Seven guest floors rewired, one floor at a time

A hotel operator was refurbishing every guest floor of a city-centre hotel near Piccadilly. Its refurbishment contractor needed an electrical subcontractor who could work floor by floor without the guests noticing.

• Only one floor out of use at a time, so the hotel kept selling the rest
• Drilling and chasing only between 10am and 4pm, between check-out and check-in
• Guest lifts never used for materials, only the service lift at booked times
• The fire alarm kept live on every occupied floor while its devices were replaced

Each floor was sealed behind a dust screen and handed to us for three weeks. Drilling and chasing ran between check-out and check-in, materials went up the service lift at booked times, and the fire alarm on the floors around us stayed live while the closed floor's devices were replaced.

• New sub-mains and a distribution board on every guest floor
• Bedroom power, USB outlets and bedside controls to the designer's layout
• Corridor and bedroom lighting with presence detection in the corridors
• Emergency lighting and fire alarm devices replaced to the new layout

Twenty-two weeks for seven floors, a floor every three weeks, with commissioning and the floor's own fire alarm cause-and-effect test before each one went back on sale.

All seven floors went back on sale on their planned dates, with no booking cancelled because of the works and corridor lighting energy down by more than half.

As-fitted drawings, test certificates and the fire alarm cause-and-effect record for each floor, handed to the hotel's engineer as each floor reopened.