After Hours Amenities Strip Out and Wall Openings in a Government Office Building, Goulburn NSW

Status: complete. Client: Joss Facility Management. Location: a multi storey government office building on Auburn Street, Goulburn NSW. Scope: strip out of the amenities blocks on the lower ground, ground, first and second floors ahead of an accessibility upgrade, all after hours, then a second stage cutting new door openings through the concrete walls.

The building was full of public servants at their desks every weekday. Nothing could run in office hours, nothing could be left in a corridor at 6am, and the crew was three hours from the Marrickville yard. So the job ran as a night shift, stage by stage, with the amenities handed back stripped and the corridors clean before the first staff arrived.

What the job involved

• Strip out of the amenities on four floors: floor tiles and 40 mm bedding, wall tiles, cabinets, joinery, lights, fittings and fixtures
• Demolition of shower walls and hobs, brick partition walls, doors and sections of wall and ceiling to open the rooms up for the new accessible layout
• Second stage: five new door openings, 2100 by 820 through 200 mm concrete walls, cut on the ground, first and second floors, plus one existing opening widened
• Openings cut with a ring saw and cored at the corners so nothing overcut into the wall that stayed
• Every load out of the building in wheeled bins to skip bins in the car park, then off to the tip and the recycler
• All of it after hours, 6pm to 6am, weeknights only, with the corridors cleaned down and the rooms closed off before each morning
• Services disconnected by the builder's trades before each block started, and the crew living away in Goulburn for each stage

What made it hard

The building never closed. Four floors of offices worked through both stages, so every shift started after the last person left and had to finish, clean and quiet, before the first one came back. Jackhammering 40 mm of tile bedding off a slab and knocking down brick partitions is loud work, and on this job it happened at night inside an occupied building, with the corridors swept and the rooms closed off before dawn.

Goulburn is not a day trip. The crew stayed in town for each stage and everything they needed came down with them: bins, tools, lights, saws and the bits that always break. When something was missing there was no yard to run back to.

The second stage was a different trade. Five door openings through 200 mm concrete walls, inside finished rooms, with the wall on either side of the cut staying in service. A jackhammer would have cracked the wall well past the line, so the openings were sawn with a ring saw, cored at the corners and taken out in blocks small enough to carry to the bins.

How it was run

Stage 1 ran over a week of nights in July 2023. Each amenities block was taken in the same order: fittings and fixtures out, cabinets and joinery, ceilings down, wall tiles off, then the floor tiles and bedding jackhammered to the slab and the brick partitions and shower hobs demolished. Pan connections and floor wastes were capped for the plumber, rubble went into wheeled bins and out to the skips in the car park, and the room was swept and closed off before knock off.

Stage 2 ran in January 2024 with the strip out crew and the concrete cutting crew on site together. The openings were set out from the drawings, checked against the wall, cored at the corners and cut with a ring saw. The panels came out in blocks, the edges were cleaned back square, and the slab below was left ready for the new frames. The last nights were spent on the remaining amenities strip out and the final loadout.

How it went

Both stages were handed back with the amenities stripped to render and slab and the new openings cut clean, square and ready for the builder, with the offices working every day in between. Joss Facility Management came back to Perfect Strip Out and Demolition for the second stage six months after the first.

If you have something similar

Amenities and accessibility upgrades in occupied government and commercial buildings, after hours, in regional NSW as well as Sydney: that is work Perfect Strip Out and Demolition does for facility managers and builders. Have a look at our commercial strip out, demolition and make good and defit pages, or get in touch.