Lift and Shift Durham

Lift and shift in Durham and across County Durham

We provide lift and shift in Durham for hospitals, schools, offices, energy sites and the county’s engineering firms. The work is moving, lifting, lowering, turning and positioning heavy or awkward items where a crane cannot reach or cannot do the final placing: transformers and switchgear into switchrooms, chillers, boilers, air handling units and generators in and out of plant rooms and basements, machinery repositioned inside factories, tanks and process skids, and delicate items such as display cabinets and laboratory equipment.

We are based at Darlington, down the A1(M), and work across Durham, Chester-le-Street, Consett, Stanley, Spennymoor, Bishop Auckland, Newton Aycliffe, Crook and Barnard Castle. Send details and photos and we can price it the same working day from a desktop survey.

What lift and shift covers

Lift and shift picks up where the crane stops, or replaces it: raising an item off its base, lowering it a level, turning it and running it to where it will stand. We use gantries, skates, rollers, jacks and toe jacks, and a crane outside will often land the item at the door.

What we lift and shift in Durham

Item	Where it usually is	How it moves
Switchgear and transformers	Switchrooms in hospitals, offices and factory units	Raised on jacks, run in on skates and lowered onto the plinth
Boilers	Basement boiler houses under older city buildings	Brought down through a hatch on a gantry, then skated to the base
Standby generators and UPS	Basements and comms rooms in public buildings	Brought down a ramp on skates and set on anti-vibration mounts
Presses and production machinery	Factory units at Spennymoor and Consett	Lifted with toe jacks and moved to a new bay under the same roof
Laboratory and medical equipment	Hospital departments and research buildings	Skated along corridors, then lowered into place by gantry
Display cabinets and delicate fittings	Shops, offices and public buildings in the city	Padded skates, moved at walking pace

If you know the weight and size, we can tell you which method suits. The lift and shift service page sets out how we work.

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 Durham

Our Durham lift and shift jobs come from a mix of buildings and sites.

Hospital plant rooms and departments

Hospitals across the county replace plant room kit and switchgear with patients still on the wards, and move medical equipment between departments at hours the estates team sets. See our healthcare and pharma page.

Schools and university buildings

Plant room upgrades and lab fit-outs are booked into the holidays. Some teaching blocks have no outside route to the plant room. See our education sector page.

Factory floors at Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor

Here and at Consett, engineering and automotive supply firms reorganise the floor when a line changes, jacking machines across a bay while the rest keeps running. See our industrial and automotive pages.

Switchrooms and energy sites

Wind farms and energy from waste sites need transformers and switchgear set on plinths inside compact substations. On rural sites the item may be jacked off a trailer at the gate and rolled to the building. See our power and renewables page.

Offices and commercial buildings

Offices and hotels in Durham city and Chester-le-Street replace rooftop and basement plant while staff and guests carry on. See our HVAC sector page.

New builds and regeneration schemes

Regeneration schemes around Durham city and Newton Aycliffe need generators and switchpanels landed in their plant rooms before the walls close in. See our construction page.

Access and planning for a lift and shift in Durham

Points we check on most Durham jobs:

The peninsula. Streets around the peninsula are narrow and weight limited, and the older buildings have stone stairs and small doorways. We walk the carry from the nearest legal stopping point to the door before settling the method.
Floors, yards and old workings. Skates and jacks put heavy loads through small points. Parts of the county sit on made ground over former colliery workings, so a yard route gets checked as carefully as a suspended floor, with mats or steel track where the numbers call for it.
Headroom along the route. We take the item’s height once it is on skates, then compare it with every beam, door head and duct on the way to the base.
Buildings that stay open. Hospitals and schools in term time carry on around us, so the move fits the hours the site gives us.
Standing the vehicle. Where the lorry unloads on the highway, we apply to Durham County Council for the permit or closure and supply the traffic management.

Getting it where it needs to go

A Durham job can run in any direction: new plant into a building, old kit out to the kerb, or both in one visit. Others never go indoors, such as a transformer skated across a yard, a tank set on a new plinth, plant moved between buildings or lifted onto a roof.

City routes bring stone stairs, cellar steps, sloping streets and doorways sized for people. On the estates it is mezzanines and small goods lifts, and in hospitals ramps down to basements or raised floors in comms rooms. Gantries, jacks, rollers, skates and a crane where it helps get most items through. 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 the DH and DL postcodes across County Durham, and the neighbouring parts of Tyne and Wear and North Yorkshire:

DH1 and DH6 to DH9: Durham city, Bowburn, Coxhoe, Langley Moor, Lanchester, Consett, Stanley and Annfield Plain
DH2 to DH5: Chester-le-Street, Birtley, Houghton-le-Spring and Hetton-le-Hole
DL1 to DL5: Darlington, Shildon and Newton Aycliffe
DL12 to DL17: Barnard Castle, Weardale, Bishop Auckland, Crook, Spennymoor and Ferryhill
Wider area: Gateshead, Sunderland, Northallerton, Richmond and Catterick

We also lift and shift right across the UK.

Why Durham firms choose Synergy Lifting for lift and shift

Kit for tight spaces. Low-headroom gantries, toe jacks, rollers and skates suit small plant rooms and narrow corridors.
At home in live hospitals and schools. Occupied hospitals and schools are a regular part of our Durham work.
The crane and the shift on one plan. The crane lift outside and the move indoors run under one method statement and one contract.
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 Durham lift and shift can be part of a wider project, so we also offer:

How a lift and shift works

Let us know the weight, the dimensions and both positions, with photos of the route.
You get a same-day price from a desktop survey, or a site visit first when the route is tight or the floor is unknown.
We draw up the method statement, risk assessment and lift plan, and check floor loading.
Our crew lifts, moves and positions the item.
We set it down level on its base and hand it over ready for connection.

Common questions

Can you replace a school’s boiler during the summer holidays?

Yes. We survey in term time and fix the dates with the school, then swap the boilers while the building is empty. Book early, because the summer weeks go first.

Can you skate a transformer across a yard on former colliery land?

Yes, once we know what the ground will carry. We lay mats or steel track where the bearing is poor and jack the transformer onto its plinth.

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 Durham

Phone: 0191 313 0049
Email: durham@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 Sunderland, Newcastle, Hartlepool and Darlington. See all the lift and shift locations.