The property
A converted residential block of three self-contained flats over four storeys and a basement, of traditional London stock brick with stone dressings, built around 1912, within a conservation area.
The brief
The building owner needed to deal with a backlog of maintenance and, more pressingly, with urgent compliance deficiencies in the common parts. Because the building is held on long leases, any significant spend had to be consulted on properly with the leaseholders, and because it sits in a conservation area, the repairs had to be sympathetic to the original fabric. The owner needed a single adviser to take the project from diagnosis through to completed works, accounting for every decision along the way.
What we did
One appointment ran the whole programme, from survey to site.
- Survey and prioritisationA condition survey graded every element and separated the priority one items in the common parts, which could not wait, from works that could be planned around them.
- Specification and tenderA full specification written to be built from, and a single stage competitive tender to three contractors.
- Proper selectionProvisional and prime cost items normalised to a common basis, each return assessed for conformance, and selection advised on merit rather than the lowest headline figure.
- Leaseholder consultationThe Section 20 process managed formally: notice of intention, statement of estimates, and written updates to each leaseholder as the works proceeded.
- Contract administrationWorks let under JCT Minor Works 2024 at around £70,000, with inspections, a dated photographic record, documented variations and the certification chain managed. Avalon also carried the Principal Designer duties.
The RICS standard
Planned maintenance plans are governed by the RICS professional standard Planned preventative maintenance of commercial and residential property, which sets out how the inspection is carried out and how the costed PPM schedule is reported, so the plan can be relied on for service charge and reserve fund budgeting.
The most urgent works first
The priority one works, the items that could not wait on safety and compliance grounds, were completed first under the contract: partition walls and ceilings to the common parts relined, service penetrations sealed, the staircase protected, and new entrance doors to the flats. Avalon specified, instructed and certified these works; they were carried out by the appointed contractor.
Conservation sensitive repair
In keeping with the conservation area setting, the roof was recovered in reclaimed slate to match the original, lead flashings were re-dressed rather than replaced wholesale, the chimney stacks were repointed in lime mortar, and lime render was repaired in the traditional manner. The repairs read as part of the building rather than as patches on it.
The owner moved from an unquantified set of problems to a properly specified, competitively priced, formally consulted and professionally administered project.
The outcome
The most urgent works were substantially complete within the planned window, with the remaining envelope and conservation works programmed to follow while the access was still in place.
This programme is the shape of our Major Works, Managed service.
