Current News
Advanced Buildings has been busy helping customers deal with the aftermath of a range of events including a major hail storm in Sydney just before Christmas, the floods in Queensland and a serious fire in Sydney’s west, amongst other reinstatement works.
By offering an integrated building and restoration service, we’re able to co-ordinate all that needs to be done with maximum efficiency. Our ability to get onsite quickly has helped to minimise damage and maximise the potential to salvage and reuse building assets.
Some of the projects we’ve been involved with in recent months are described below. Please let us know if you would like more information about these projects or any of our services.
Kind regards,
Stephen Barlow
Managing Director
Queensland Office is operational
Advanced Buildings is please to announce the operation of our Queensland Branch.
Peter Thomas is are Queensland Manager with our office located in North Lakes. The location is geographically ideal to service the Brisbane, Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast areas.
Please see Peter's profile in our 'About Us" - Management Team page.
Demand for Advanced Buildings’ expertise has been growing rapidly and we’ve responded in a number of ways.
So that we’re ready to get to work as soon as we receive a request for help, we’ve been steadily increasing our stock of specialist equipment that we keep on hand in our warehouse. We have hundreds of pieces of equipment including air movers, dehumidifiers, hard surface cleaners, steam cleaners, ozone machines, pressure washers and more.
Clients have appreciated the fact that we’re also able to store their goods and equipment in a dedicated storage facility whilst their premises are returned to normal.
Our new ozone room has over 300m2 of floor space and wash bay facilities, enabling us to clean and dry our customers’ goods and equipment efficiently and quickly.
We’re also pleased to report that our personnel have accreditation with the Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration (IICRC), demonstrating our capability in, and commitment to delivering superior inspection, cleaning and restoration services.
And on the Building Services side, Peter Kibby adds his expertise and skills to our operations as Senior Estimator.
We look forward to continuing to provide first class service to our insurance company clients by investing further in our equipment, systems and people.
On the afternoon of 16 December – a week before Christmas – a severe hail storm struck Penrith. One of the places worst affected was Penrith Panthers, which necessitated the evacuation of patrons and staff.
Hail had collected in box gutters, forcing water to overflow into the club. This affected over 4,000m2 of carpets, gaming machines and parts of the building structure.
Getting the club back to full working order was a priority. This was particularly important because two of the club’s biggest nights of the year – Christmas and New Year’s Eve – were just a week or so away.
Advanced Buildings were onsite the same evening, making collapsed ceilings safe and removing fallen debris. By 9.30pm we had delivered 100 air movers onsite, and had three trucks working throughout the night extracting large volumes of water from sodden carpets and other areas.
By 10am the following morning, the club was open for business.
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Gaming machines were opened at the bottom with air movers directed at them to dry out carpet underneath.
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We devised a dehumidification program to rapidly dry affected areas. It was important that our approach minimised impact upon club activities and power usage. We brought in a 500 KVA generator, a 250 KVA generator, four 3500 desiccant dehumidifiers, two pre coolers and a further 100 air movers.
Over the next two weeks, we worked steadily to continue drying the building. This included removing as much wet underlay as possible and implementing odour control strategies. By 30 December, all affected areas had returned to acceptable levels and drying equipment was removed from site. Around 80% of the carpet was salvaged as a result of our work. Where shrinkage had occurred in the remaining 20%, the club will be able to lay a border to render the area usable, pending a decision on whether to replace the affected carpet.
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A Kennards Self Storage (KSS) facility in Milton, Brisbane was flooded to a depth of two metres in mid January.
Arriving on site on Sunday 16 January, we found that all surfaces, fixtures and fittings below the tide line were covered in a greasy sludge. Air quality was unsafe and power was terminated. We began the clean-up by sanitising all affected areas and stripping out and disposing of all hygroscopic materials.
This facility provided storage for a large amount of wine (including many rare and vintage wines stored as investments), and customers of KSS were anxious to access and inspect the site.
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Restoration personnel begin the multi-phase process of cleaning and repacking the wine.
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By 19 January we had made the area safe again, and we began the task of scheduling and overseeing customer inspections.
Over 400 wine storage units were affected and we engaged 100 labourers on site each day to assist with cleaning more than 50,000 bottles of wine.
We used a cleaning product specifically designed to treat the high levels of E. coli present in the facility. This product was also chosen because it would not interfere with paint adherence when the building was repainted.
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In response to damage caused by the January floods in Brisbane, Advanced Buildings carried out cleaning, sanitisation and mould remediation works to various commercial premises including Assa Abloy, Lindsay Transport, Amcor and others.
Australand Holdings engaged us to carry out these works which included jet blasting of stormwater lines, air conditioning duct cleaning, hard surface cleaning in carparks and warehouses and other areas. We also arranged final certification with a hygienist to ensure the area complied with OH&S requirements for a safe work area.
At the conclusion of our work, Jane Kasper, Property Manager with Australand Holdings Ltd wrote to us saying, “Your advice, attention to detail and regular informative updates, not to mention the quality of your work has been second to none and has assisted me no end. Please pass on my thanks to all of your team. It has been a pleasure working with you.”
On 30 October, a fire completely destroyed the warehouse section of ITW Proline in Smithfield in Sydney’s west. The next-door tenant, Givaudan suffered damage to its roof as well as the party wall between the two properties.
A number of concrete wall panels up to 11m high were still standing but were extremely unsafe. We barricaded the area and began the process of removing them.
Adjacent to the damaged building are major water pipes owned by Sydney Water which convey fresh water to many thousands of Sydney properties. It was critically important to prevent the dangerously leaning walls from falling on and breaking the pipes, potentially contaminating the water supply.
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Major water pipelines were kept safe by our careful demolition of the adjacent wall.
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Advanced Buildings restrained the panels using long straps. The panels were winched back away from the side where the water pipes lay, and they were then dismantled safely.
The demolition of the main warehouse took eight weeks with full supervision. Other equipment including 30t excavators, boom lifts, cranes, tippers, generators, water carts and more were deployed during the process.
The proceeds of the demolition were sorted into piles, and a large magnet on a 30t excavator was used to sort steel from the burnt out rubbish for recycling as scrap metal.
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