When The Randolph Hotel in Oxford was due to undergo a total strip back, in October 2020, to be redeveloped into a boutique hotel as part of the Graduate Hotels brand, Tower Demolition proposed a working partnership to McBains for CleanConscience to assess the hotel’s contents, with a view to donate the assets to charity rather than having it landfilled or incinerated.

Once the budget was signed off by the owners, AJ Capital Partners, via the project consultants, McBains, it took twenty one 10-hour days with Gwen herself, assisted by a project manager, a welfare manager, 6 rented vans with drivers, 6 labourers and 4 members of staff from the hotel itself, to salvage the remaining contents.

There were two guest lifts, and for the first week Gwen and her team had exclusive access to the hotel, as the demolition team from Tower Demolition only arrived on the 3rd day. Gwen was then assigned an additional small team of 4 labourers from Tower Demolition’s team, to assist with bringing the contents down in the lifts and creating loading areas.

From there the assets were redistributed to benefit various other charities and, keeping in mind that this had to happen whilst the COVID pandemic was in full swing, any challenges were overcome as and when they presented themselves.