Sheffield Children’s Hospital Snowflake Installation

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Sheffield right now as sparkling Christmas snowflakes appear on Sheffield Children’s Hospital.  Each snowflake is sponsored, raising vital funds to help Sheffield Children’s where it is needed most, including redeveloping the hospital’s Cancer and Leukaemia ward.  The ward provides treatment for cancer and blood disorders in children from babies through to 19-year-olds in South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire but sees patients from across the UK for chemotherapy, operations, and bone marrow transplants.

For several years Elev8 Access Platforms have been proud to supply the access platform used to install the snowflakes.  This year Elev8 were given the opportunity to look at other aspects of the lighting install that we had not done before.  With the expertise of our Appointed Person we were able to devise a clever installation plan that saved precious time and money, installing the snowflakes in a single weekend rather than taking several weekends as in previous years.

Elev8’s contract lifting team used their expertise to find a safe and efficient solution for the installation of the Christmas lights.   We provided a fully project managed and supervised contract lifting service for this lighting install which included:

• Design of the lifting plan by an Appointed Person
• Supplying the MEWPs and lifting attachments
• Executing and supervising the lift
• Attaching the Christmas lights to the building
• Traffic management

Some of the snowflakes are installed directly onto the hospital building and others are mounted onto metal frames which fit onto the building.  Elev8’s Project Coordinator Adam used his expertise to find an efficient solution for lifting the snowflake frames onto the building using a 400kg Cage winch fitted to our Bronto S70XR access platform.   This meant that the bulk of work fitting these lights could be done at ground level, massively speeding up the installation process.   The Elev8 team installed the snowflakes onto the frames, lifted them and attached them to the building.  The hospital’s estates team did the final checks and connected the lights.  You can see our contract lifting team in action in the video at the bottom of this page.

Whilst this part of the installation was happening three other Elev8 teams were busy installing Christmas lights on other parts of the Children’s Hospital with our Palfinger P640, Bronto S35EM and Palfinger P300KS MEWPs providing safe access.

Our thanks for the team at The Children’s Hospital Charity for being a pleasure to work with.  And of course a huge thank you to all the businesses, schools, community groups, families, and individuals who have sponsored snowflakes.

This Christmas, The Children’s Hospital Charity has lots of fund raising initiatives with money raised going towards funding new facilities, lifesaving equipment, pioneering research as well as some very worthy projects at the hospital.

The team at Elev8 wish all the Children & Staff at Sheffield Children’s Hospital a happy Christmas.  We hope that the children using the hospital enjoy their Christmas snowflakes.

If you have a project that involves lifting or work at height, and you would like our team to design a safe and efficient contract lifting plan please contact us for more details.