Lift and Shift Dover

Lift and shift in Dover and across Kent

We provide lift and shift in Dover for engineering firms, seafront hotels and offices, schools, heritage buildings and utilities across east Kent. The work is heavy items taken where a crane cannot reach or cannot place them: switchgear into a switchroom, a boiler out of a basement plant room, a generator into its enclosure, a machine moved to a new bay, or a display cabinet carried into a historic building.

Dover is pressed between the chalk and the sea, so the move inside is planned from wherever the lorry can stand. Our crews cover the town with Whitfield and Aycliffe, the coast from Deal to Folkestone, and inland to Sandwich, Canterbury, Ashford and Thanet. Send details and photos and we can price most jobs the same working day.

What lift and shift covers

Lift and shift is everything after the lorry or crane: raising an item, lowering it, turning it in a tight corridor, moving it along a route and setting it down where it will run, using gantries, skates, rollers, jacks and toe jacks. Where a crane outside lands the item at the door or on a roof, the same team carries on from there.

What we lift and shift in Dover

Item	Where it usually is	How it moves
Switchgear and UPS	Switchrooms in offices, hotels and public buildings in the town	Toe jacks under the frame, then rollers to the plinth
Boilers and air handling units	Basement plant rooms in seafront hotels and apartment blocks	Gantry over a pavement hatch, then skated to the base
Lathes, mills and assembly machinery	Engineering workshops across east Kent	Turned on the spot with jacks and pushed into a new bay
Standby generators	Plant compounds at water and utility sites across the district	Old set rolled out and the new one rolled in on one shift
Tanks and process skids	Manufacturing units on the Whitfield estate	Walked in on rollers and levelled on its frame
Display cabinets	Shops and public buildings in the town	Raised on jacks onto soft-wheeled rollers and walked in by hand

Give us the weight, size and both positions, and we will explain the method. Our lift and shift service page explains the process 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 Dover

Lift and shift work in and around Dover comes from five kinds of building.

Units at Whitfield and Aycliffe

Engineering and trade firms here reorganise their floors when new equipment arrives, turning a press through ninety degrees and pushing it a few metres while the rest of the unit keeps working. See our industrial sector page.

Seafront hotels and town-centre offices

Along the front and in the centre, boilers and air handling units sit in basements reached by a single stair, where a gantry over the stairwell does the lowering. See our HVAC sector page.

Older public buildings

Display cabinets in the town’s older buildings have to move without marking stone floors or stair treads. A crane is rarely needed here, and protecting the fabric decides the method.

Schools and healthcare buildings

Science blocks and plant rooms at schools are worked on in the summer break. Clinics book us into whatever hours their estates team can spare. See our education and healthcare and pharma pages.

Switchrooms and rail buildings

Substations and lineside buildings on the Kent lines keep switchgear in rooms with a single door. The old panel has to come out before the new one can be turned and jacked in. See our power and renewables and rail pages.

Access and planning for a lift and shift in Dover

Points we check on most Dover jobs:

Where the lorry can stand. The town has little flat ground by the kerb between the cliffs and the water. That spot decides which door the item goes through, so we settle it before planning anything inside.
Old floors along the front. Regency and Victorian terraces on the seafront and in the centre have cellars and suspended floors. We check what the joists will carry and lay mats or steel tracks where needed.
Headroom and the route. Clearance is measured with the item on the equipment, then each door and turn from kerb to base.
People in the building. Hotels and schools carry on while we work, so the hours and a fenced route are agreed with whoever runs the building.
Kerbside unloading. A lorry parked on a Dover street needs traffic management and sometimes a full closure, which we arrange with Kent County Council.

Getting it where it needs to go

Some Dover jobs take new plant into a building or bring worn-out kit back to the kerb, and plenty are swaps done in one visit. Others never go indoors, such as a transformer skated across a yard onto its plinth or a unit landed on a roof and pushed to its frame.

Inside, the town puts stairs, small goods lifts, mezzanines, basement ramps, raised floors and narrow Victorian doorways in the way. Gantries, jacks, rollers and skates get past them, with a crane where it saves a stair. When nothing fits, a door frame comes out and is made good, or the item goes through in sections.

Postcodes and areas we cover

We cover every CT postcode and the districts around the town:

Dover: town centre, Whitfield, Aycliffe, River and Buckland
The coast: Deal, Walmer, St Margaret’s, Folkestone and Hythe
North and west: Sandwich, Canterbury, Ramsgate, Margate and Ashford
Wider area: Maidstone, Tonbridge, Tenterden and the rest of Kent

We also lift and shift right across the UK.

Why Dover firms choose Synergy Lifting for lift and shift

One team from the hook to the base. When a crane puts the item on a roof or at the door, our riggers take it on under the same lift plan and the same supervisor.
Care inside older buildings. In the town’s historic buildings, protection for floors and door linings is agreed with you at quote stage.
Method statement in good time. The method statement and lift plan are written for your building and sent in time for your estates or facilities team to approve.
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

Dover lift and shift jobs sometimes lead on to other work, so we also offer:

How a lift and shift works

Send the weight and dimensions, both positions and photos of the way between.
We price it from a desktop survey the same working day where we can, and come out first if the route is tight or the floors are unknown.
We write the method statement, risk assessment and lift plan, and check the floor loading along the route.
On the agreed day our crew lifts, moves and positions the item.
It is set down, levelled on its base and handed back to you.

Common questions

Can you get plant into a seafront building with no rear access?

Yes. We measure the front entrance and any pavement hatch, then decide whether the unit comes through whole or in sections. Where it has to go up, a small crane on the street can land it on the roof.

Can you turn a machine round inside a unit at Whitfield?

Yes. We raise it on toe jacks, turn it on skates within the space it already occupies, then run it to its new bay and set it down level.

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 Dover

Phone: 01304 700 758
Email: dover@synergy-lifting.co.uk

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

We also provide lift and shift in Ipswich, Brighton, London and Cambridge. See all the lift and shift locations.