With Christmas fast approaching, it’s time to get festive and start thinking about present, food and fancy lights to drape over all surfaces in your house. Although, if you manage a construction site, you will also have another thing to worry about, shutting your site down for the Christmas period.
Most construction sites all over Britain are expected to close down for the longest period at this time of year. And as it should, the festive break is always welcomed and well deserved for anyone who has worked outside during the colder, wetter months. However, failure to securely shut down your construction site and your Christmas festivities could be rudely interrupted.
If you would like to know how to successfully shut down your site over the Christmas period, read on.
Don’t stress during Christmas
If you make sure to shut your construction site correctly and tick all of the boxes on your checklist before leaving you will feel better over the Christmas period you have off. A rushed shutdown will leave you stressed and can prevent you from having a fully-relaxed Christmas. No one wants to have to dash out one bite into their Yorkshire pudding to deal with a disaster!
Keep your site safe and secure
You should always make sure your site is secure when locking it up, but especially when you are locking up the site for Christmas. No construction site is going to be completely impenetrable, if someone wants to break in to a construction site and cause damage, they will also be able to do so no matter how secure your site is. It is your job to make it harder for them. If you make access hard for your unwanted guests but investing in access control systems and with a bit of luck they will lose interest.
Remove expensive items
You will never be able to remove all of the valuable items in a construction site, but by removing as much equipment as you can, you will prevent thieves from being able to take them and maybe even deter thieves from trying to break in there in the first place. If removing your bigger items is impractical and they do need to stay, make sure that they are out of sight, tucked away and under lock and key.
Think of the weather
UK weather is unpredictable and fowl at the best of times, December weather can be chilly and wet, you can expect gale force winds to freezing temperatures. You might not think that the weather will affect your construction site that much, but wind and rain can cause equipment to fall over and cause loads of damaged if not prepared for. Make sure stacked items are secure, equipment that could easily be blown over is moved to a sheltered spot and vulnerable equipment is safely out of harm’s way.