A hotel, a restaurant or a bar is a building that earns its money in the evenings and at weekends, which is exactly when most contractors want to go home. The kitchen draws more power than the rest of the building together, the public areas have to evacuate safely with the lights off and music on, the guests expect the Wi-Fi to work, and the licensing authority expects the CCTV to be running. We work in hotels, restaurants, bars, cafes and venues across Birmingham and the West Midlands, around service.
What a hospitality site usually needs from us
- Commercial kitchens: three-phase supplies for ranges, ovens, fryers, dishwashers and extraction, with the isolation and the fire suppression interface the kitchen designer specifies, and the emergency stop at the exit.
- Front of house: lighting schemes with scene control, power for the bar and the tills, the data for the ordering system and the card terminals, and the music and screens.
- Guest rooms: refurbishment wiring, bedside power and USB, lighting control, the TV and the Wi-Fi access point in the corridor.
- Fire detection to the category the fire risk assessment calls for, which in a building where people sleep is usually a high one, with interfaces to the kitchen suppression, the ventilation and the door holders.
- Emergency lighting that works in a dimmed dining room and a dark bar, which means maintained fittings and exit signs chosen so that they do not spoil the room.
- CCTV covering entrances, the bar, the tills, the cellar and the car park, with retention and signage set so that the footage is lawful when the police or the licensing officer ask for it.
- Access control on staff doors, the cellar, the office and the stock room, and door entry for deliveries.
- Networking that keeps the tills, the kitchen screens, the card terminals and the guest Wi-Fi apart from one another and all of them working.
How we work in a trading venue
We plan the work around service: mornings in a restaurant, the quiet days of the week in a hotel, and the overnight close for anything that needs the power off. A kitchen is handed back working and clean before prep starts. In a hotel, rooms are taken out of sale in blocks and handed back finished rather than half the floor being unusable for a month. Noise, dust and the route our engineers take through the building are agreed with the manager beforehand.
The inspections you will face
The fire officer, the environmental health officer, the licensing authority and your insurer each ask to see something: the fire alarm log book, the emergency lighting test record, the electrical certificates, the CCTV signage and retention. We keep all of those in order, write to you before a test falls due and leave the records in one file so that whoever is on duty can produce them.
Where we do this
Venues across Birmingham, the hotels around the NEC in Solihull, Coventry and the rest of the West Midlands, and for an operator with several sites, wherever the sites are.