The Act places a duty on the Building Owner to service notice on an Adjoining Owner to inform them of their intentions and to provide details of the work to be carried out.
If upon receiving the notice, the Adjoining Owner fails to respond or dissents from the work a dispute is said to have arisen. Once a dispute has arisen, each owner must appoint a Surveyor who will then prepare a Party Wall Award to reach an agreement on what, how and when the work will be carried out. The Award will also specify who will be responsible for the cost of the work.

CSN Consulting regularly act as Party Wall Surveyors for both Building Owners and Adjoining Owners on construction projects which range from small domestic extensions to large multi-million pound commercial developments. Previous clients have included Nexus, Newcastle University, Metnor Group PLC, Newcastle City Council and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust.

New Front Entrance

Construction of a new teaching block to provide additional teaching accommodation for an existing secondary school. The single storey steel framed construction provides two general classrooms, an ICT Suite, offices and sanitary accommodation.

Scope of Works

• Provide professional services for new build project

Scope of Service Provided

• Acted as CDM Co-ordinator
• Completion of Feasibility Study
• Obtaining of Planning & Building Regulation Approval
• SBEM Energy calculation
• Production of Detailed Design
• Preparation of Specification
• Management of Tendering Process
• Contract Administration
• Acted as Client Quantity Surveyor
• Applied for funding on clients behalf & managed financial spend of full project
• Management of all furniture, furnishings & ICT equipment orders

Contract Value: circa £500k

Rear Elevation

Contract Period: 27 weeks

Where the premises are licensed, or where five or more persons are employed, the responsible person must maintain records of assessments made and measures taken.
CSN have carried out fire risk assessments on behalf of responsible persons where the responsible person feels they are not competent to carry out the task themselves. Premises previously inspected include office buildings, higher education premises and the communal areas of large multi-tenanted residential developments.

We have also previously carried out fire risk assessments of hospital premises on behalf of local health authorities to the standard prescribed within Health Technical Memorandum No 86.

The CDM 2007 Regulations impose certain duties on all parties who have an involvement with any construction project within the UK to ensure health and safety is considered throughout all stages of a project.

For all non-domestic construction projects likely to involve more than 30 days or 500 person days of work, the client has a duty to appoint a suitably competent person to perform the role of the CDM Co-ordinator.

CSN Consulting LLP have acted as CDM Co-ordinator for a wide range of projects including, demolition, refurbishment and new build schemes. As CDM Co-ordinators we provide advice and assistance to clients to ensure suitable co-ordinated arrangements are implemented while planning and preparing for the construction phase. Other duties also include notifying the Health and Safety Executive, ensuring the relevant information is provided to all parties, ensuring all designers comply with their duties under the Act and also to ensure co-operation between the Principal Contractor and all Designers during any onsite changes.

As CDM Co-ordinator we are also responsible for collecting information about the project which is likely to be relevant during the future use and maintenance of the building. This information is provided to the building user in the form of the Health and Safety File.

This Feasibility Study enabled the Hall Management Committee to be successful in the first stage of an application for funding from the Big Lottery Fund and they were subsequently awarded a Development Grant to progress the application further. (See link)

St Patrick's Hall

CSN then produced a Capital Project Delivery Plan as required by the Big Lottery Fund which in conjunction with a Business Plan prepared by the Hall Management Committee was successful ahead of over 1000 similar applications in obtaining just under £100,000 worth of funding from the Big Lottery Fund from a pot of funding available under the Community Buildings programme.The Big Lottery Fund subsequently gave praise for quality of the submission from the Hall Management Committee and in particular the exceptional quality of the Capital Project Delivery Plan prepared by Mark Mulhern of our Washington Office and this quality was key to the success of the funding application as it demonstrated the strong need for the redevelopment and the professional and structured manner which the proposed project would be executed through to completion.

CSN are delighted to have been of assistance to the Hall Management Committee and look forward to continuing our successful working relationship with the Committee even further to deliver the project.

Since funding was obtained, CSN have subsequently obtained Planning Permission for the striking new Entrance Lobby and are now underway with preparing the full design package for the alteration and refurbishment project.

We also act for Tenant’s who need to respond to dilapidations schedules that have been served on the Tenant by the Landlord.

Some Tenant’s require an assessment of there future liability so they can budget for the future should they wish to end the lease, we offer a bespoke assessment that sets out the potential breaches of the lease and the costs that are likely to be tabled should the works not be undertaken by the Tenant.

• Private Client
• Provision of New Garage Block to Listed Building
• Contract Value £75,000

Scope of Services Provided

• Complete design and Contract Administration of New Garage Construction to a grade 2 listed building.
• Repair and Maintenance of external fabric to hall

Images

To follow…

Our Practice carries out Building Surveys on all types of property, from the small Terraced House to imposing Historic Buildings, Factories, Offices and Industrial Buildings.  Defects, or potential defects, are carefully examined and the cost of putting them right assessed.

The quality of past maintenance and the need for future maintenance has to be considered and items needing urgent attention identified.

Once the various defects are identified and costed they can be taken into account in relation to the proposed purchase or rental.

Often considerable savings can be made on the actual purchase or lease and a Client also made aware of future problems.

We have developed considerable experience in designing and managing building works.  Modern technology and access to online legislation and documentation allows us to efficiently prepare detailed schemes for submission and approval of the local authority.

Recent legislation has meant that specialist services are often required to supplement the traditional architectural package.  On some projects there is a need for a Party Wall Surveyor, Planning Supervisor or Disability Auditor, all of the services are provided in house.

Conservation of derelict agricultural buildings to provide new uses requires particular expertise, something that has been developed by CSN Consulting for many years.  Take a look at our projects for examples of the work we undertake.

Main aim of project was to provide an extension which complimented the main building as well as providing the changing facilities. Work consisted of underpinning existing foundations to take the additional load, new cavity wall construction with a complicated truss rafter roof.

Scope of Works

Cochrane Park Sports Pavilion

• New build
• Refurbishment

Scope of Services Provided

• Site Survey
• Feasibility Study
• Design, M & E co-ordination
• Planning & Building Regulation Application
• Preparation of Specification
• Tendering process
• Project Monitoring and Supervision
• Final Account negotiations
• Planning Supervision
• Co-Ordination of other Consultants

New Extension

Clients Comments

Contract Value £82,500

Contract Period Twelve Weeks

“Impressive and tasteful extension which has provided much needed extra changing facilities. The external decoration and lines of the extension blend in perfectly with the existing building which is full of character and a valuable asset to the University.”