It hosts what are arguably the cleanest offices in Birmingham – but that isn’t stopping Brindleyplace from striving even harder to stay on top of its game.
By day, office workers are going about their daily routine in the most luxurious of city office settings. But at night ‘steam clean’ workers are coming out to play – and it’s fair to say that Five Brindleyplace is scrubbing up nicely.
A giant mobile crane – complete with fire-engine style retractable stabilisers used to lift the whole vehicle off the ground – is being used to give the landmark building a sauna-style spruce-up that’s so subtle even its own workforce might not notice the difference the next morning. Watch our steam clean video here:
During the night, the shadow of the crane’s arm created by the super-bright portable lights has created the impression of a Hollywood film set on the Brunswick Street side of the building.
But Steven Spielberg isn’t anywhere to be seen! Instead, technicians are using steam heated to 150C to gently lift the dirt out of the buff brickwork without damaging either the bricks or the rendering.
A worker told Westside BID: “The whole job will take about two weeks, with teams working until 3am. The idea is to steam the dirt out of the bricks with no damage to them whatsoever.
“By working through the night, nobody notices what we are doing but the much cleaner new look should then last for another seven to ten years.”
As an industrial city, many of Birmingham’s buildings were constructed with dark coloured materials to hide the grime.
Drive around town now and you will see many 21st century buildings with buff-coloured bricks which, if not maintained, will all soon carry dirty streaks of grime.
The Five Brindleyplace makeover follows the early September announcement that Praxis were the new owners of the whole estate thanks to a £125 million deal, as reported by Westside World here.
Argent created Brindleyplace after acquiring the derelict land 30 years ago in 1993. Today, the estate has more than one million square feet of office space across all 11 buildings.
Complete with attractions including Ikon Gallery and the National Sea Life Centre as well as the Crescent Theatre and Hilton Garden Inn Hotel, the estate reportedly attracts some four million visitors per year.
Praxis said it planned to invest ‘significant capital’ into environmental, social, and governance factors as well as the ‘decarbonisation’ of the Brindleyplace buildings.
