Everyman Theatre, Liverpool

We were engaged by Gilbert Ash Builders to provide the lift element of this very prestigious project after being involved in a competitive tendering process competing with a number of the multi-national lift companies as well as other independents. Our remit was to provide a 1000kg through car passenger lift with glass doors, a rear of house 1350kg through car goods lift, two small 100kg service lifts, and a 3 stop high specification disabled platform.

The original Everyman Theatre was totally demolished and was to be rebuilt using funding from the arts council, not only was the building to be state of the art as regards the theatre going experience itself, the care taken in the overall design and aesthetics of the building was always intended to leave nobody in any doubt that rather than just being built as a functional building, every material used, construction method, and final finish had been carefully selected to add to the sensory experience for theatre users also.

This attention to detail carried through to our own remit with the front of house lift, which was eventually finished in a brushed black stainless steel, with large glass panel doors, the glass itself being a wired glass type with wires running at 45 degrees, and the specific details going as far as to ensure the wire in the glass with the straight run were all to be ran in a specific direction throughout. Lift car lighting is provided by Bespoke LED lamps with a copper reflector that are used throughout the theatre.

Due to the floor plan throughout the theatre there are 9 floor levels in total although several are at half levels, which is why a through car was necessary posing a challenge to ourselves not usually faced on standard installations,both to ensure floor to floor speed patterns between short floors are set efficiently and comfortable to the user, and also making it necessary to keep the fixing method of each entrance (visible from the opposite entrance) as tidy as possible. Due to the finish of the shaft being in bare concrete, and visible through the doors and glass cladding we were instructed to ensure no markings used in laying out the shaft, would be visible after fitting our equipment, all of which was finished in a black gloss finish, including shaft trunking.

There is further front of house access provided by ourselves by means of a high specification fully enclosed wheelchair platform with variable frequency drive and full battery recovery system in the event of a power failure.

The project was again finished on budget and on schedule, with both the customer and ourselves very happy that the final result has proved worthy of the many hours spent at the beginning of the project ensuring this was the case.