Lift and Shift Derby

Lift and shift in Derby and across Derbyshire

We provide lift and shift in Derby for engineering and aerospace suppliers, rail and automotive firms, hospitals, universities and utilities. The work is heavy or awkward items moved, lifted, lowered, turned and positioned where a crane cannot reach or cannot do the final placing: switchgear into a switchroom, a boiler out of a basement, a machine repositioned on a factory floor, or a laboratory cabinet taken up a floor. Many machine shops here have to stay clean while we work.

We cover Derby, Pride Park, Spondon, Sinfin, Chaddesden, Mickleover, Allestree and Littleover, and out to Belper, Ashbourne and Burton-on-Trent. Most jobs are priced the same working day.

What lift and shift covers

Lift and shift is the part of a heavy move that happens off the crane hook. We raise an item, turn it, carry it along a route and lower it onto its base with gantries, skates, rollers, jacks and toe jacks. Where a crane outside sets the load at a door or on a roof, our crew takes it from there.

What we lift and shift in Derby

Item	Where it usually is	How it moves
Switchgear panels and transformers	Switchrooms in factories and office buildings	Raised on toe jacks, set on skates and walked through the door to the plinth
Chillers, boilers and air handling units	Basement and roof plant rooms in the city centre	Brought through a roof hatch on a gantry, or down the stair core in sections
Machine tools and inspection machines	Toolrooms and machine shops across the city	Toe jacks and skates to a new bay in the same shop
Standby generators and UPS	Basements and data rooms in offices and healthcare buildings	Rolled off the tail lift and set down on anti-vibration mounts
Laboratory equipment and process skids	Test and laboratory areas in university and engineering buildings	Lifted clear on a low-headroom gantry, then short moves on skates
Display cabinets and heavy fittings	Shops and public buildings in the city centre	Raised a few millimetres on jacks and moved on padded rollers

Give us the weight, the size and both positions and we will explain the method. Our lift and shift service page goes through each stage.

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 Derby

Our Derby lift and shift work comes from a handful of building types.

Precision engineering workshops

Machining and inspection firms across the city supply the aerospace industry among others. One new machine in a packed shop can mean shuffling others into new bays. See our aerospace sector page.

Rail engineering and its suppliers

Derby’s rail supply chain includes plenty of small specialist workshops, where test benches and control cabinets get moved between bays around the build programme. See our rail sector page.

Automotive component makers

Suppliers to the car industry change their lines when a new contract arrives, and welding cells and wash tanks are walked to new positions on toe jacks and skates. See our automotive sector page.

Pride Park, Spondon and Infinity Park

These estates mix new units with older yards. Incoming tenants need plant set into place, and office rooftop units get replaced as they age. See our industrial and HVAC sector pages.

Hospitals and universities

Healthcare and university buildings replace chillers and lab equipment with people still inside, on a route the estates team signs off. See our healthcare and pharma and education pages.

Substations and treatment works

Utility sites around the county swap transformers and switchgear panels during planned outages, and the new kit finishes on a plinth behind a narrow door. See our power and renewables page.

Access and planning for a lift and shift in Derby

Points we check on most Derby jobs:

Clean and controlled areas. Derby’s engineering supply chain has plenty of machine shops and inspection rooms where dust is not allowed. We sheet the route and keep any cutting outside.
Floor loading. A loaded skate puts a lot of weight on a few small wheels. We check the slab and whether a basement or duct runs beneath the route, and lay steel plates where the figures call for it.
Headroom and the route. We measure the height with the item on the equipment, and each door and corner between the lorry and the base.
Production carrying on. Derby factories on shift work keep running around us, so the move is timed around shift changes and forklift traffic.
Road space. Where a city-centre lorry has to stand on the street, we can arrange the traffic management or road closure with Derby City Council or Derbyshire County Council.

Getting it where it needs to go

Derby jobs run in every direction: plant into a building, plant out, or a swap in one visit. Some stay outside, like a transformer moved across a yard onto a plinth or a unit skated along a roof.

Inside, the route might mean the stairs of a Georgian building in the Cathedral Quarter, a goods lift in an older works, a mezzanine on Pride Park or a ramp down to a basement. Gantries, jacks, rollers and skates get past these, with a crane where it helps. If 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 DE postcode and the districts around Derby:

Derby: city centre, the Cathedral Quarter, Darley Abbey, Pride Park, Alvaston, Chaddesden and Spondon
Suburbs: Mickleover, Littleover, Allestree and Sinfin
Derbyshire: Belper, Ripley, Heanor, Ilkeston, Wirksworth and Matlock
South: Swadlincote, Burton-on-Trent and Barton-under-Needwood
Wider area: Ashbourne, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Uttoxeter, Loughborough, Mansfield and Nottingham

We also lift and shift right across the UK.

Why Derby firms choose Synergy Lifting for lift and shift

Photos are enough to start. Pictures of the item and the way in give us enough for a first price.
The lift and the shift planned together. When a crane lands the item at the door, the same team carries it on to the base.
At home in working buildings. Offices, labs and healthcare buildings stay open while our crew works around the people in them.
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 Derby 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 and dimensions, where the item sits and where it has to go, with photos of the route.
We give a price from a desktop survey the same working day, and come out first if the route is tight or the floor is unknown.
We write the method statement, risk assessment and lift plan, and check the floor loading.
Our crew lifts the item, moves it along the route and puts it in position.
We set it down, level it and hand it over for connection.

Common questions

Can you work in a clean machine shop or inspection room?

Yes. The floor is sheeted along the route, the skates are cleaned before they come in and no cutting is done inside. Tell us the site’s rules when you enquire and we will plan to suit them.

Can you replace a rooftop unit on an office at Pride Park?

Yes. A crane lifts the new unit onto the roof from the car park, and we skate it to the base while the old one goes down on the return lift. A weekend date keeps the car park clear.

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 Derby

Phone: 01332 408 863
Email: derby@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, Chesterfield, Leicester and Stoke. See all the lift and shift locations.