The Generator Company were approached by a West Midlands family owned Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Services company who had been selected to provide the mechanical and electrical works for a new £48M mixed-use regeneration scheme at a former 1970s town centre library site in Berkshire.
They enquired if we would be interested in the design, supply, install, test and commission of a generator package providing a secondary means of power to life safety and essential loads in the event of general or local mains power failure for this major redevelopment project.
The regeneration and redevelopment programme involved the construction of two new international brand hotels, new apartments and a retail complex. In total the dual-branded hotel property would provide 244 new guest bedrooms and boast a contemporary bar, dining space and lounge that will be open to locals as well as hotel guests.
The residential building on the high street will provide 64, one and two-bedroom apartments, along with restaurant and retail space, complementing the two hotels and adding new life to the town centre.
The whole scheme will deliver much needed high-quality hotel accommodation in the town centre, while the apartments will contribute towards meeting the local demand for housing.
The old library, named after Alderman Taylor in recognition of his contribution to the library service, was opened in November 1974 and was demolished in May 2017 as part of the programme of redevelopment in the town centre.
The Generator Company was of course delighted to be involved with this much needed regeneration programme and on completion of site surveys and discussions with the client and end-client, the following equipment to back up the life safety services including smoke extract systems, sprinkler pumps and firefighting lifts amongst others was agreed;
- Hotel – a 615kVA standby generator within an acoustic enclosure and integral fuel tank together with all associated equipment installed at roof level (level 9) of the hotel;
- Apartments – 110kVA standby generator with integral fuel tank and anti-vibration mounts to minimise disturbance to the structure of the building located on the ground floor.
As with all our projects a dedicated Project Manager was assigned ensuring that the day to day running of the project ran smoothly. On approval of the generator package, all equipment was ordered and pre-despatch tested to include proving/simulation of all automatic sequences, protection devices and shutdowns where practical in relation to our scope of supply, followed by a load run whereby the load would be increased over a period of time until full rating was achieved.
Towards the end of the build completion, both generators were delivered to site, offloaded and positioned as per specifications. Following completion of the installation and testing of ancillary plant, our commissioning engineers returned to site to carry out full load testing and commissioning of the complete generator installations to demonstrate compliance. This included an acoustic performance test, full black building testing and loadbank testing using our own resistive loadbank.
Once all satisfactory testing and hands on familiarity training was completed The Generator Company handed the building back to the client clean, tidy and in full working order.
