Our History
PHD has an extensive and enriched heritage within the access industry.
We are a second-generation Irish family owned company with links to London, Sligo Ireland, Nassau Bahamas, Jebel Ali Dubai, and Odense Denmark. Over the years we have worked on a variety of exciting projects and with high-profile clients.
PHD expands it’s operations further into Europe as part of the company’s growth strategy which reflects PHD’s commitment to excellence and innovation in the access industry.
PHD aims to serve its customers better by establishing a presence further afield in Denmark, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Sweden.
30 years ago, Bernard Dwyer started PHD Scaffolding Ltd with only £460 in his pocket. Today, PHD Access is one of the leading providers of scaffolding and access solutions around the world, with works in the UK, Europe, America, Caribbean, and the Middle East.
Bernard’s son, Danny, inherited the company in 2017 and has grown the company exponentially since.
PHD was awarded a Silver Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) award by the London Employer Engagement Board. PHD signed the Armed Forces Covenant in May 2019.
For International Women’s Day 2021 PHD worked with ChronicMedia to create a video showcasing the most common of gender imbalances within the construction industry: women working on site.
PHD Access has reached a new high thanks to the role it has played on Europe’s biggest engineering project, HS2. PHD secured its first contract with HS2’s construction partner, Align joint venture, after registering to tender for business opportunities with HS2 through the CompeteFor portal.
HS2 Ltd has already awarded around £18bn worth of contracts directly and a significant proportion of this value is expected to flow out to the wider supply chain. Over the coming years, it’s estimated this figure will reach around £25bn.
PHD Access was ecstatic to have won the Access and Scaffolding Specialist category at the CN Specialist Awards 2020. This is the third time in a row PHD has picked up this award, having won in 2018 and 2019.
The award is the culmination of another outstanding year for PHD, which has seen continued growth and work both internally and on our projects.
As part of our goal to become a net zero carbon emission company, we installed four electrical charging points at our head office as an incentive for our employees to consider electric cars as their personal car of choice.
In May 2019, PHD were delighted to sign the Armed Forces Covenant (AFC) at Fulham House in Fulham, London. We were honoured to co-sign with Commander Glynn Johns, Chief of Naval Staff Regional Command. Also in attendance were PHD employed veterans, Lorraine Cadle from the Career Transition Partnership, Major Ian Weatherley and Trudy from the AFC.
This year, PHD Access were awarded the coveted ‘Access & Scaffolding Specialist of the Year’ and ‘Project of the Year (£1-3m subcontractor) prizes at the Construction News Specialist Awards.
Overlay Events were selected by Adidas to engineer a bespoke floating stadium called the Football Creator Dock, which was tied up by Tower Bridge for one night only. This was a first for Adidas, bringing football and music to the Thames and to celebrate the launch of Team Mode with guest appearances from their top football stars.
PHD Access has sponsored the London Irish Rugby team since the 2016/17 season.
PHD were engaged by Skanska to provide scaffolding and access services to their flagship Project Laureate. The project being a state-of-the art pharmaceutical Research & Development facility for the global biomedical giant AstraZeneca.
Whilst Project7 were preparing the London Stadium seating and transitioning the venue for the first major sporting event to be held since the Olympic Games, Overlay Events were providing Broadcast Overlay to all 54 venues, including 13 stadium venues and 41 team bases.
This included broadcast towers to all the team bases for the team and media to use, as well as service bridges to Twickenham Stadium and London Stadium, and a number of bespoke structures dressing the players entrance tunnels.
In addition, Overlay Events did significant work providing platforms, under structure, ramps and stair access to the huge hospitality villages.
Project7 are appointed by E20 and LLDC as Principal Contractor and Designer under a 5-year contract to reconfigure the London Olympic stadium to stage various major events throughout the year. As such we are responsible for re-configuring the lower bowl seating into the various venue modes (pitch, concert, athletics etc). This allows the venue to facilitate a wide range of events from football, rugby, concerts, athletics and baseball.
The works require the adaption of a bespoke seating system at least three times per year, alongside elements of overlay, which complement the various modes – this is typically event decking, stair cases, temporary buildings and advertising etc.
In 2015, PHD HOISTS & MASTS joined the PHD Group, providing Building Hoists and Mast Climbing Work Platforms (MCWPs) to supplement ad support the core business.
PHD Access are proud to have supplied the scaffolding and access equipment to Skanska at this world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) for Children, which is the country’s leading centre for treating sick children.
The London 2012 Olympic Games were one of the world’s largest events and PHD delivered £11m+ of projects.
An estimated 7.9m spectators attended the Games, making it the largest peacetime event ever staged anywhere in the world.
PHD were installed as overlay events partner for these games.
PHD were commissioned to install the access requirements for the King’s Cross Station renovation. The positions of all prefabricated steel ladder elements were exactly set out and supported by PHD’s carefully plotted scaffold structure.
PHD’s direct propping access solution allowed minimal scaffolding and maximum load bearing, whilst the roof elements are welded together to form the iconic central funnel and lattice design that the station is now known for.
The project helped treble the size of the concourse and eased the congestion of a station that has in excess of 47 million commuters pass through it each year. The station’s redevelopment is the centrepiece of the King’s Cross area, which at 67 acres, is one of the largest regeneration schemes in Europe.
One Hyde Park is one of the most iconic residential buildings in the world and are presently the most expensive and sought after apartments on the planet.
PHD were appointed to supply a variety of heavy-duty loading bays, staircases and access towers, which were delivered in galvanised Layher system scaffold.
Marylebone Station is a grade II listed ‘National Heritage’ building and home to London’s fastest growing rail hub.
PHD produced a bespoke rolling crash deck and mobile temporary roofing solution saving equipment, erection time and precious site space. A floating platform was created allowing trains and commuters to still use the platforms below.
In response to growing user numbers and to meet passenger demand during the London Olympics and Paralympic Games, the Dockland Light Railway (DLR) undertook a £208m infrastructure programme to allow their current two car carriage trains and station facilities to be upgraded to three carriages.
Works for this project included the construction of new stations and the modifying of 19 existing stations through extended platform canopies, new lifts, stairways, strengthening of bridges and viaducts.
PHD utilised specialised ‘Protec’ panel cladding on the scaffold to aid sound proofing during engineering hours, thus shielding commuters from ongoing works whilst improving the aesthetic appearance of the sites.
On the same day as the Atlantis’ ‘Grand Opening’, and earthquake hit Iran causing the strongest tremors ever to shake Dubai and created £44m worth of hotel damage. Due to the prioritising of damage repairs, only a 60 hour window was left for full installation of the staging deck with all work having to be carried out in a live environment as guests arrived.
PHD’s solution produced a deck designed to an extraordinary 6kg msg spanning an area in excess of 5,000msg. The whole stage was strengthened with a double skin of 18mm thick plywood, preventing bounce and distortion.
Further to this, PHD installed 23 flights of stairs with fire escapes using an offsite prefabrication process to meet time constraits. PHD successfully completed ‘Mission Impossible’ in 59 hours and 14 minutes.
PHD are proud to have been involved in the delivery of the Terminal 2 for the Republic of Ireland’s Dublin Airport. This T2 project, created a further 75,000m2 of floor space, which almost doubled the size of Dublin Airport.
PHD were ‘flying high’ after having won awards at Dublin T2 for our demonstrated Health & Safety practice.
Ireland’s largest cable stay bridge in the peaceful Boyne Valley on the outskirts of Drogheda, consists of an asymmetric 56 cable stayed structure with a main span of 170m across the two channels of the river.
This landmark steel structure carries the M1 motorway linking Dublin and Belfast across the River Boyne.
PHD are proud to have carried out the access works on this extremely challenging engineering projects.
In August 1997, Bernard Dwyer received an invitation from Sun International Inc to visit Nassau, Bahamas, with a view to providing a suspended access solution for the second phase of the Atlantis development “The Royal Towers” on Paradise Island.
The initial requirement was for swing stages (cradles) to the upper perimeters and stick scaffolding (tube fitting) to the lower perimeter and access to the various shark tanks – value circa $7m.
PHD remained committed to the islands throughout the economic swings and has provided numerous employment opportunities to Bahamians over the years.
Restoration of the tower was a four-year process and required over 68 miles of scaffolding tube to provide access to replace 1,000 cubic feet of decayed stonework. At the time PHD’s scaffold solution was the largest independent scaffold in Europe, and the highest temporary roof in the UK.
In 1992, Bernard founded his scaffolding and temporary access company, then called PHD Scaffolding Ltd, in London with only £460 in his pocket. In his first year the company’s turnover was £204k.
During the next few years, PHD worked for some of the top companies in the UK, including British Rail, BBC, BP, ITV, Thames TV, Bovis, Laings, Costain and many more.
In 1984 Tetris was created, Richard Branson revitalised air travel, Prince released both the film and album Purple Rain, and Bernard Dwyer began his career in construction as a labourer.
