Lift and Shift Portsmouth

Lift and shift in Portsmouth and across Hampshire

We provide lift and shift in Portsmouth for boatbuilders, hospitals, colleges, manufacturers and building owners across the area. The work is heavy or awkward kit moved, lifted, lowered, turned and positioned where a crane cannot reach it 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 a factory, tanks and process skids, and delicate items such as display cabinets and laboratory equipment.

Portsmouth is a tightly built island city, and the lorry often has nowhere to stand but the street. We cover Southsea, Hilsea and Cosham, then Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Waterlooville and on to Chichester. Send the weight and a few photos and we can price it the same working day from a desktop survey.

What lift and shift covers

This is the part of a job done without a crane hook overhead. Gantries, skates, rollers, jacks and toe jacks do the lifting and travelling, and the item finishes on its base. Where a crane brings it to the door, our crew carries it on from there.

What we lift and shift in Portsmouth

Item	Where it usually is	How it moves
Switchgear and LV panels	Ground-floor switchrooms in flats and offices	Toe jacks and skates, turned in the corridor and lowered onto the plinth
Boilers and air handling units	Basement plant rooms under older Southsea buildings	Gantry over the stairwell or hatch, then rolled to the base
Presses and machine tools	Factory floors on the Segensworth estates	Jacked evenly onto skates and pulled to a new bay
Standby generators and UPS	Data rooms and energy centres in commercial buildings	Skated from the goods entrance, jacked down onto mounts and levelled
Tanks and process skids	Manufacturing and marine sites on the Gosport and Fareham side	Skated across the yard and jacked onto a new concrete base
Display cabinets and laboratory equipment	Shops, galleries, clinics and teaching labs	Low rollers under a padded frame, moved by hand

Give us the weight, footprint and both positions and we will tell you how we would handle it. Our lift and shift service page covers 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 Portsmouth

Our Portsmouth enquiries come from six kinds of building.

Boatyards and marine workshops

Boatyard sheds around the harbour have slipways, ramps and slabs laid at different times. Kit moved inside crosses joints and level changes, so we plate the route. See our maritime sector page.

Hospitals and clinics

Plant rooms in the area’s clinics and hospitals take new UPS, boilers and air handling units, with the work done at night under a permit to work. See our healthcare and pharma page.

Schools, colleges and civic buildings

Victorian school buildings and council offices keep boilers down narrow stairs, while newer science blocks need laboratory equipment placed for a fit-out. See our education sector page.

Estates at Hilsea, Portchester and Havant

Manufacturers here reposition presses and machine tools to fit a new line or free a bay, with the rest of the unit still running. See our industrial sector page.

Offices, hotels and shops

Commercial buildings in the city centre and along the Southsea seafront keep their plant in basements and on flat roofs, reached through a hatch on a gantry or by crane and skates. See our HVAC sector page.

New residential and commercial blocks

New schemes on the island need transformers and switchgear set into ground-floor switchrooms before the finishes go in. See our construction sector page.

Access and planning for a lift and shift in Portsmouth

Points we check on most Portsmouth jobs:

Nowhere to park the lorry. Portsea Island is one of the densest built-up areas in the country, and few buildings have a yard. The item goes from lorry to building in one movement, with arrivals timed to miss peak traffic on the crossings.
Cellars and suspended floors. Terraces and Victorian buildings in Southsea, Fratton and Old Portsmouth can have cellars or timber floors below ground level. We check what lies under the route and spread the load with mats or tracks.
Headroom and the way through. We measure clearance with the item on its equipment, and every doorway and turn from pavement to base.
People still in the building. Clinics, shops and offices stay open, so we fence off the route in sections and agree hours beforehand.
Road space. Where the lorry must stand on the road, we arrange traffic management and any closure with Portsmouth City Council, or Hampshire County Council for Fareham, Gosport and Havant.

Getting it where it needs to go

A job can run into a building, out of one, or both, with the old unit leaving on the visit the new one arrives. Some never go indoors: a transformer skated across a yard onto its plinth, a tank moved between buildings, or an air handling unit craned onto a roof and rolled to its frame.

Terraces bring front steps and narrow hall doors, seafront hotels bring basement plant rooms under a single stair, and units at Hilsea bring mezzanines. Gantries, jacks, rollers and skates handle most of it, with a crane outside 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 PO postcode, on Portsea Island and around it:

Portsea Island: city centre, Old Portsmouth, Southsea, Fratton, Milton, Eastney and Hilsea
North of the creek: Cosham, Drayton, Farlington and Paulsgrove
West: Portchester, Fareham, Titchfield, Stubbington, Gosport and Lee-on-the-Solent
East: Havant, Waterlooville, Emsworth and Hayling Island
Further out: Chichester, Bognor Regis, Wickham, Petersfield and the Isle of Wight

We also lift and shift right across the UK.

Why Portsmouth firms choose Synergy Lifting for lift and shift

Night and weekend working. Clinics, shops and offices can stay open, because the move is booked for when they are shut.
Our crane, our crew. Where a crane lifts the item off the road or onto a roof, it is ours, and the same crew finishes the move inside.
Pictures of the route first. Send pictures of the route and we will tell you whether the item goes in whole or in sections, and whether we need to visit.
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 Portsmouth lift and shift can lead into other work:

How a lift and shift works

Tell us the weight and dimensions, the current and final position, and send photos of the route.
We quote from a desktop survey, in most cases the same working day, and visit first where the route is tight or the floor unknown.
You get a method statement, risk assessment and lift plan, with floor loadings checked.
Our crew lifts, moves and positions the item.
It is set down on its base, levelled and handed over ready for connection.

Common questions

Our building has no yard and a narrow street outside. Can you still get the unit in?

Yes. We book a parking suspension or short closure so the lorry can stand at the door, then take the item straight inside. Photos of the frontage help.

Can you take an old boiler out of a Southsea basement?

Yes. We check the stair, any pavement hatch and the floor above, then decide whether the boiler comes up whole on a gantry or in pieces. Photos of the room and the stair are enough to start.

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 Portsmouth

Phone: 023 9388 2296
Email: portsmouth@synergy-lifting.co.uk

Send the weight, the dimensions and photos of the route for a price.

We also provide lift and shift in Southampton, Bournemouth, Brighton and Reading. See all the lift and shift locations.