Lift and Shift Leicester

Lift and shift in Leicester and across Leicestershire

We provide lift and shift in Leicester for food producers, engineering firms, logistics sites, hospitals and universities. The work is heavy or awkward kit moved where a crane cannot reach or cannot do the final placing: switchgear into a switchroom, a chiller or generator out of a basement plant room, machinery repositioned inside a factory, a process skid, or laboratory equipment taken between floors.

We work across Leicester, Beaumont Leys, Braunstone, Hamilton and Oadby, and out to Hinckley, Lutterworth, Loughborough and Market Harborough. Quotes go out the same working day from a desktop survey.

What lift and shift covers

It means raising, lowering, turning and travelling a heavy item along a route and landing it on its base, with no crane hook over it. We use gantries, skates, rollers, jacks and toe jacks. Where a crane outside lands the item at the door or on the roof, we take it from there.

What we lift and shift in Leicester

Item	Where it usually is	How it moves
Transformers and switchgear	Switchrooms in commercial buildings and on industrial estates	Toe jacks up, skates through the door, lowered onto the plinth
Air handling units and boilers	Rooftop and basement plant rooms in offices and student blocks	Craned to roof level or lowered on a gantry, then rolled to the base
Presses and machine tools	Precision engineering works on the industrial estates	Walked on skates to a new bay in the same building
Standby generators and UPS	Basements and data rooms in offices and warehouses	Skated in from the loading door onto anti-vibration mounts
Process tanks and skids	Hygiene areas in Leicestershire food factories	Rollers over a protected floor during the shutdown
Display cabinets and heavy fittings	Shops and public buildings in the city centre	Padded rollers and hand skates, with walls and floors covered

Give us the weight, the size and the end position, and we will work out the method. Our lift and shift service page has 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 Leicester

The work comes from these kinds of building.

Food factories and cold stores

Across Leicestershire’s food plants we move tanks and process skids between hygiene zones and swap refrigeration plant behind the cold stores, inside the site’s shutdown. See our food and beverages page.

Distribution sheds off the M1 and M69

The big sheds near Lutterworth and Hinckley rely on switchgear and standby generators, kept in back rooms or an outside compound, that eventually need replacing. See our industrial sector page.

Engineering and textile units

Engineers and textile firms at Beaumont Leys and Hamilton reposition presses and machine tools for new equipment. Some units date from the hosiery years, with narrow openings and floors never laid for modern machines. See our industrial sector page.

Hospital and campus buildings

The city’s hospital estate and two universities replace plant room chillers and move laboratory and medical equipment between floors. Clinical buildings stay in use, and campus jobs are booked between terms. See our healthcare and pharma and education pages.

Offices and student blocks in the centre

City-centre buildings keep their plant on the roof or below ground. New air handling units arrive on the roof by crane and are skated to the plinth, and basement boilers go down a stair core or hatch. See our HVAC sector page.

Substations and switchrooms

Transformer and switchgear changes follow an agreed outage, with the new unit set beside the old one before changeover. See our power and renewables page.

Access and planning for a lift and shift in Leicester

Points we check on most Leicester jobs:

Working distribution sheds. Plant rooms on the logistics parks off the M1 and M69 sit beyond a busy warehouse floor. We agree a route clear of forklift aisles and time the move around the shift change.
What is under the floor. Older units on the estates can hide machine pits and thin slab. We check what lies below the route and spread the load with mats or steel plates.
Headroom and the route. We measure clearance with the item on the equipment, and each doorway and turn on the way.
Buildings in use. Hospital and campus moves are fitted around patients and students, with protection agreed with the estates team.
Loading on the street. Cultural Quarter streets are narrow and partly pedestrian. Where a lorry needs part of a road or pavement, we arrange the closure with Leicester City Council, or Leicestershire County Council outside the city.

Getting it where it needs to go

Jobs run in any direction: plant into a building, plant out of one, or old swapped for new in one visit. Some stay outside, such as a transformer skated across a yard onto its plinth, a tank moved between buildings, a generator taken to a new compound, or a unit craned onto a roof.

Leicester routes bring small goods lifts in older textile units, mezzanines in the sheds, ramps and narrow doors down to city-centre basements, and raised floors in data rooms. Gantries, jacks, rollers and skates get past most of it, with a crane for any outside stretch. When nothing fits, we strip back a door frame and make it good, or take the item through in sections.

Postcodes and areas we cover

We cover every LE postcode and the Leicestershire districts around it:

Leicester: city centre, the Cultural Quarter, Clarendon Park, Aylestone, Evington, Beaumont Leys and Braunstone
Around the city: Glenfield, Hamilton, Wigston, Oadby, Enderby, Groby, Anstey and Syston
The county: Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Lutterworth, Market Harborough, Coalville and Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Wider area: Hinckley, Nuneaton, Coventry and Corby

We also lift and shift right across the UK.

Why Leicester firms choose Synergy Lifting for lift and shift

Crane and crew on one contract. The crane that lands the item and the team that moves it inside work to one lift plan.
Out-of-hours work as standard. Many Leicester moves happen overnight or at weekends so a food line or ward keeps running.
Old and new in one visit. The old unit comes out and the new one goes in on the same booking.
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

Leicester lift and shift jobs sometimes come with other work, so we also offer:

How a lift and shift works

Send the weight and dimensions, where the item sits now and where it is going, with photos of the route.
We price it the same working day from a desktop survey, and visit first if the route is tight or the floor unknown.
A method statement, risk assessment and lift plan are drawn up, and the floor loading along the route is checked.
Our crew lifts, moves and positions the item on the agreed day.
It is set down, levelled on its base and handed over for your engineers to connect.

Common questions

Can you get a new boiler into a basement plant room in the centre of Leicester?

Yes. We check the way down and where the lorry can stand, then decide whether the boiler goes whole on a gantry or in sections. Photos from the street to the plant room are enough to quote.

Can you move process equipment inside a food factory shutdown?

Yes. Tell us how long the line is down and we plan the move to fit. Our skates and jacks are cleaned to the site’s rules before entering a hygiene area, and the space goes back ready for your cleaners.

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 Leicester

Phone: 0116 350 1020
Email: leicester@synergy-lifting.co.uk

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

We also provide lift and shift in Nottingham, Coventry, Derby and Northampton. See all the lift and shift locations.