Hoist Bells

At the Pontoon Dock site, we are constantly trying to improve the respect of the community. We believe that we have the obligation to respect our neighbours and to provide the highest standards in terms of safety and working conditions.

Using new tools, we can improve the image of construction and avoid disturbance to the community. As we are close to the DLR station, our site is one of the numerous windows of the construction industry and we could not let the workforce shout in the buildings and outside to call the hoists.

To overcome this, we installed hoist bells to each floor of the building. When an operative is in the building and needs to go up or down, they just need to press the bell and a ring bell with light signal will appear in the hoist to make the hoist driver aware of the request. The hoist driver can see that someone is calling for the hoist at a specific level and operate the hoist to respond to the request.

This system is known and proposed by companies, but is expensive, costing around £500 per level.

Our system has been designed and built on site. The idea came from one of our operatives who said we could build this system by ourselves. We are building three buildings of 14 floors and it could have cost us £30,000 if we would have asked for a standard product provided by a supplier. Our own system cost us only £500!

Advantages of the hoist bells include:

• Avoids the workforce shouting.
• Reduces the noise on site.
• Respects the community.