In Spring 2018 members of what was to become the HIGHLIFE team began a short job on Conwy castle as sub contracting sole-traders for Sally Stratchey Historic Conservation. The task was de-vegetation, re-consolidation and re-pointing of the murlons at the very top of the North East tower of the castle. A slow moving scaffold, awkward access and requirement for a safer system of work was presenting challenges for the project managers and made rope access an obvious solution to their their difficulties. As time on the castle progressed, the rope access teams competence, efficiency and professionalism spoke for itself. The project managers at CADW realised the value of having a skilled rope access team on site and our work load rapidly increased from a week to months. By the end of the summer their trust in our efficiency of access over scaffolding and our attention to detail and quality of our work meant that they felt confident in our ability to undertake large scopes of work and deliver results within the time frames allowed.
They slimmed down the rest of the scaffold masons and left the Rope Access team to manage the final stages of the job which included the entire East Barbican, the Mill Gate and the whole of the North East tower of the castle. During the course of the job we had the pleasure of re-consolidating all of the North towers castellated tops and re pointing a large surface area of the faces below. Working on such an old building wasn't the only challenge we faced but managing our rope systems in a safe way for an 8 person team to work both independently and systematically was something which we thoroughly enjoyed overcoming.
See below for some pictures from the work.