Rutland Water: Two New Changing Places By RISE

There are other requirements, such as non-slip flooring and privacy screens, and all RISE installations come with a shower fitted as standard.

With Changing Places toilets, disabled people and their families can travel in confidence, knowing that they can safely, cleanly and easily attend to their health and hygiene needs. Without them, people with complex health conditions are left with a few stark options: stay at home (or make only short trips), sit in soiled continence products, or risk being cared for somewhere unclean or unsafe, such as on a public toilet floor.

Thankfully, central government has made funding available to install more of these vital services. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Changing Places Fund opened for applications in 2020, and over the past 3 years has seen the number of Changing Places in the UK balloon to over 2,200. Anglian Water took advantage of the funding on offer to cover the costs of installing these two pods, and as a result, Rutland Water is now both more accessible and a better prospect for outings, day trips and holidays for both locals and the wider general public.

Health & Safety – Always At The Fore

Every job RISE works on has its own set of quirks that makes it unique. However, these installations at Rutland Water perhaps had a few more than the average!

As a responsible and respected main contractor, RISE already has extremely mature Health & Safety processes, procedures and policies in place. Our internal teams carry out our own site surveys, we audit and risk assess all sites prior to the commencement of any works and put in place specific health and safety plans in place for each element of each job we undertake, from breaking ground to delivery and lift to final install.

As a mixed-use site with constant public access during working hours, the need for consideration for the local conservation areas, and to ensure the primary function of the reservoir (ie. the supply of potable water) was not put at risk, the client required us to comply with additional and rigorous health and safety checks which were reviewed jointly at each stage of the process. These additional requirements were vital to the success of the project, and included:

• A requirement for hand-dug inspection holes at each proposed site, to determine the exact location of utility lines and prevent any unintended outages, or possibly injury to workers or the public
• A clear and agreed plan for how works would be separated from the general public, with RISE delegated the responsibility to determine the best course of action based on its extensive experience
• A detailed plan for the delivery of each unit, including how the Hiab trucks would be shepherded on site, where they would be placed, the footing they would sit on and detailed plans for rescue should workers become suspended from the crane
• A comprehensive and detailed schedule of works that covered what would happen on site and when chronologically.

As with any other job, we were more than happy to meet the client’s expectations to ensure they had the confidence they needed to allow the works to go ahead as planned. Our experienced site management team worked closely with both Anglian Water and our subcontractors to ensure that these plans were both in place and properly monitored and adhered to for the duration of works, resulting in a successful, safe and happy site.

In addition to this, both installations fell within local development plans, meaning their designs needed to complement and blend in with both existing buildings and the local habitat, while not impinging on the views, light or impacting on local residents.

As all of our modular pods follow a fixed design with scope for finish customisations, compliance with planning regulations was easy enough; our proposed plans featured a cedral lap weatherboard cladding for the shell of the building which, when paired with their small scale and uniform design, passed planning scrutiny with flying colours.

Rutland’s Open!

It was an absolute pleasure to work on these two pods with Anglian Water. Our mission at RISE is to make our public spaces as accessible as they can be for everyone, regardless of their individual needs. Rutland Water’s now open to so many more disabled visitors and their families, meaning they can benefit from all the positives that the great outdoors has to offer. Happy days!