Oakbay Windows has a busy summer holiday

Published by Jane Ward for Deceuninck Ltd in Education

School summer holidays are the perfect opportunity to refurbish schools and colleges. No students and no staff mean installers can get on with the job without needing to minimise disturbance to lessons. The downside is the tight schedule: there’s just six weeks to complete a project and there’s no room for slippage. Companies that have demonstrated their abilities to meet the strict deadlines and deliver a quality result are frequently in demand over the summer months. One example is Liverpool’s Oakbay Windows: the company undertook window and door refurbishments in no fewer than five schools and colleges over the summer.

One of these was Priestly College in Warrington. With an A level pass rate of 99% for eight years running, it’s got an excellent reputation. Something that makes these results even more impressive was the sad fact that the fabric of the college’s older buildings was letting both staff and students down. Thankfully, the college was recently able to make a considerable investment to refurbish the buildings and allow the staff and students to continue to achieve excellent results.

A significant proportion of the refurbishment work was undertaken this summer and will be completed in the October half term. The window and door replacement contract alone demonstrates the scale of the overall project: 200 windows and two doors needed to be replaced. The contract was awarded to Deceuninck fabricator Oakbay Windows whose reputation meant they could be relied on to deliver a quality result on time and on budget.

Stuart Loughlin at Oakbay said, “We enjoyed working on this project because it allowed us to use all our experience to ensure a successful result. Projects on this scale are always complicated and require significant amounts of planning to ensure they are delivered successfully. In this instance, additional pressure was added because Priestly College only received permission to go ahead with the refurbishment at the beginning of the summer, so all contractors needed to be able to cope with a very short lead time. Happily, this was something we were able to do. We also needed to work in close partnership with a wide range of other contractors who were on site at the same time as us and faced the same pressures to complete on time.”

As a result of Oakbay’s work, Priestly College students arrived back for the start of the new term to see all the old windows replaced with Deceuninck  2500 system in white. Stuart said, “We were delighted to complete the project on time and to have played such an important part in enhancing the learning environment of the college. We are also pleased that our work will help to lower the college’s running costs thanks to the increased thermal efficiency the windows and doors offer.”

As Oakbay’s experience shows, a good reputation means that you get booked up fast. But as the Priestly College project goes to show, to maintain that good reputation, you need to be at the top of your game all the time.

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