Planning a floor around a running production line

Replacing a floor in an empty building is a scheduling exercise. Replacing one under a line that cannot stop is a different problem, and it is decided long before anyone arrives with a grinder. The constraint is rarely the resin. It is dust, odour, access, cure time and the boundary between the work and the process.

Phasing and the shape of the shutdown

The first decision is whether the work happens in a single shutdown or in phases beside live production. A single shutdown is cheaper in labour and gives the best result, because there are fewer joints and no daily make good. It requires the site to release the whole area, including the time for preparation, laying and cure, and cure is the part most often underestimated: a floor that is walkable is not yet a floor that will take a pallet truck or a chemical spill.

Phased work trades that simplicity for continuity. The area is divided into bays, each taken, prepared, laid and returned in sequence. Bay boundaries should be set at existing joints, at changes of level or under equipment wherever possible, so that the cold joints between phases land where they are least visible and least loaded. Weekend and night windows suit phased work, provided that the building can be brought to the right temperature during that window.

Separation from the process

Preparation generates fine dust, and resin generates odour during application and early cure. Neither is acceptable near open product. Separation is physical and mechanical: sealed screens or temporary walls to the full height, taped floor to screen junctions, negative pressure in the work area with extraction to outside, and vacuum shrouded grinding rather than open blasting where the boundary is short.

Air movement should be checked rather than assumed. A screen that looks solid is useless if the building's own ventilation pulls air from the work area into the hall. Where extraction is routed outside, the discharge point should be away from intakes and from any neighbouring property.

Odour is also a matter of choosing the system. Some polyurethane and PU cement products are markedly lower in odour than solvent containing alternatives, and this can be a legitimate selection criterion in an occupied food plant.

Temperature, cure and the return to service

Resin systems cure to a schedule that depends on temperature. Below the stated minimum, cure slows or stalls and the final properties are not reached. In a chilled room or a cold store this is the dominant planning constraint, and the answer is temporary heating, a system formulated for low temperature, or both. High temperature shortens the pot life instead, which limits the area a team can lay at once.

Return to service should be stated in three steps, since these are different times: foot traffic, mechanical traffic, and full chemical resistance. Cleaning with chemicals or hot water before full cure is one of the more common causes of early damage.

What to agree before the programme is fixed

• The exact area released per phase, and who moves and returns the equipment in it.
• The cure times for foot traffic, wheeled traffic and chemical exposure at the temperature the building will actually be.
• The position of every phase joint, agreed on a drawing.
• The containment method, extraction route and discharge point.
• Power, water, lighting and waste arrangements during the window.
• Who signs the area back into production, and against what checks.
• A contingency for a phase that runs late, because the next one depends on it.