Listed Building Rewire Diss, Norfolk - Riddlesworth Hall School

We recently carried out a full rewire, fire alarm and emergency lighting installation at Riddlesworth Hall School, a grade 1 listed building in Diss, Norfolk.

Care and consideration had to be taken as the building is grade 1 listed and English heritage had to be involved. The other major problem we had that it is a co-educational boarding school for children aged from 5 to 13 years.

We were conscious that we had to keep the school open and running in a safe environment whilst keeping to cost and time implications. We were also unfortunate that whilst we were on site there was a major fire which resulted in the swimming pool burning down. The fire was not related to any of the works we were carrying out. The implications for us were immense, mainly because the main incoming school electrics were housed inside the pool boiler room.

We only lost 1 day of school time due to having no electric. We managed to get in heavy duty generators, switch supplies and keep the school open, albeit on a reduced power supply for the first few days. The fire had major implications on the programme and budget as we had 12 electricians installing temporary supplies and carrying out emergency works for over 3 weeks. We had Generators on site for six months before we could get the new switch room built and then had to programme in a switch over to the new electrical supply without disruption to the school.