre. This meant that noisy works had to be limited and a specialist had to supervise the space where the bats were each time the area was worked on.

As Clerk of Works, we undertook weekly visits to the site to inspect the quality of the construction and flag any defects. Key to our success on this project was our relationship with the contractor; from the early stages of the project, we worked closely with the contractor to ensure that issues were flagged as early as possible.