Buildings We Work In
The five kinds of building the Lake Electrical team knows best
Lake Electrical are electrical contractors for commercial buildings across Kent, East Sussex, Surrey and the wider South East, working in offices, schools, churches, universities and industrial sites. Each one buys electrical work on its own calendar and through its own approvals. Find your building below.
NICEIC approved contractor. SafeContractor accredited. DBS-checked engineers. Trading since 2008.
Electrical contractors for commercial buildings across the South East
We are based in Battle in East Sussex. The work is commercial in scale: inspection and testing programmes, lighting upgrades, heating for buildings that are hard to warm, distribution boards and main intake panels, and fit outs in buildings that stay open while we work. If you know the service rather than the building, start at services.
What changes when a contractor knows the building type
The same EICR takes a different shape in each of these five, because the plan is built around the building’s constraints, and those differ far more than the wiring does. In a church a faculty decides which fixings will ever be permitted, before anybody prices a cable run. On an industrial site the constraint is the production line. Pricing, access, paperwork and lead times all move with the building type, and a contractor who has only worked in one will plan the others as though they were the same, in good faith.
Offices
Cat B fit-outs for the tenant, and the lighting and power that goes with them. The installation you inherit has been added to by two or three tenants, so the board schedule no longer matches the building. We start with a survey or an EICR that establishes what is actually above the ceiling, then design the small power, lighting and containment around how the floor will be occupied. We cover power, lighting and data ourselves, so one contractor is answerable for the desk power, the LED upgrade and the cabling. Our offices and commercial property page sets out how a fit out runs.
Schools
Rewires and upgrades, planned around the holidays so we are finished before term starts. Term restarts on a set date whether or not the ceiling is closed, so the handover is the real specification. We programme the testing so the report and the remedial work it uncovers fall inside the same holiday, rather than a school reading an unsatisfactory finding in September. Sports halls are where ceiling mounted radiant heating earns its place, warming the people in the hall rather than the air above them. Private schools, with longer holidays, give us room for the larger jobs. See schools and education.
Churches
Heated pews, lighting and rewires, worked through the faculty and diocese. A church is one of the few buildings where the approvals take longer than the work, so lead times run into months and the paperwork matters as much as the wiring. We inspect with the building’s age and its mixed generations of wiring in mind, and relight it so the congregation can see and read. A stone building takes days to warm and empties again on Sunday afternoon, so heated pews are usually the answer. See churches and houses of worship.
Universities
Main intake panels and distribution, changed over without the building losing power. We swapped a main panel at a Chichester university lab over three days on backup generators, without stopping the science, which is the level a campus needs from our power distribution work. Inspection and testing across many buildings runs as a programme, in one format with consistent coding, so an estates team can compare buildings and plan capital work. The intrusive work happens in the vacations, so the programme is written around semester dates and the buildings that never fully empty. See universities.
Industrial
Power and distribution for sites that cannot lose supply, planned around production rather than forcing production around us. A shutdown costs more than the electrical work, so the sequence is agreed before anything is priced: what can be done live, what needs a changeover, and which hours the line can be handed to us. That means evenings, weekends and round the clock where the site cannot stop. See industrial.
The clients and the work that suit us best
The clients we most want are high end builders and architects, who care more about the standard of the work than the lowest figure. Drawings settled before first fix, a programme that is respected, an installation that is designed rather than improvised. It reaches us through commercial electrical installations and high end domestic and rewires, and we are most useful at design stage.
Ours is refurbishment, fit out, testing and upgrade in existing buildings rather than new build. We are not the cheapest, and we are straight about that. As a finishing trade we arrive late in a programme, so we plan around the trades before us.
Accredited and experienced in these buildings
Commercial buildings since 2008, as a NICEIC approved contractor and SafeContractor accredited, with DBS-checked engineers, which matters in a school or on a campus.
Recent work
What clients say
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Why clients choose the Lake Electrical team
Family run and owner led since 2008. The owners run the jobs themselves, so the person who walks the building with you is the one who prices it and the one answerable for it. Call in working hours and you get a person in the office rather than a voicemail. Our engineers have all been with us at least two years, so you get the same faces back. What you pay for is an engineer who understands the building, work carried out to BS 7671, and a report that tells you what is actually there, including the finding you hoped we would not make.
Sector questions answered
Do you work in buildings that are not listed here
Very likely. These five are where most of our work sits, but the same skills apply to public buildings, village halls and community premises.
Why a cheap inspection can cost you more
A cheap EICR is priced per circuit, and the engineer gets about five minutes on each one. That is not long enough to work out what a circuit does, so it comes back as a page of limitations and you pay again to find out what you have. We have seen a £500 report turn into a £10,000 remedial bill.
Do you visit the building before quoting, and how is the work priced
Yes, on anything beyond the smallest job. The supply, the spare capacity in the boards and the age of the wiring all change what the work involves, and none of it reads off a drawing. We price from the survey and the drawings rather than a rate card, so you get the scope and the cost before anything is agreed.
Do you respond to tenders and work for main contractors
Yes. We price against tender and specification documents, work to a main contractor’s programme and paperwork, and are comfortable with public sector and university procurement. Where a project takes in the audio visual work, our sister company OBAV tenders for that half.
Request a quote for work in your building
If you are planning electrical work in any of these buildings, the next step is a visit. A few details is enough for us to come back with a price, usually the same day.
Planning work in your building? Request a quote. Prefer a chat first? Get in touch, or call [[NAP: phone number]], Mon to Fri, 8am to 5pm.
We work across Kent, East Sussex, Surrey and the wider South East.