City office, Tilburg | Three disciplines on tight schedule

Renovation demolition, asbestos remediation and total demolition

The renovation of Tilburg's City Office 1 required careful preparation. Several parts of the building, such as the former City Shop and Council Chamber, were completely demolished. The rest of the building was gutted and the asbestos removed. Gubbels Demolition and Asbestos Remediation took care of these tasks.

Gubbels Demolition and Asbestos Remediation (part of Gubbels Companies) regularly operates in Tilburg, and that worked in its favor for the work on Tilburg's city offices. She knew the scope of work. To prepare the nine floors of the city office for renovation into a new city hall with stores, Gubbels removed interior walls, ceilings, window frames, carpeting and cement screeds, tiles, stairs, installations, natural stone façade panels, insulation, elevators and a ground floor.

Tight planning

"Execution time was tight," says project manager Martien Gubbels. "That made tight planning necessary. Broadly speaking, you can divide our activities into preliminary demolition, asbestos remediation, bare demolition and total demolition. We started with pre-demolition on the ninth floor. As soon as it had descended to the floor below, asbestos removal started here as quickly as possible, followed by bare demolition. In the process, our professionals - demolishers, asbestos cleaners and machinists - made long days."

All demolition materials were separated.

Temporary steel structure

A technical challenge was the ground floor of the high-rise building. To eliminate the difference in height with the surrounding ground level, it had to be lowered one meter. "This required a responsible, temporary support," Gubbels explains. "For this, our engineer created the structural drawing and submitted it to the project's structural engineer. After approval, we prefabricated, assembled and later disassembled the temporary support structure."

Wooden walk-through tunnel

The limited space around the building especially required ingenuity. The facade panels that had to be removed were not allowed to endanger the safety of shoppers. Gubbels: "For this we built a temporary tunnel 65 m long and 2.5 m wide. Coming up with solutions like this brings out the best in us. We regularly solve problems that our clients had not (yet) foreseen. "There was also the Tilburg fair that controlled the entire city center for a fortnight, including the beer hall that barricaded access to the project. "We happened to have experienced that before during the demolition of the adjacent building. So we were also prepared for this surprise."

Reuse

Much attention was paid to the reuse of the released materials. System ceilings, walls, kitchens and more went on sale. The concrete rubble was recycled into gravel by GRZN, subsidiary of the Gubbels Companies.