About the Project

Repair and renovation of grade II*-listed lido, completed in 76 weeks.

Serious limitations on a site can break the project or make the construction manager. On this scheme to restore a dilapidated 200-year-old lido that had closed 40 years before, with the only land access to the tight site being a 1.2m-wide footpath, and with virtually all plant, materials and equipment having to be brought in by river, Mark Tregelles was the inspirational driver of project success.

The river – crammed with punts, canoes, paddleboards and a pair of summer tourist cruisers that could not be passed on the width of the river – was key. Mark had to balance the inflow of materials and the outflow of site waste that could be handled by a barge that could take no more than five tonnes a trip, with a maximum of six trips a day.

His lightweight spider crane could lift only a tonne at a time, so heavier plant had to be able to track off the barge onto site. Suitable plant was extremely difficult to find, forcing Mark to rethink how virtually everything would be constructed. All the temporary works shuttering systems for the concrete pool shell, for example, had to be demounted and lifted in with excavators. Amid all this, his ability to get all subcontractors to work out of sequence to suit the problematic logistics and to pull together without arguing about which kit was whose was a triumph of collaborative endeavour.