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Back-to-back for Marks & Spencer and Selfridges in Manchester
Situated in the heart of Manchester are two of the UK’s best-known retail brands, Selfridges and Marks & Spencer. Each has impressive city-centre stores, Selfridges in Exchange Square and Marks & Spencer on Market Street. The area is well-known for its fashion and specialist stores, eateries and coffee shops. These two five-storey department stores share a staff and visitor entrance at the rear of the Selfridges building on Market Street, where two lifts serve each floor.
The Jackson Modernisation team at our Manchester offices were asked to competitively tender for the modernisation of these two through-car staff and visitor lifts. Following on from a detailed site survey, we submitted our tender for the works along with a projected time frame. Subsequently, Jackson Manchester was awarded the contract for the modernisation which would take place over a period of months, to allow for one of the two lifts to always be available for staff and visitors.
The five-storey building and hall had an ageing hydraulic lift installed that had become unreliable. Jackson were approached and asked to provide a replacement solution that would provide the reliability CWL wanted and the life expectancy needed, to justify the cost investment of a lift replacement.
As with many of the projects Jackson undertakes in retail environments, our modernisation team undertook the work outside of store opening hours to reduce inconvenience and noise in the store and, in this instance, to customers who were using the Selfridges spa/treatment rooms situated immediately behind the enclosed lift shafts.
The scope of the modernisation project included the removal of the existing machines that were situated in the motor room, installation of new geared drives, A3 safety gears, overspeed governors, duplex controller, full car interior relines, door operating equipment, car operating panels and landing signalisation.
On completion of each modernisation, locally-based Jackson engineers undertook the required testing and commissioning prior to each lift being restored to full service.