Royal British Legion Village, Aylesford

Here at Howes SE Ltd, we had the great privilege to work with The Royal British Legion on three sites, supplying and installing a total of 68 door sets within their villages. This project consisted of 48 flat entrance doors, 12 stairwell doors and 8 bin stores which were in need of being replaced due to the doors being old, damaged and non-compliant for fire doors in a residential property. 

There were a few challenges that came with this project. As The Royal British Legion offers an array of accommodation, including nursing care, assisted living and veterans’ housing, it was imperative that the residents were disturbed as little as possible and that all door sets were installed in a timely manner.

Further consideration was also required when installing the bin store doors, as these had taken a beating over the years from bins having been moved around and bashing into the doors. We were tasked with finding a solution to ensuring the fire rating and structure of the doors were not compromised, and that the doors would withstand the test of time.

These challenges allowed us the opportunity to work on a larger scale project, and have more fire door engineers on-site, working in collaboration with one another.

To ensure the door sets were installed on time, we dedicated 4 fire door installers to the project over the course of 3 weeks, allowing for each installer to have additional support at times where needed. This method, paired with only working within a pre-determined installation schedule throughout the day, ensured resident disturbance was kept to a minimum.

To ensure the residents were disturbed as little as possible, appointments were booked to install the flat entrance doors and no work was authorised to be carried out before 9 am or after 4.30 pm.

As a result of the discussions around the bin store doors with the manufacturers, we installed additional primary tested leaf protection, ensuring that should the bins hit the leaf there would be minimal to no damage, meaning these doors would withstand the test of time and would not have their fire rating compromised. 

Once the decisions were made regarding working hours, appointments and reinforcing the bin store doors, the project ran smoothly and without resistance from either the residents, employees or client.

We were able to complete the project on time and on budget and received a great response from the client.