One Block, Nineteen Years, One New Warm Roof

Nineteen years with one early twentieth century block of twelve flats in Croydon, south London: parapet repairs, a ten year plan, an emergency on the boundary, and a new warm roof let at £181,864 and closed under the contract sum.

Discuss your building

New warm roof and parapet on a block of twelve flats

The building

A detached block of twelve flats over three floors in Croydon, south London, built in the early twentieth century: cavity brick in lime mortar, a flat roof behind brick parapets, chimney stacks, stair turrets and steel windows.

The brief

Old flat roofed blocks age from the top down. The freeholder and its managing agent needed the building surveyed, the work put in order of priority, and each project delivered when the budget allowed, by a practice that would still know the building next time.

What we did

Parapets and front elevation, 2010A survey found the parapets rotating and their steel ties corroded. Avalon specified the repairs, tendered them, and cut the scope back to the front elevation to suit the budget. Let at £37,407 under JCT Minor Works, final account £37,737.
A ten year plan, 2015A planned preventative maintenance survey, updated in 2020, setting out the roof, parapet, chimney and boundary work to come and its cost.
An emergency on the boundary, 2016A 2.5 metre brick boundary wall leaning 120 millimetres towards the flats, pushed by the roots of neighbouring trees. Avalon arranged its emergency demolition, which confirmed the wall was unsafe, and designed its replacement.
A new warm roof, 2022 to 2023The whole roof over all twelve flats re-roofed to modern Building Regulations, Part L and Part B in the main: a new deck, tapered insulation laid to improved falls, and a liquid applied warm roof with an insurance backed guarantee, plus parapet and lintel repairs and lowered chimneys.

The roof

The first tender in 2021 came back between about £197,000 and £212,000. The specification was then brought up to the June 2022 changes to Part L, with the insulation thickened and the falls improved, value engineered elsewhere, and re-tendered in October 2022, when the bids ranged from about £182,000 to £206,000. Avalon acted as project manager, contract administrator and principal designer. The contract was let at £181,864 under JCT Minor Works 2016 in December 2022 and reached practical completion in April 2023, around twelve weeks after the contractor started. The final account closed at £179,225, £2,639 under the contract sum.

The standards

The plan followed the RICS professional standard on planned preventative maintenance. Works were administered under JCT Minor Works contracts, with principal designer duties under the CDM Regulations 2015.