Churchward House Dominates C&M Workload

Churchward House Update

Work on Churchward House has been C&M's primary focus since our last blog. We are desperately trying to get the building ready for the Admin Team to transfer location ideally in January 2020, but with an absolute transfer deadline of March 2020 ready for the new operating season.

Jim Hitchen is C&M's Project Manager reporting to Projects Director Alan Miller and Head of C&M Department Dave Bowie.

There are many changes needing to be made to the building to allow the various teams to have the office space they require and a number of practical difficulties to be overcome such as maintaining fire escape routes whilst altering the layout of some of the offices and creating different work zones in the workshop area.

The first task was to complete the clearance of the remnants left behind in the yard by the previous occupants. the largest of which was the two steel shipping containers.

9th October - Structural Work is Starting

This Wednesday most of the available C&M Team were deployed on Churchward House. Meetings were held to discuss the scope of the works, the critical tasks and any dependencies. It is clear that the more work we do and the more problems we find that the scope is going to keep creeping upwards.

Alan M, Dave B, Jim H, Pete D and Rob W are having to try and stay on top of these issues. Jim is directing operations and Pete is deploying team members to the various tasks. 

During the day Rob W and Rod W broke through the old blocked up doorway off the corridor to form a new doorway to the Operations Manager's new office.

Colin M, John W, Pete D, Mike W and Jim M took down the internal cupboards from what will become the admin office and began the redecoration.

Rod W and Rob W carefully removed a surplus door and frame from the first floor office and prepared it for re-use as the Operations Manager's new office door. 

All the studding removed from the ground floor doorway was de-nailed and then taken upstairs ready to fill the vacant doorway.

In the meantime the outside gang were clearing away all the contaminated gravel with the telehandler and taking it away from Churchward House and tipping it further down the railway yard. 

The water was still coming into the yard at quite a rate and so more trials were done by Pete D, Colin M and Austen S to try and see how we can get the water away. 

10th October - Removing The Old Shipping Containers

Jim H had arranged for a specialist removal company to take these containers away. The original plan was to have an empty container lorry come from slough, arrive at Winchcombe, load one container and take it to the disposal site at Gloucester, come back, repeat the exercise and depart back to Slough.

Unfortunately it didn't quite work out as Jim was led to believe. Here is Jim's record of the whole exercise.

The wagon arrived an hour later than agreed, and when it did arrive strapped to the bed of the wagon was a large double axled trailer.

The trailer was unloaded using the double Hiab unit and put to one side. The first container was then loaded onto the trailer.

The trailer was hooked up to the lorry and the pair maneuvered to the second container. The second container was then lifted onto the lorry bed.

When all were secured there was a major exercise getting both out of the yard.

Despite coning off part of the car park Jim had to get one car moved in the public parking area, and with a very tight squeeze the convoy just managed to get out of the yard and head off out of the station, much to Jim's relief.

In the meantime all the electrical circuits in the building and workshop are being tested by our independent electrical contractor Buzz Electrics. The central heating has been run up and tested and kept on for a day to prove everything works correctly.

All the old phone cables and sockets are being removed from the walls and any holes filled and made good.

12th October - Saturday Working

Pete D, John W and others started investigatory work on cladding and beams so that the new stud wall could be anchored safely. This wall will separate the Operations Manager's new office from the general meeting room on the ground floor.

More work was done on removing unnecessary fitments and electrical equipment and work was done to work out where the services could be routed to form the new mess room.

The group also recycled the old stud timbers to form a new stud infill where the superfluous office door had been removed. This will soon be covered with plasterboard both sides and skimmed with plaster.

16th October - The Office Refit Gains Pace

With all free C&M members dispatched to work on Churchward House again the planning group began to assess all the new issues that had arisen since last week and began to plan how these would be addressed.

In the meantime Rod W and Phil T set about building the Operations Manager's new office door from all the component parts retrieved from the office upstairs. 

Believe it or not, the downstairs doors are different sizes to those upstairs and so the lads had to make a 50mm infill panel above this door to fix the door framing to the brickwork opening

Finally the door fittings were fitted and the architrave added. You would never have guessed that this door its frame and all the fittings were recycled from upstairs !

In this last picture the structural framing has been exposed ready for the new stud walling to be built below to split this large area up into two separate office spaces.

Pete D, Colin M, John W, Jim M and Austen S all set to re-decorating the new Admin office. Here Colin who is camera shy can be seen busy painting the walls.

Downstairs in the workshop John W has new skirting boards and architraves and is cutting them to size before applying several coats of paint.

There's loads more happening on a daily basis, but that's all for now ....