Curtain walling, windows and doors, Bletchley rail depot

Bletchley depot was refurbished while it carried on working. Our part was the glazing package: sixty-five aluminium windows, six doors and a single curtain wall screen, fitted into a building that had to keep functioning around us. The wider refurbishment was the main contractor's; we were brought in for the windows and doors on the back of work we had already done for them.

The doors are the part that varies most. Automatic entrance doors at the two main ways in, fire exit doors where the escape route needed them, and heavy-duty commercial hardware throughout, specified for an industrial building rather than an office. There are fire rated windows in the package as well, and an internal reception screen, which is the sort of thing that never appears in a photograph of a facade but takes as long to get right as anything on the outside.

A rail depot is a strict site, and that is the honest headline of this job. Nobody goes anywhere near it without completing the site induction first, and it is a long one. Full PPE is enforced at all times on and around live rail infrastructure, and every part of the work has to be delivered to the compliance standards a rail environment demands. It changes how you programme a job: access is booked rather than assumed, and the paperwork is part of the build rather than an afterthought.

The finish detail worth mentioning is the flashings. Custom aluminium flashings were powder coated to match the window frames right through the package, so the junctions between new glazing and existing structure read as one thing rather than as a set of patches.