Lift and Shift Sunderland

Lift and shift in Sunderland and across Tyne and Wear

We provide lift and shift in Sunderland for engineering firms, riverside fabricators, hospitals, colleges and offices across Wearside. The work is heavy or awkward items moved where a crane cannot reach or cannot do the final placing: switchgear into a switchroom, a chiller out of a plant room, a generator down to a basement, a machine repositioned inside a factory, a process skid set on a new plinth, or laboratory equipment moved between rooms.

From our base in Darlington we cover Sunderland, Pallion, Southwick, Doxford, Washington, Houghton-le-Spring, Hetton-le-Hole, Seaham and Peterlee. Send us the weight and some photos and we can price most jobs the same working day from a desktop survey.

What lift and shift covers

Lift and shift is the part of a heavy move that happens off the crane hook: raising, lowering, turning and travelling an item along a route, then setting it on its base with gantries, skates, rollers and jacks. On many jobs a crane outside lands the item at a door, and our crew takes it from there.

What we lift and shift in Sunderland

Item	Where it usually is	How it moves
Transformers and switchgear	Switchrooms on the business parks and at utility sites	Jacked onto skates and lowered onto the plinth
Chillers, boilers and air handling units	Plant rooms in hospitals, colleges and office blocks	Gantry at the opening, then run on skates to the base
Injection moulding and production machinery	Supplier units on the Washington estates	Toe jacks, then skated to a new bay
Tanks and process skids	Fabrication shops and energy sector yards along the Wear	Rolled across the yard on tracks and jacked down
Standby generators and UPS	Office data rooms at Doxford and along the A19	Brought in from the loading door and levelled on anti-vibration mounts
Display cabinets and laboratory equipment	Galleries and teaching labs in the centre	Padded skates and a low-headroom gantry

Send us the weight and where the item has to end up. Our lift and shift service page covers the equipment and the method in more detail.

Get In Touch

Please leave a few details and a member of our lift and shift team will be in touch to discuss your requirements in more detail.

Where we work in and around Sunderland

Lift and shift enquiries from Sunderland come from a spread of buildings and rooms.

Production halls on the Washington estates

Automotive and engineering suppliers around Washington reposition machines for new contracts or a changed layout, with the lines either side still running. See our automotive sector page.

Riverside workshops and yards

Fabrication and energy firms along the Wear build tanks and skids that need turning, jacking onto transport or sliding from the bay to the loading door. See our maritime sector page.

Doxford and the A19 business parks

Offices on the business parks replace standby generators, UPS and rooftop cooling, with swaps booked for evenings or weekends. See our HVAC sector page.

New buildings in the centre

Regeneration schemes in the centre need switchgear and generators landed in basement switchrooms during fit-out. See our construction sector page.

Hospital and college plant rooms

Chillers, boilers and laboratory equipment are changed during refits. Each move is planned around the corridors and lifts that stay in use. See our healthcare and pharma and education pages.

Substations and utility sites

Transformer and switchgear changes across Wearside run to a planned outage, with the old unit off its plinth and the replacement jacked down in the time allowed. See our power and renewables page.

Access and planning for a lift and shift in Sunderland

Points we check on most Sunderland jobs:

Filled ground and old workings. Much of the riverside is filled ground, and the former pit villages to the south and west have mine workings beneath them. Before a tank or transformer crosses an open yard on skates, we check the surface and lay steel tracks where it is soft.
Floor loading along the route. Skates put a heavy item’s weight through a few small points. We find out whether a cellar, void or suspended slab sits under the route, and spread the load with mats where needed.
Headroom, doors and turns. Clearance is measured with the item on the equipment, along with every threshold, corner and ramp on the way to the base.
Buildings that stay open. In hospitals and offices the move is timed around the people inside, with a banksman at each crossing point.
Road space and loading. Where the lorry must stand on a street, from the centre out to Washington, we can arrange the traffic management and any road closure with Sunderland City Council.

Getting it where it needs to go

Work in Sunderland runs in every direction. New plant comes into buildings, old plant goes out, and on a swap the failed chiller leaves by the route its replacement arrives on. Other jobs stay outside: a transformer skated across a yard onto its plinth, a skid moved between workshops, or an air handling unit craned onto a roof and slid to its frame.

Older premises around Sunniside have narrow stairs and basements, Washington units add mezzanines and level changes, and hospital corridors bring ramps and goods lifts smaller than the item. Data rooms sit on raised floors. Gantries, jacks, rollers and skates get most items past these, with a crane where it helps. When nothing fits, a door frame is stripped back and made good, or the item goes through in sections.

Postcodes and areas we cover

We cover every SR district and the surrounding towns:

Sunderland: Roker, Seaburn, Monkwearmouth, Southwick, Pallion, the city centre, Sunniside, Silksworth and Doxford
West: Washington, Penshaw, Chester-le-Street, Houghton-le-Spring and Hetton-le-Hole
South and coast: Seaham, Ryhope, Murton, Peterlee and Easington
Wider area: Newcastle, Gateshead, South Shields, Hartlepool and Durham

We also lift and shift right across the UK.

Why Sunderland firms choose Synergy Lifting for lift and shift

Photos are enough to start. Pictures of the item and the route usually get you a price the same day.
Crane outside, crew inside. The crane lift and the move to the base are planned by one team under one method statement.
At home in buildings that stay open. Wearside hospitals and offices carry on around us.
Qualified and accredited. CPCS and NPORS operators, lifts planned to BS 7121, equipment inspected under LOLER and PUWER, SSIP approved, Constructionline Gold Member, certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and members of the Construction Plant-hire Association.

More than lift and shift

A Sunderland lift and shift can be one part of a larger job, so we also offer:

How a lift and shift works

Tell us the weight, the dimensions, where the item sits and where it has to go, with photos of the route.
You get a same-day price from a desktop survey, or a site visit first if the route is tight or the floor unknown.
We draw up the method statement, risk assessment and lift plan, and check the floor loadings along the route.
Our crew lifts the item, moves it along the route and positions it.
It is lowered onto its base, levelled and handed over ready for connection.

Common questions

Can you move a transformer across a riverside yard onto a new plinth?

Yes. We check the yard surface first, since much of the ground by the Wear is filled, then run the transformer across on skates over steel tracks and jack it down. Photos of the yard are enough for a first price.

Can you reposition a machine in a Washington factory while the rest of the line keeps running?

Yes, in most cases. We fence off the route and the new bay, move the machine on toe jacks and skates, and hand it back for connection.

How much headroom do you need?

Less than most people expect, but it decides the method. What counts is the gap between the top of the item and the lowest obstruction on the route once the item is on the equipment. Where it is tight we use a low-headroom gantry or jacks and lift in smaller steps.

Will you damage our floor?

Not if the route is prepared, and that preparation is part of the price. We spread the load with mats or tracks where the slab needs it, protect finished surfaces, and agree beforehand what gets covered and what gets made good.

Get a quote for lift and shift in Sunderland

Phone: 0191 313 0049
Email: sunderland@synergy-lifting.co.uk

Send us the weight, the dimensions and some photos of the route, and we will come back with a price.

We also provide lift and shift in Newcastle, Durham, Hartlepool and Teesside. See all the lift and shift locations.