Office Clearance In Chichester

9/30/2014

One of Environmental Solutions areas of expertise is in office clearances which are conducted environmentally friendly so that as much of the waste materials can be recycled and put back into use. This report shows the goings on during a recent clearance in Chichester.

One of the benefits of working for a growing company is the opportunity to experience all aspects of how the company runs and the work that goes into each level. Last week I travelled down to Chichester to help finish an office clearance for one of our clients who were relocating base to a new site down the road. The job was a two week mission with three floors needed to be emptied of all furniture and office equipment. As an environmentally friendly company Environmental Solutions aims to make office clearances with recycling top of mind. Through this ethos the clearance takes on a system of removing the furniture, breaking it down and then splitting the components into the various different recycling categories ready to be processed. When I arrived onto the site, a week in to the project, a clear system had developed with the ground floor and top floor already cleared. The ground floor had become the work station where the dismantling of the furniture took place and workers were moving the remaining furniture from the first floor down.

The majority of the tables, cabinets and pedestals contained metal including aluminium strips. These therefore needed to be broken down so that the metal could be recycled as scrap and the wooden or plastic counterparts separated into their respective piles. 

The breaking down process involves little finesse but a lot of hard work using various tools to make sure that all of the recyclable material is separated correctly. This was the bulk of the work and as such, project manager, Rob Chuter, had taken charge. Office clearances rely upon efficiency and effective delegation of tasks to make sure that the job can be completed on schedule. 

In order to do this a cyclical rotation of the staff was created so that the work was run like a production line where some would be bringing the furniture down to the breaking area, this would then be broken up an then the materials would be transported out onto the wood skip or into the truck as scrap metal. 

Plastics and general waste were then further separated into tonne bags to be disposed of. Speaking about the system they created Chuter claims “it is important to get a cycle going so that everyone knows what they are doing and how to do it. It also means that as the project leader I know where everyone is so that I can keep an eye out, with such heavy furniture and some dangerous equipment being used it’s important to know these things”. Health and Safety is a key component of the Environmental Solutions work ethos with all the jobs being completed with top levels of safety. Having just been awarded the Safe Contractors Accreditation it is important to maintain these high levels of safety when completing these jobs.      

Assigning specific stations where to do the furniture breakdown also helps to minimise the mess that can be created during an office clearance. 

As the images show Environmental Solutions attempts to clear up all mess and all floors are swept and vacuumed to make it seem as though we were never there. Breaking up furniture creates splintered wood, spilt screws, nails as well as other by products from the dismantling process. 

Cleaning is therefore an important part of the process to make sure that the place is safe to go for the new occupants as leaving debris around could be a potential hazard. A large amount of time was therefore spent sweeping and vacuuming the floors once they had been emptied.  

The volume of materials that had already been processed showed the hard work that had gone into the first week of the clearance. The wood skip had already been filled weighing around 7 tonnes of pure wood to be recycled into chip board. Once this had been emptied it was again filled to the brim by the weeks end with another 7 tonnes of wood being recycled. 

Week one also saw a huge amount of metal being recycled with trips to the local scrap dealerships weighing in at 1.4, 1.48, 1.34 and 1.5 tonnes making a total depositing of 5.72 tonnes of scrap metal for recycling. 

Along with this a large amount of WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) recycling was collected including eight printers, 5 servers as well as a large amount of Aluminium.

One of Environmental Solutions newest recruits, Sam Piper, took a leading role in this project and acted as second-in-command to Rob.  Speaking about his first office clearance for the company, Piper said “It is strange just how much materials are in offices. The amount of wood that we cleared was amazing really, especially in such a short amount of time. Once we got into a rhythm it all seemed to fall into place and we just got it done”.