Few would deny that St Brelade’s Bay on Jersey’s southwest coast stands out for its stunning beauty.

Sheltered waters, golden sands, long curving promenade fringed with ample places to eat, drink or enjoy a delicious ice cream. Not many locations are arguably better on a hot summer’s day or even a crisp winter one.

Understandably, the bay regularly tops not just the local most popular list but is often also ranked highly among those featuring beaches across Britain or even Europe. No doubting, then, that the outstanding charms of St Brelade’s are recognised far and wide.

With such a glowing status, it is doubly important for the bay to be accessible to all, including anyone with complex care needs.

Now, thanks to a marvellous charitable team effort that included T&G Structural Engineers, this renowned beauty spot’s charms have become just a bit easier for everyone to enjoy.

Enabling access

Enable Jersey is a charity dedicated to ensuring disabled islanders can live without limits. The availability of suitable public toilets can be a barrier to achieving this – and certainly one that has been limiting access to St Brelade’s Bay for some community members.

Following a grant from Jersey’s government, however, the charity had an opportunity to remedy this … providing a bit of professional assistance could be secured.

‘We heard about plans to construct disabled facilities in St Brelade’s Bay,’ reveals Johnny Moffett, managing director at T&G, ‘and recognised an opportunity for supporting both the local community and our organisation.

‘By providing the structural and civil engineering services needed for the project free of charge, we helped the charity’s tight budget go a little further. By seeing the project as an excellent opportunity for personal development, we were able to help some of our team members gain real life engineering experience and put important workplace skills into practice.’

Full range of skills

The project was building an extension to the existing public toilet building located in the centre of the bay. This specially designed ‘Changing Place’ facility provides an independently accessible disabled toilet along with changing bench, shower and hoist.

Working closely with the charity, and alongside several other local organisations also supporting the project, T&G provided the necessary site inspections, risk assessments, design calculations and 3D design visuals.

Trainee structural engineers Nicole Wood and Zac Pallot assumed many responsibilities, including project management and administration, delivery of information, onsite inspections, 3D visuals and communications between design and construction teams.

T&G’s recently appointed associate director Cátia Caetano took on the role of project lead, becoming main client contact alongside providing key engineering design services.

‘While a small project in overall terms, its location within a busy carpark near a well-used road crossing added quite a lot of complexity,’ elaborates Ms Caetano. ‘This provided some challenging design and construction considerations for the team, who all wanted to deliver the best service possible.

‘This was important, not only to help develop our engineering and project management skills, but also because we knew the value of this new facility for the community.’

Worthwhile all-round effort

The professionalism, dedication and effort of the T&G team and others involved certainly paid off. The finished Changing Room facility was able to open in February 2022, ready for use as the number of visitors coming to enjoy the charms of St Brelade’s Bay ramps up for the summer.

Among them this year will potentially be islanders who may have stayed away for lack of disabled facilities or had to reduce time spent there.

Now that is a worthwhile bit of community service.