A project spanning over a two-year period
The University of Reading is one of the UK’s leading universities with 17,000 students and is globally renowned for its teaching and research.
The world-class University has invested over £40 million in refurbishing and redeveloping the library, a project which started in 2016 and was completed in autumn 2019. The library needed to remain operational to students throughout the construction works.
Refurbishing three floors of the University’s library
Crown Workspace won the contract to carry out the series of moves to enable University of Reading to refurbish three floors of the library.
The project was completed in six phases of moves over a two-year period. The contract included planning, project managing, sequentially packing and relocating 25,400 linear metres of books to other levels of the library and 3,800 linear metres of periodicals into temporary storage in the Bodleian Library storage facility in Swindon. Construction services company, ISG then completed the refurbishment before our team returned all items to their rightful homes.
Our team also dismantled and rebuilt 4,000 shelves. In extension to the original contract, Crown was asked to dismantle, store and then reinstate nine large quiet study pods requiring a team of fitters. The library pods were temporarily stored at Crown’s 24/7 secure storage facility in London.
The services provided included:
- Project management
- Sequential packing and unpacking
- Physical relocation of books and periodicals
- Dismantling and rebuilding shelves
- Dismantling and reinstating study pods
- Secure temporary storage of study pods
Find out more about our Specialist Library Relocation services here
“Steve and his team worked with us to facilitate the moves at the library project – reorganising the book stacks across 3 floors at the start and end of each construction phase was a sizable challenge, but one that Crown was able to achieve.”
Richard Slade, ISG