Fordbridge Fire Station

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Client: Surrey County Council

Sector: Commercial

Scope: Drylining | Partitions | Suspended Ceilings | Bulkheads | Passive Fire Protection | Fire stopping

Location: Staines Road West (A308), Ashford, Surrey

Overview

Fordbridge is Spelthorne’s main fire station. It replaced the ageing Staines and Sunbury stations with one purpose-built base, sited to keep response times down across the borough.

The building is a working emergency services facility. It includes:

• A large appliance bay
• 10 dormitories with en-suite showers
• Kitchen, dining and rest areas, plus offices
• Kit, drying and locker rooms
• Community meeting and training rooms
• Accommodation for South East Coast Ambulance Service crews
• A drill tower and rescue house for live training

Every one of these spaces needed robust partitions, clean ceilings and properly certified fire compartmentation. That was GA’s job.

Our scope

GA worked as the interiors subcontractor to Lakehouse from early 2018. We took the building from an open steel frame to finished, fire-safe internal spaces.

• Drylining and partitions. Metal stud partitions and wall linings through the living, office, training and operational areas.
• Suspended ceilings and bulkheads. Grid ceilings to corridors and rooms, with plasterboard bulkheads and soffits for services and rooflights.
• Passive fire protection. Fire stopping and linear joint seals across the ground floor, from the gym to the operational rooms. Every seal was given a unique ID and photographed before and after. Each one was logged by room and size, then signed off with the client.
• Design changes. We priced and delivered more than 30 variation orders as the client’s needs changed during construction.

That documented, seal-by-seal approach to fire stopping is now standard practice at GA. It’s the same discipline behind our FIRAS-approved passive fire protection service today.

Challenges

A changing brief. The client’s requirements moved substantially during construction. GA’s long-standing project managers turned each change into a priced, documented variation order quickly. That kept the programme on track.

Fire safety in a fire station. A building that trains firefighters has to get compartmentation right. We recorded fire stopping seal by seal, with photo evidence and signed schedules. That gave the main contractor and building control a complete audit trail.

A live, multi-trade site. Our partitions and ceilings had to work around mechanical and electrical services, steelwork and rooflights. Our specialist teams worked in sequence with the other trades so each area was closed up and handed over in turn.

Continuity through contractor change. Lakehouse’s construction business changed ownership in 2018, while the build was under way. GA stayed on site throughout and kept delivering to the same standard.

Outcome

Fordbridge Fire Station opened on 21 August 2019. It now serves the whole of Spelthorne from one modern base, shared with the ambulance service and open to the community.

For GA, it showed what we bring to public-sector and emergency services buildings: dependable interiors, fire safety we can prove, and a team that adapts when the brief changes.

Planning a public-sector or blue-light project? Talk to GA Interiors: info@gainteriorsltd.com | 0203 011 1778