COMMERCIAL OFFICE FLOORING FOR BOLUDA TOWAGE, HEAD OFFICE HESSLE

Boluda Towage runs its regional head office from Hessle, and the building was being refurbished to bring it up to date. Hull Flooring replaced the floors across both storeys, 520m² in total, working in two phases over a fortnight while the rest of the fit-out carried on around us.

Why this space matters

It's the base for Boluda's regional team, the place the day-to-day runs from and where visitors get their first sense of the company. So the brief wasn't only about the commercial office flooring that stands up to office traffic, it had to look right as well. That meant flooring that pulled the working areas of breakout zones and meeting rooms together, so the different parts of the office read as one space rather than a set of patched-together areas.

This is not just a floor...

It's the shore base for a team that spends its working life out on the Humber

The brief

The flooring was part of a wider office refit, with us handling the finishes throughout. Two floors, a mix of carpet, vinyl tile and safety vinyl depending on the area, fitted in a two-week programme. The complication was in the design, rather than a straight grid, the layout used curves, with the line between the carpet and the vinyl following a sweep across the floor and key pieces of furniture positioned to sit right on it.

Making it work

Any finish is only as good as what's underneath it, so we started by getting the subfloor sound and level with an Ardex Arditex NA latex smoothing compound. From there the finishes went down by area: Desso Essence Roots and Desso Retrace carpet tiles through the offices and meeting rooms, Tarkett iD55 LVT across the open and breakout spaces, and Tarkett Safe-T Primo safety vinyl where slip resistance mattered.

The curves took the most setting out. A curved line looks simple on a drawing, but translating that onto a real floor accurately is fiddly work, and the tolerances here were tight because the furniture was going to sit directly on the finished sweep. Our fitters marked the design out by hand, using pegs, string lines and markers to lift the curve off the drawing and pin it down on the floor before a single tile was cut.

We split the work across two phases, taking one floor at a time. That let the other trades keep going and kept the wider programme on track, so the office never had to shut down in one go.

The result

The finished floors hold the design the way it was drawn, curves and all, and the change between the carpet and the vinyl follows the sweep cleanly rather than fighting it. Working a floor at a time meant we were in and out without stopping the rest of the refit.

At a glance

• Client: Boluda Towage SMS Ltd, Hessle

• Sector: Commercial, regional head office

• Programme: two weeks, in two phases (dates to confirm)

• Scope: replacement floor finishes across two floors, part of a wider office refurbishment

• Size: 520 m2

• Timing: live refit, phased a floor at a time so other trades could continue

• Materials: Ardex Arditex NA smoothing compound; Desso Essence Roots and Desso Retrace carpet tiles; Tarkett iD55 LVT; Tarkett Safe-T Primo safety vinyl

Outcome:

Curved design set out and delivered accurately, no hold-up to other trades, handed over on time