Crosslane is a student accommodation real estate company specialising in acquiring, developing and managing purpose-built student accommodation assets across the UK and Europe.
Over the last ten years Crosslane has established a proven track record, delivering more than 7000 PBSA beds across 7 countries and is making significant progress on expanding its future development pipeline with a further 25 developments comprising 6,000 beds for delivery by 2025.
Adam Bennett is a Senior Project Manager and is responsible for delivering small project works in operational buildings throughout the Crosslane estate. He explains, “The projects I manage are valued up to £500K, and include upgrading fire safety, increasing energy efficiency and generally ensuring our developments are performing at their best for the benefit of the students that live in them.”
Trinity View, a new-build development in central Coventry was completed in September 2019. It is managed by Prime Student Living, part of the Crosslane Group. It boasts a roof terrace, cinema and gym along with 459 en-suite cluster flat bedrooms and 155 self-contained apartments. Situated just a few minutes from the train station and a short walk to the Coventry campus it is proving very popular with both Warwick and Coventry University students.
Following a review and subsequent future-proofing advice from their insurance company, Adam was tasked with installing some additional safety measures to ensure hobs within the kitchens couldn’t be left on inadvertently and fire doors couldn’t be wedged open. Primarily a safety precaution, but also an energy efficiency measure. “I was looking for high quality, practical solutions. In a previous role I had experience of Prefect Controls, who are better known for their heating controls, but I recalled they provided safety equipment too, I was very comfortable using their products. HobSafe was perfect for the kitchens – affordable, reliable, easy to install and robust enough to cope with vigorous use!”
40 Amp double gang Hobsafe timer and 30 Amp single gang Hobsafe timer
HobSafe is designed to prevent hobs from being left on if the person preparing food is distracted. It is installed between the power supply and the hob, usually next to the main cooker switch. When the button is pressed the power connection is made and the hob will operate in the usual way. The in-built timer can be set to 15, 20, 30 or 45 minutes and when the time elapses the hob is switched off, if more time is needed the cook simply presses the button again.
The DorWatchers are a magnetic device fitted to both the door and the frame, typically on kitchen and fire doors in student accommodation. If the door remains open for more than a minute an alarm will sound, alerting people in the locale, and prompting them to close the door to prevent the drift of smoke from cooking to corridors where fire alarms could be activated.
Adam continues, “the installation of the 333 HobSafe units and 95 DorWatchers was carried out very efficiently and on-programme with no major disruption for the tenants, and the fact that I haven’t had any of the site teams contact me suggests all units are working and performing as intended!”
