Care in the community

For many years, the name Longsight has been synonymous with urban decay and social deprivation. The Manchester housing estate – one of the largest in Europe – had acquired all the hallmarks of a social experiment that failed. Most of the homes were in poor condition, many lay empty and crime flourished to such a degree that some parts of the estate were virtual no-go areas.

But now Longsight’s Plymouth Grove is the focus of a remarkable regeneration project. A private sector consortium of designers, developers, funding bodies and contractors is working alongside Manchester City Council to reshape the estate through a mixture of demolition, new-build and refurbishment.

The Grove Village consortium is the special purpose vehicle (SPV) behind the UK’s first and largest housing redevelopment to be let under the Government’s Private Finance Initiative. The partnership consists of Harvest Housing Group, MJ Gleeson, m&e contractor Powerminster and Nationwide Building Society, assisted by consultants PRP Architects, PriceWaterhouseCooper, Eversheds, Alan Baxter Associates, Gleeds and the Safe Neighbourhoods Unit.

Grove Village will carry out the refurbishment and new-build work. It will then run the estate of over 1250 new and refurbished homes, carrying out routine maintenance and facilities management work for the next 30 years. After this time Plymouth Grove will be handed back to Manchester City Council.

Now into the third year of the project, much of the refurbishment and new-build work has been completed. A major component of the refurbishment work has been the improvement of utilities provision for the existing dwellings. This has required major rewires and the fitting of entirely new kitchens and bathrooms complete with new heating systems.

Besides carrying out all the rewiring and plumbing work on the project, Powerminster has installed a major new district heating system to serve 500 of the refurbished houses. It firm also has the £33.5 million maintenance contract for the whole of the concession period over the next 30 years.

The new district heating plant represents the latest state-of-the-art gas boiler technology, but Powerminster has installed similar systems elsewhere. The real challenge for the company was to install the system and modify the existing underground pipework with the tenants of the 500 homes that it serves remaining in residence.

“Our contract clearly stated that no tenant was to be left without heat or hot water outside of the planned shutdown periods,” says Powerminster’s director of building services, Nick Sterling. “Of course, we were working in the middle of a residential area, in and around people’s homes, and digging up the streets to get to the pipework. The potential for general disruption was huge.”

The district heating boilers are a replacement for the original plant, housed in a purpose-built ‘energy centre’ on the estate. The three existing boilers, installed during the 1960s, were coming to the end of their lifespan and increasingly inefficient. Powerminster was required to decommission these boilers and install and commission new boilers in the same energy centre and without interruption to the service.

“Since the existing plant provided for the needs of about 800 connected dwellings, it had a floor area capable of supporting energy generation for this new demand,” says Sterling. This gave Powerminster enough space to install one of the new boilers, link it into the existing supply and then start decommissioning the old boilers.

In this way, the old system was decommissioned and the new system installed in phases starting just after Christmas 2004 and finishing in October 2005. The additional floor area remaining after the refit will be retained for future scheme expansion should that be required.

Supplying the 500 homes with hot water was made easier thanks to the fact that the existing underground pipework had been replaced only ten years previously. The only complication here was that some of the pipes needed re-routing to new properties.

“We basically had to disconnect and re-route pipe runs to make way for new roads and buildings,” says Sterling. “This was all done in small sections to avoid disruption to tenants.” The pipework is a highly specialised prefabricated steel pipe with a high-density polyethylene outer casing and a rigid foam insulating layer in-between.

Naturally, there were periods during the boiler and pipework installations when the system had to be shut down. These shutdowns were meticulously planned by Powerminster with the co-operation of other members of the team. There were roughly 15 shutdowns over the course of the contract, most of them timed to take place during the hours of 6:30 am and 6:00 pm when most tenants would be at work and demand for heating and hot water would be at its lowest. No shutdown lasted more than 12 hours.

Such is the scope and complexity of the Grove Village regeneration project that plenty of opportunity exists for delay, disruption and cost escalation. The scheme’s partnering approach has meant that there have been few problems.

“Adopting a partnering philosophy enables you to see the other person’s point of view, but it also enables you to see the same things from a different perspective and share that knowledge,” observes Sterling. Hence the early involvement of subcontractors and suppliers can be invaluable in forestalling problems before they arise. “Traditionally, problems tend to surface only when the subcontractor comes along to do its bit and after the design is cast in stone,” says Sterling.

At Grove Village, the installation and commissioning of the district heating system went smoothly largely thanks to the close working relationship between Powerminster and its subcontractors and contractor Gleeson Building. A great deal of hard work also went into keeping the local community informed of the installation’s progress via the project’s tenant liaison officer, Lucienne Callaghan, who ensures that tenants’ views are voiced and heeded.

Much of this work inevitably extended into the houses themselves. Powerminster is also providing domestic central heating and hot water systems to homes that are not connected to the district heating circuit. This is also a long-term commitment for Powerminster, which is providing a 30-year domestic facilities management service through its Propertycare team.