The Sheffield College Hillsborough Campus, is based in the north of the city offering a mixture of studying, training and recreational facilities over a 4 hectare site. Overseeing the whole campus is Buildings Manager Trevor Fox, who also has in his remit the buildings and grounds of the nearby University Technical College Sheffield (UTC). To maintain the two synthetic surfaces within the grounds the college enlists the help of Replay Maintenance.
Used Monday to Friday as part of the curriculum, and at evenings and weekends for sports clubs and community use, the usage of the synthetic pitches has increased significantly over the last two years.
In line with regulations, the full size artificial pitch on The Sheffield College grounds is included in the FA’s 3G Football Turf Pitch register – which in turn enables the site to host competitive games. When the registration was up for renewal, Trevor looked to outside contractors, “because of the specialist nature of the work involved, we would normally outsource all maintenance for the synthetic surfaces. For this renewal we invited 5 local contractors to tender for the work and Replay came out on top. They came in; inspected and then carried out the remedial work to get us back onto the approved register. Another part of the FA registration process is to have a regular maintenance programme, and Replay won that contract too.”
Replay have been contracted to carry out brushing on a weekly basis, and operate their Revive process six times a year. Added extras within the contract means Trevor can utilise the Revive+ 3 day process once a year as well as the repair services when necessary.
The other synthetic pitch is a small multi-use area on the rooftop of UTC Sheffield. Because of its city centre location, the rooftop pitch solves the issue of space and provides an enclosed, netted surface predominately for 5-a-side football. Trevor again, “The UTC Sheffield pitch has been open for about 2 years and only sees around 8-10 hours of play a week so maintenance on it had been minimal. However, we noticed that the pile was becoming flattened and so, after obtaining the contract for the full size pitch, we asked Replay to come and assess. The location of the pitch meant Replay had to look at the accessibility for their machinery but they came in with a can-do attitude and a price which saw the job added to their existing contract.” The rooftop pitch has so far been cleaned once, with the plan of doing this four times a year.
Final word from Trevor, “To date, everything with Replay has been smooth and professional and we have no complaints with the services they’re providing. We’ve also made good use of their online Portal facility which enables us to see the paperwork, site visit reports etc from their work.”