Site Cabins

What we supply, and how to size it

Site accommodation is usually specified late and sized by guesswork, which is how sites end up with a canteen nobody can fit in at eleven o’clock and a drying room full of wet clothes that never dry. These are the four units we supply most often, and the things worth getting right before they arrive.

Site offices

Offices for the site team, ranging from a single unit for a small project to linked and stacked arrangements with meeting space for a principal contractor running multiple trades.

The detail that matters most is not floor area but what the office has to do. A unit hosting progress meetings, inductions and visitor briefings needs a table people can sit around, somewhere to display drawings, and enough separation that a phone call is possible while an induction runs. Power, data and heating should be specified against actual occupancy rather than the unit’s nominal capacity.

Position matters too. An office sited where the manager can see the gate is worth more than one tucked behind the compound, and it should sit clear of the main vehicle route rather than beside it.

Welfare units

Welfare provision is a legal requirement, not an amenity, and the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations set out what has to be available from day one — not once the project is established.

In practice that means washing facilities with hot and cold water, sanitary provision, somewhere to take a break and eat that is warm and not the back of a van, drying facilities for wet clothing, and secure storage for personal belongings. Mobile welfare units cover the earliest phase before services are connected; static units take over once the site is established.

The usual failure is sizing for the average headcount rather than the peak. A unit adequate for eight people is inadequate the week the groundworks and steel teams overlap, and that is the week it will be inspected.

Storage containers

Secure containers for tools, materials and plant. The security value is straightforward: material inside a locked steel container is not material sitting in the open, and most opportunistic loss on a construction site is of things that were never put away.

Worth thinking about beyond the lock. Containers need positioning where a vehicle can reach them without crossing a pedestrian route, on ground that will still take the weight in February. COSHH storage has its own requirements for ventilation, separation and signage, and should be specified as such rather than being the same container with a label on it.

Where a site has repeated losses, container placement within sight of the gate or a camera position does more than a heavier padlock.

Portable toilets

Standalone toilet units for sites where plumbed provision is not available or not yet connected, and for locations away from the main compound where walking distance would otherwise cost real time.

Two things are routinely underestimated. The first is servicing frequency, which should be set against actual use rather than a standard schedule — an under-serviced unit stops being used and the problem moves somewhere worse. The second is distance: provision at the far end of a long site is provision people will not use, and on larger sites units need distributing rather than clustering at the gate.

Specifying it properly

Tell us the peak headcount rather than the average, the programme phases and when they overlap, what services are available and when they connect, and the site layout. We will size and position the provision against that.

Where units are on site out of hours they also need to be considered as a security matter — occupied welfare units are a target, and empty ones are somewhere to sleep. This usually sits alongside mobile patrols or site security. See our full range of construction site services or get in touch on 020 4602 3974.