Browne’s Service Station is a family run petrol station and convenience store on Church Street in Kilcock, Co. Kildare, founded three generations ago and still a daily stop for locals and passing trade: fuel, Frank and Honest coffee, food to go and a car wash, seven days a week. Now trading as Browne’s Centra, the garage has been through a full site redevelopment: the building extended substantially, the whole interior rebuilt, and a new car park and car washes outside. Closing for the duration was never an option. PP Construction, as main contractor, managed the entire project from start to finish and carried out the building work with our own tradesmen, all around a live business trading from temporary premises on site the whole way through.
Project at a glance
Location
Church Street, Kilcock, Co. Kildare
Project
Full site redevelopment: building extension, interior refit, new car park and car washes
Client
Browne’s Centra, Kilcock (PP Construction as main contractor)
During the works
Garage kept trading from temporary premises on site
Keeping the doors open
A garage that has served the same community for three generations cannot simply shut for a few months. Regular customers, fuel deliveries and staff all depend on it staying open. So before the main works started, temporary premises were set up on site and the business moved into them. Customers kept coming in for fuel and the shop while, a few metres away, the building was stripped back and extended. Planning the job around a live business shaped everything that followed. PP Construction managed the site from start to finish: how it was fenced and kept safe, where deliveries went, how every trade was sequenced, and the order in which each part of the building was tackled, so that the garage never had to close.
Steel, props and a bigger building
The extension was substantial, and that meant heavy structural work. Our own team stripped the building back, propped the existing structure throughout, and brought in new steel beams and columns to carry the enlarged building while walls came out and the steel went in. The photos below show the stage most customers never see: the interior stripped to the slab, steel bolted up, props everywhere and the new footprint taking shape.
A new interior from front to back
With the structure in place, our team rebuilt the interior from front to back. The kitchen was extended to give the coffee and food to go side of the business the space it needed, the stores and office were rebuilt, and new tiling and new ceilings went in throughout, with the shop fit-out completed alongside the client’s own shopfitter. The result is a bigger, brighter building that works far better for staff and customers than the one it replaced.
Outside: car park and car washes
The works did not stop at the walls. The whole site was reworked around the new building, with groundworks, a new tarmac car park with line marking and new car wash bays, carried out by specialist contractors under our programme and management, so the site now flows properly from forecourt to shop to car wash and back out.
What the work involved
- Main contractor: full management of the site redevelopment from start to finish
- Temporary premises set up on site so the garage could keep trading
- Substantial extension to the existing building
- Structural steel beams and columns, with temporary propping throughout
- Entire interior stripped out and rebuilt
- Kitchen extended
- New tiling and ceilings throughout
- New stores and office
- New car park and car washes (groundworks, tarmac and car wash installation by specialist contractors under our management; part of the shop fit-out by the client’s own shopfitter)
Building work for businesses that cannot close
Browne’s is typical of the commercial work PP Construction has done since 2004: a family business that had to keep serving its customers, a hard deadline and a building that has to be bigger and better at the end of it. We have carried out the same kind of extension and fit-out work for pubs, shops, cafés and department store concessions, including Brother Hubbard in Ranelagh and Fagan’s Pub in Moynalvey. See more on our clients page.
Extending or refitting a commercial premises?
Talk to Paul about the building, the deadline and how the business needs to keep running while the work is done.